French religious leaders on Wednesday called for unity after militants claiming allegiance to Islamic State murdered a Catholic priest in the middle of a Mass, as the government scrambled to shore up security across a country struggling to avert terrorism, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Christian and Muslim leaders met with François Hollande and senior ministers after the French president called the killing of Rev. Jacques Hamel a desecration of the French Republic and its secular values of religious tolerance.
“We were able to speak in particular of the singular responsibility of religions in this country in terms of self control, resistance, unity,” said Ahmet Orgras, vice president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, after meeting Mr. Hollande.
The attack has left France - a predominantly Catholic country with a large Muslim population - in a deep state of shock and struggling to come up with a response. It comes shortly after an attacker in a truck barreled for more than a mile through Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, killing 84 people.
In the wake of the latest attack, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 23,500 additional security forces including reservists would be deployed across the country to secure some 56 events, part of a busy schedule of summer festivities. Some 2,500 people had answered the government’s call to join reservists since the Nice attack, he said.
Mr. Cazeneuve said he had asked police to contact the mayors of cities hosting events to detail their security needs and the measures in place.
“If all the conditions to ensure optimal security aren’t met, the events will be cancelled,” Mr. Cazeneuve said.
The demands of defending the country against constant and often invisible threats are wearing police forces thin and the country is struggling to hire and train forces fast enough, police and local officials say.
Political divisions opened up within hours of the church attack, with centre-right opposition lawmakers demanding the government take an even harder line to combat radical Islamist activity. Mr. Hollande and his government have centered their response on a call for solidarity and against knee-jerk changes to the country’s legal apparatus.
After meeting with Mr. Hollande on Wednesday, Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Paris Mosque, said French unity was targeted by an attack he described as a “blasphemous sacrilege” against the teachings of Islam.
“It is an act outside of Islam, an act that all French Muslims reject in the most formal way,” Mr. Boubakeur said.
The archbishop of Paris, André Vingt-Trois, said Christians should be guided by the objective of “peace, harmony and love.” “[Those objectives] demand an effort to overcome the spontaneous reaction, to overcome hate rising in one’s heart and to become the craftsmen of peace,” he said. “We cannot let ourselves get caught up in the political game of Daesh that wants to turn people, children from the same family, against one another,” he added, using another term for Islamic State.