Fears of an anti-Islamic backlash in France are growing in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre as a spate of attacks on mosques were reported across the country, reports The Telegraph.
Mosques in French have in recent years regularly been targeted, but since Wednesday’s deadly attack on the satirical magazine by a pair of radical Islamists, there has been a spike in the number of attacks.
The latest came on Friday night when shots were fired at a Muslim prayer centre in Digne-les-Bains in Provence, and at a mosque in Soissons, about 20 miles away from the town where the Charlie Hebdo suspects were shot dead by police.
On Thursday, a homemade bomb went off outside a mosque in the central city of Villefranche-sur-Saone, while on Friday the head of a wild pig was placed outside a prayer room in Corte in Corsica.
A letter lay beside the head that warned “the next time it will be the head of one of yours.”
Anti-Islam slogans were daubed on the walls of mosques in the towns of Poitiers, Lieven and Béthune, while in Bayonne on the Atlantic coast the words “dirty Arabs” and “murderers” were sprayed on the facade of a mosque.
Police said a fire at a mosque in Aix-les-Bains was likely a criminal act, and in L’Oiselet, a secondary school student of north African origin was beaten up by youths shouting racist insults.
In Paris, terrorism expert Thomas Hegghammer tweeted that his taxi driver had told him customers were refusing to ride with him because he was of Arab appearance.
The spate of attacks worry the leaders of France’s Muslim community, which at around five million people is the largest in Europe.