03-Jan-16: At a French mosque, a vehicle ramming attack with "bellicose slogans" but "unclear" motive

Scene outside the Valence mosque. The driver of the attack vehicle, a red
Peugeot wagon was stopped by police gunfire [Image Source]

Here in Israel, reports of an assault on a French mosque on Friday are likely to be eliciting knowing nods.

All of France is still on high alert after a series of ISIS terror attacks murdered some 130 people in Paris on seven weeks ago. Soldiers remain deployed throughout the country to protect public spaces, transit routes, official buildings and all kinds of religious sites.

This comes from a Friday afternoon AFP syndicated report ["Driver shot as he drives at French soldiers guarding mosque"]:

A driver was shot and wounded on Friday as he drove a car at four soldiers guarding a mosque in southeastern France... Police said the driver deliberately sped his vehicle at the troops, injuring one of them, as they were stationed in a car park outside a large mosque in a suburb of Valence. The driver bore down on the team a first time, prompting them to shout a warning, and when he returned for a second pass, they opened fire, they said... The defence and interior ministries in Paris said in a joint statement the driver's injuries were "serious but currently not life-threatening..." Police said the driver's motive remained unclear. Local mayor Nicolas Daragon praised the soldiers for what he said was "remarkable" self-control, and Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian were swift to add their backing... The soldier is among 10,000 security personnel protecting sensitive sites around the nation after the deadly jihadist assaults in Paris in 2015... 

The driver is 29, and comes from Lyon, about an hour's drive from the scene of the attack. He is said to be "unemployed for several years and was not known to police or intelligence services".  A German news source says he

seemed to have acted alone, Valence prosecutor Alex Perrin told reporters on Saturday. The investigators have found no evidence that the French citizen of Tunisian origin was linked to a terrorist group. Perrin added that the suspect reportedly shouted "Allah is great," which suggested "some religious element." According to the local prosecutor, the man told investigators he wanted to kill the soldiers "because troops killed people." At the same time, the suspect - who seemed "rather confused" - said he wanted to be killed by soldiers. ["Valence driver 'wanted to kill soldiers'", DeutscheWelle, January 02, 2016]

Aljazeera observes that French police found "jihadist propaganda material" on the driver's computer but then quotes (prominently, and with evident sympathy) the local prosecutor who says this

did not prove he had links with "terrorist groups... These are downloadable images that are a few weeks old. Not the worst type of images, but rather bellicose slogans," he said. "It shows he had an appreciation of that but it does not prove he had links with terrorist organisations."

The vehicle does not appear [video via Euronews] to be speeding at the point when French soldiers opened fire after the driver launched two separate ramming attacks on them. In fact, it's moving very slowly. Nonetheless, an innocent passer-by was injured in the shooting. He's a 72-year-old Muslim man, a worshiper at the mosque, who was struck in the leg by a stray bullet fired by the soldiers. A soldier suffered leg injuries.

(It's hard not to compare with recent vehicle-ramming attacks here in Israel where the shots that stop the drivers have generally been fired while their vehicles were being driven at top speed. That's clearly not what happened in Friday's attack in France.)

We know some Israelis are thinking about whether the French security people are going to now be accused of engaging in attempted "extrajudicial execution".

As for us, we're wondering whether any published analysis has come out that examines why a vehicle-ramming-minded Muslim would choose to attack people standing out in the cold day and night to protect and defend... a mosque. Might this be a variant of Munchausen's Islamophobia by Proxy?

UPDATE Sunday January 3, 2015: Reuters reports (via Jerusalem Post) that the French authorities are considering charges of attempted manslaughter against the driver. Quoting "the local prosecutor", they say investigators have "ruled out terrorism for now... They said the 29-year-old Frenchman of Tunisian descent seemed to have acted alone in "a fit of anger" and did not appear to be linked to terrorist groups." Why acting alone is relevant may eventually come to trouble some French citizens, but for now it appears they have larger headaches [for instance, "Paris terror attacks: French police admit mistakes in response"] with which to contend.

17-Feb-15: In Denmark, some changes to the way life has been lived till now

Grimhøj Mosque, Aarhus, Denmark [Image Source]

From The Copenhagen Post, a Danish English-language daily, this morning:

Jewish community radio station shuts down in wake of terror attacks | Radio Shalom advised by PET to take a break while Jews across Europe demand more protection | The Copenhagen Post | February 17, 2015 | Ray Weaver | For the first time in the station’s history, Radio Shalom did not broadcast its usual blend of programs about Jewish culture, music and history on Monday evening. The control board located in a basement in Nørrebro was silenced for what host Abraham Kopenhagen called "security reasons". “PET says it's too dangerous,” Kopenhagen told DR Nyheder. “We do not feel that it is too dangerous, but we respect the information we are given.” Kopenhagen said that Radio Shalom will be back on the air when PET tells them that it is safe. The security agency offered to protect the station while it was on air, but Kopenhagen turned them down. “We must do as instructed, but we will not have police standing outside the door,” he said. "We would rather close down until it is quiet again. I do not know how long that will take.” The radio station was not the only Jewish institution in Copenhagen that chose to shut its doors following the weekend's attacks, which included the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Dan Uzan, a guard standing in front of the synagogue on Krystalgade by Omar Abdel El-Hussein. The Jewish school Carolineskolen was also closed yesterday.

Imam Abu Bilal Ismail
[Image Source: MEMRI]

The same article in the same paper, evidently exploring the toxic environment behind the murderous events in Copenhagen on Saturday and Sunday, provides a link to a July 22, 2014 report entitled "Danish imam encourages followers to kill Jews". Embedded within that is a MEMRI Arabic-to-English video capturing Imam Abu Bilal Ismail, an Islamic preacher described by the Danish paper as

a regular speaker at the Grimhøj Mosque in Aarhus, and accused of encouraging young Muslims to travel to Syria to fight in the bloodbath there.

The Grimhøj mosque in Denmark's second-largest city Aarhus has been in the news often. In "Aarhus: The Danish town where Syria’s jihadist fighters are welcomed home" [The Independent UK, October 20, 2014], for instance, it's pointed out that

In Denmark, not one returned fighter [from the Syrian killing fields] has been locked up. Instead officials here are providing free psychological counselling while finding returnees jobs and spots in schools and universities. Officials credit a new effort to reach out to a radical mosque with staunching the flow of recruits... “I know how some people think. They are afraid of us, the ones coming back,” says Talha, a name he adopted to protect his identity because he never told his father he went to fight. “Look, we are really not dangerous.”

Not dangerous is a relative expression in today's Europe.

In a Danish article, "Head of Grimhøj mosque supports IS" [DR.dk, January 15, 2015], the same Aarhus-based house of prayer is said to be

known in the media as a hotbed for radicalised young Muslims. Numerous youth from the region who have attended the mosque have subsequently travelled to Syria to fight in the conflict. The mosque is now making waves once again. In the documentary “Den Fordømte Moské” (“The Condemned Mosque”), shown on DR1 on Tuesday evening, Oussama El Saadi, head of the mosque, declared his support of Islamic State. “I hope that IS wins and that we one day will have an Islamic state in the world,” said El Saadi in the documentary... [He] believes that the western world’s declaration of war against IS is not a war against terror, but rather against the entire Muslim world. Therefore, he says, it also hurts when the Danish state is at war against people in the Middle East.

Evidently it also hurts the Danish state and its fair-minded people to see one of their own shot down by Danish police, even though the shooter was a cruel murderer of innocent and unarmed strangers, and was holding a powerful weapon at the time:

Numerous bouquets had been laid at the killing site of the suspected Copenhagen gunman, 22-year-old Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein. The flowers were laid in solidarity with the alleged terrorist’s family, locals told reporters... Masked young men, describing themselves as “brothers” of the suspected gunman behind attacks in Copenhagen, removed flowers and candles from the site where he was fatally shot by police. The young men said they removed the flowers because it is not a Muslim tradition to lay flowers for the dead. [Sputnik News, February 16, 2015]

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, a beloved theme of our childhood, seems to be rapidly receding into the distance, never to appear again.

31-Jul-14: What possible excuse could decent civilized leadership have for attacking a holy place of worship? Let's see

The Al-Sousi mosque, northern Gaza City, yesterday
[Image Source: Xinhua]

The headline above will make little sense if readers don't click below and view the video.

Photographs of mosques destroyed by Israeli forces in Gaza (like the one over on the right) are all over the web and the newspaper world right now.

The anger of Islamic masses is being whipped up as the outrageous desecration of holy places gets understood by believers. See for instance "Calls to Raid and Desecrate Al-Aqsa Mosque", "Historical mosque destroyed by inhuman zionist terrorists", "Palestinians Fiercely Clash With Zionist Army At Al-Aqsa" and many others.

Attacking places of religious worship is never something of which to be proud. It may have legal consequences, and certainly has an impact on public sensitivities. What would bring a military to open fire on a church, synagogue or mosque?

So let's take a look at a documented instance of desecration from this past week.

In the background, there's a well-established and shameful history of open manipulation of Islamic sensibilities by religious and political leadership of the various arms of the Palestinian Authority. See for instance this Palestinian Media Watch backgrounder, "Israel to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque".

Is it time for some focus on the cold-blooded desecration of Moslem holy places by Moslems?