Muslim Riots Continue to Spread in Europe
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Photo Credit: Yori Yanover
Also in Athens, Muslim inmates at the Korydallos prison (Greece’s main prison, in which an estimated 70% of the inmates are Muslim) went on a rampage and protested the anti-Islam video by burning mattresses, sheets and clothing. Security officials at the prison brought the situation under control after using teargas to force the rioting inmates to return to their cells.
In Austria, some 700 Muslims descended on the American Embassy in the Alsergrund district in downtown Vienna on September 22. They carried banners and shouted slogans of protest against the film, and called for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. The protests were well organized: some Muslims wearing orange vests were waiting at the nearby metro station to guide protestors toward the embassy. According to the Austrian newspaper Tageszeitung Österreich, one young woman wearing a headscarf said, “The film has triggered such a rage in me, I had tears in my eyes.” Other protesters wondered how it was possible that the film portrayed “our beloved prophet as a child molester and misogynist.”
In Norway, in front of the American Embassy in Oslo on September 21, more than 150 radical Islamists gathered, shouting, “This world needs another Osama.” Separately, hundreds more Muslims gathered at Youngstorget Square in central Oslo to protest the anti-Islam film. Oslo’s imams were joined in the protest by the city’s Conservative Mayor Fabian Stang, as well as Lutheran Bishop Ole Christian Kvarme, who said in a speech: “With this peaceful protest we want to maintain and strengthen our unity. As believers we understand each other.”
In Italy, the Interior Ministry announced on September 25 that it had expelled two Libyan jihadists who were urging attacks against Western targets in revenge for the film denigrating Mohammed. Police said the Libyans, aged 26 and 28, had been in a hotel in Rome for several months, receiving medical care after being injured during the Libyan conflict. Police said they were expelled after they “began activities of proselytizing and propaganda to jihad within the Libyan community.”
In Serbia, several thousand fans from a local football club in the country’s Muslim-majority Sandzak region protested against the film on September 21. Defying a ban on political slogans at the march, supporters of Torcida Sandzak football club waved banners reading, “The Prophet is in my heart” and “Freedom for Palestine, Afghanistan and Libya.” There was a heavy police presence at the march, where protesters also waved the flags of Turkey and Bosnia.
In Spain, the Islamic Commission, a Muslim umbrella group, has sent a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon demanding the enactment of an international law that would outlaw blasphemy “so that no attack against religious sentiment will go unpunished.”
Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.
tell a friendAbout the Author: The writer is the Senior Analyst for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group, one of the oldest and most influential foreign policy think tanks in Spain.
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