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Hate Crimes Rise Worldwide as Fire Guts Mosque in Australia
BRISBANE, Australia, Sept 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A fire, suspected of being an arson attack, gutted a mosque in the Australian city of Brisbane Saturday, raising the specter of race-hate crimes in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States, news agencies reported.
As authorities called for calm, Muslims in the northeastern state of Queensland appealed for increased police protection as the U.S. gathers support for retaliatory strikes against the terrorists it blames for the attacks, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
A Queensland police spokesman said the mosque, located in the Brisbane suburb of Kuraby, was gutted early Saturday and that a group of youths was seen fleeing the scene.
The attack was the second on a mosque in the city since the September 11th terrorist strikes in the United States, which has accused Saudi-born Osama bin Laden of masterminding the carnage.
Amid fears that U.S. preparations for military retaliation against bin Laden's bases in Afghanistan were fuelling hostility towards Muslims, Australian leaders condemned the mosque attack.
Peter Beattie, prime minister of Queensland, of which Brisbane is the capital, demanded that Australians demonstrate tolerance even as international tensions rise.
"I went personally as a clear signal that I expect tolerance and that we will not accept acts of violence of this kind," Beattie said. "The Australian way is a fair way. This is un-Australian."
Investigators conceded Saturday that their investigation was likely to be clouded by tensions after Australia committed itself to fight alongside U.S. forces in what Washington describes as a "war on terrorism".
Queensland Fire and Rescue Authority area director Tim Beckett said investigators would proceed cautiously because of ramifications that may result from making "a wrong call".
The latest incident is one of several targeting Queensland mosques and schools since the attacks in the United States.
The state's Anti-Discrimination Commission has also received reports of a bus ferrying Islamic students becoming a target for stone-throwers.
The other mosque attack occurred in Brisbane's southeast region, and was damaged in a firebombing a week ago.
The chief executive of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Amjad Mehboob, said security measures at other mosques around the city prevented further attacks overnight.
"It's heightened the concern of the community in all respects when we were thinking that perhaps things would have subsided now," he said.
"We are doing what we can ourselves, within our resources, to provide security ... but we would appreciate any assistance governments can provide.
"We're talking about a few mosques. It's not hundreds and hundreds."
Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Karen Walters said the number of reported incidents appeared to be rising.
"We've had anecdotal reports from students and indeed staff from educational institutions of being fearful to wear their headdress and being fearful of walking alone," Walters said.
"I ... remind Queenslanders that one of the pillars of our democratic institutions is respect for diversity and freedom of religion."
Australia's Muslims are believed to number between 300,000 and 600,000.
In Russia, the 20 million Muslims are fearful their country will succumb to "Islamophobia" - thanks largely to the media, which often confounded Islam and terrorism in coverage of the attacks on the United States and the war in Chechnya, reported AFP.
"Islamophobia is developing in Russian media," mufti Nafigulla Ashirov, head of Muslims living in Russia's Asian regions, said a week after the attacks.
"From the first minutes of that tragedy, an unprecedented anti-Islamic campaign was launched in Russia," Muslim lawmaker Abdul-Vakhed Niazov said, accusing the Russian media of extensively covering anti-Islamic comments offered by Israeli officials.
"Immediately after those attacks, police and security services visited the majority of Islamic organizations based in Moscow," Ashirov said.
Russian Muslims found themselves under intense scrutiny by law enforcement agents after blasts in Moscow in September 1999, which cost some 300 lives and served as pretext to launch a new offensive against Chechnya.
Since the beginning of the "anti-terrorist campaign" against the breakaway republic in October 1999, people with "non-Slavic looks" have been constantly subjected to identity checks and harassment by police, Ashirov claimed.
"We have already seen police throw Caucasian-looking people to the ground and we are no longer afraid of that. We fear it may worsen and that massive persecutions of Muslims may begin," Ashirov said.
"Police officials think that if Afghanistan's Taliban have attacked America, Chechens will soon attack Moscow," said Suleiman Askhabov, 22, a Chechen student who came to Moscow's central mosque for daily prayers.
"I was detained a few days ago in the street. Police humiliate me simply because I am Chechen. I have to pay them 500 rubles just so they let me go," he complained.
"Even after the Moscow blasts there [wasn't] such an anti-Islamic hysteria," Ali Polossin, counselor to Russia's Mufti Council, remarked.
Hate crimes have also been on the increase in the United States, Ireland and the United Kingdom, as well as in other Western countries. Incidents ranging from racial taunts to outright threats to murder have shaken the thriving Muslim communities in these areas. No less than three people in the U.S. have died due to the rising anti-Islamic and Arab sentiments in the country.
A mosque located in the Wellington Park area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, was attacked on September 14.
Ahmed Versi, editor of the London-based Muslim News told Annanova news," We have been inundated with e-mails and calls from Muslims everywhere, who have been threatened over the last couple of days," he added.
In the United States, Muslims leaders declared last week that the civil rights of Muslims and Arabs across America are being endangered by the current backlash against them after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"Muslim Americans must feel that they are perceived by law enforcement agencies as a part of the solution, not as part of the problem," said Abdulwahab Alkebsi, director of the Washington-based Islamic Institute.
Stanley Cohen, lawyer for Maryland resident Moataz al-Hallak, who is being sought by the FBI for questioning in connection with Osama bin Laden, accused the FBI outright of having "unleashed a reign of terror on Muslims and Arabs by invading their mosques, taking down license plate numbers, and going to citizens' homes to question them."
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