Like many, the 28-year-old director of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Paris did not believe what he was hearing. The sheer scope of the tragedy left him speechless.
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| Asif Arif: “I was shocked and grieved, just like all French people are right now,” |
Source/Credit: Inland News Today
By INT/Excerpts| November 14, 2015
PARIS - France is still in shock over the scope of Friday's terrorist carnage that left at least 129 people dead and 350 injured in six coordinated bombing and shooting attacks. President Hollande called the attacks an “act of war,” after declaring a state of emergency and sealing the country’s borders.
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When Asif Arif heard the news, he said one thought kept racing through his mind: “Please don’t let it be a Muslim.”
Like many, the 28-year-old director of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Paris did not believe what he was hearing. The sheer scope of the tragedy left him speechless.
“I was shocked and grieved, just like all French people are right now,” Arif said. “I started thinking that I could have been in that concert, that I could have been any of those people who died. What happened is just unfair.”
Arif, who also lectures about public liberties in France, said he expects to see more Islamophobic incidents take place.
“This is not an usual thing. You’ll now definitely see a rise of attacks against Muslims and not just in Paris, but in all of France.”
The Collectif Contre L’Islamophobie en France (CCIF), or the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, a Paris-based organization that monitors Islamophobic acts, released a report in September that said physical assaults against Muslims in France increased by 500 percent, and acts of degradation and vandalism jumped by 400 percent, in the six months following the Charlie Hebdo attack.
But few people decided to press charges. According to the CCIF, victims often believe that police agents refuse to accommodate complaints of Islamophobia, and perpetrators are rarely convicted and if they are, justice is “very lenient.”
However, Arif sees a sliver of hope amongst all of this tragic news.
“Something has definitely changed. Soon after the attacks, a lot of people took to social media not only to denounce terrorism but to say that Muslims in France are not responsible for what has happened,” Arif said. “People now realize that something big is going on and that everybody needs to stand up for Muslims in France.” (Source: aljazeera)
Read original post here: French Muslims hope for peace and brace for Islamophobia
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