"And a believer of pharoh's people who concealed his faith said; "Will you kill a man because he says: "My LORD is GOD(Allah)?"and indeed he has brought to you clear signs from your Lord, and if is a liar, on him will be his lie, and if he is truthful, there will befall you some threatens you with. surely GOD(Allah) does not guide any excessive liar" (s. Ghafir40:28) French Muslims Want Remembrance Day | |||
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"[ RMF] firmly and tirelessly condemns these cowardly and despicable acts," the Rally of French Muslims (RMF) said in a statement cited by Agence France Presse (AFP). Vandals daubed swastikas and anti-Islam slogans on graves of French Muslim war veterans buried in Notre-Dame-de-Lorette World War I cemetery. About 500 of the 576 Muslim graves were defaced Sunday, the eve of `Eid al-Adha, one of the two main religious festivals on the Islamic calendar which marks the end of hajj. Swastikas and slogans insulting Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and France's Justice Minister Rachida Dati, a Muslim, were painted on graves. The damage was discovered early Monday by a passerby, state prosecutor Jean-Pierre Valensi told reporters at the scene, adding that a probe is under way. The Paris mosque is to hold a prayer ceremony at the cemetery on Friday. PresidentSarkozy denounced the attack as "abject and revolting" and said it was "the expression of a repugnant racism directed against the Muslim community of France." He ordered that the perpetrators be quickly found and brought to justice "with the full severity that this requires." This is the third time over the past two years that Muslim tombstones were desecrated at the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette cemetery. In April, vandals desecrated 148 Muslim graves, hanging a pig's head from one tombstone and again taunting Dati, who is of North African descent. That attack came almost exactly a year after a similar incident in which neo-Nazi vandals painted swastikas on 52 of the cemetery's Muslim graves. Remembrance Day The RMF, whose leader Mohammed Moussaoui is the head of the official French Council for the Muslim Religion, urged the state to devote a new day of remembrance for its Muslim war dead. "[This would] raise youth awareness about the contribution of Muslims who fell to defend the freedom of their nation, France, and the liberty of all French people whatever their religion or beliefs." During WW I, France amassed about 600,000 colonial subjects, including many Muslims from Algeria and Tunisia, of whom 78,000 were killed. The Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery, near the town of Arras, is France's biggest military graveyards. Inaugurated in 1925, it houses the remains of about 40,000 soldiers killed in a series of long and bloody battles for control of northern France at the start of World War I. The Muslim quarter includes 576 tombs, grouped together and turned towards the holy city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia. France is home to nearly seven million Muslims, the largest Muslim minority in Western Europe. |
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