Muslim Community Comes-forth to Protect Church in France
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Dozens of parishioners at
the 13th century church in the southern town of Lodeve were deeply touched. The
parish priest said their gesture gave him hope in a time of turmoil. Benferhat,
speaking with a distinctive southern French accent, identified himself as “more
French than anything.” While his mother was born in Algeria, he was born in
France and grew up speaking only French.
“Over
the past few years, I have had a pit in my stomach, because every time the
Islamic extremist violence strikes France”, he said adding that the French
Muslims faced new stigmatization. He called the beheading of a teacher near
Paris last month — targeted because he showed his class caricatures of the
Prophet Muhammad for a debate on free expression — an act of “unbelievable,
unprecedented cruelty. Benferhat, who works for French Oil Company Total and
coaches at a local football club, talked to a Muslim friend who was in Nice
that day, “and we had this idea. We needed to do something beyond paying homage
to the victims. We said, we will protect churches ourselves.
They
recruited volunteers among their friends and at his football club, and guarded
the church that night and again for Sunday Mass. He said they also coordinated
with local police, after France’s government promised to increase security at
sensitive religious sites. “It’s very good, these young people who are against
violence,” the cathedral’s priest, the Rev. Luis Iniguez, told the AP. When a
local newspaper published a photo of parishioners posing with their Muslim
guards, Iniguez hung it inside the Gothic cathedral, which serves as an anchor
for town life. “People were happy to see that”, he said amid recent concerns
about tensions between France and the Muslim world.
The
small-town gesture drew national attention, and with it, online invective from
some far-right voices. But Benferhat said the response has been “90% positive”.
His group is considering how to take the idea forward, and would like to do it
again for Christmas, and for other towns to follow Lodeve’s lead.
(Courtesy: AP)
