Leaders of France’s Muslim community called for a series of marches to express their disgust after a radical Algerian group allied with Islamic State beheaded a French hostage, reports Bloomberg.
Dalil Boubakeur, President of the French Council of Muslim Faith, has called for a gathering today outside the Paris Mosque, where he is the rector. Hassen Chalghoumi, the imam of Drancy, a Paris suburb with a large immigrant population, has called for a rally on September 28 at the Place de la Republique.
“It is crucial that the Muslims of France and Europe come out and condemn this barbarity,” Chalghoumi said in an interview on France Info radio. “It is a duty.”
President François Hollande yesterday confirmed that an Algerian militant group had killed Hervé Gourdel, a mountain guide they had seized three days earlier east of Algiers and threatened to kill if France didn’t cease bombing raids against the Islamic State in Iraq. A video showing the beheading was posted yesterday, said SITE Intelligence Group, a watchdog that tracks militant movements.
The killing followed videos over the past month showing the beheadings of two American journalists and a British aid worker by Islamic State, and a call by Islamic State’s spokesman to kill Americans and Europeans, particularly the French.
“There is the world of human beings and then there is the world of these people,” Boubakeur said on France Info radio. “I don’t know how their brains work. They are monsters.”
The Union of Islamic Organizations of France, which has been accused of being close to the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a statement yesterday “condemning with the greatest firmness the horrible assassination of our compatriot Herve Gourdel” and saying that “the Muslims of France and of the world reject any association with these crimes.”
Individual Muslim groups have condemned Islamic State ever since it went on the offensive over the summer, threatening the stability of Iraq.
On Sept. 9, three of the largest French Muslim organizations jointly signed a statement of solidarity with Christian Iraqis threatened by Islamic State, and told mosques to read a statement in support of Arab Christians at the following Friday’s prayers.
French Muslim organizations are often divided along ethnic lines, with individual organizations and mosques representing Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians or Turks.
Read more of this report from Bloomberg.