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Paris, France – On an aboriginal September morning, a pig’s head, covered successful blood, was discovered astatine the doorstep of the Javel mosque successful the bosom of Paris. On it, a sanction had been scrawled successful bluish ink: Macron.
A mates of kilometres (about a mile) from the Eiffel Tower, the mosque is simply a spot of worship for a divers assemblage of Muslims with Lebanese, Algerian, Iranian and different roots, which has agelong coexisted with neighbours successful a leafy territory of the French capital.
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“It’s the archetypal clip thing similar this has ever happened to us,” Najat Benali, the mosque’s rector, told Al Jazeera English.
That Tuesday, September 9, worshippers heading successful for the dawn supplication discovered the enactment of desecration. Muslims are forbidden from eating pork and see pigs to beryllium unclean.
The worshippers called Benali, who rushed to the site.
“They were successful a authorities of shock,” Benali said. When thing similar that happens, “naturally, you cheque your surroundings.”
When constabulary arrived, Benali learned that the Javel mosque was not the lone 1 to person been targeted.
In total, 9 severed pig heads had been scattered connected the doorsteps of mosques crossed Paris and its adjacent suburbs, successful what French authorities are investigating arsenic an enactment of overseas interference.
“One cannot assistance but gully parallels with erstwhile actions which person been proven to beryllium acts of overseas interference,” said Laurent Nunez, Paris’s constabulary prefect, astatine a quality conference.
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, 2 individuals driving a car with Serbian licence plates approached a husbandman successful the bluish portion of Normandy to bargain “about 10” pig’s heads connected the evening of Monday, September 8.
CCTV footage aboriginal shows them arriving successful Paris’s Oberkampf neighbourhood. After depositing the pigs’ heads successful beforehand of the 9 mosques, the conveyance past crossed the French borderline with Belgium aboriginal connected Tuesday.
“The pig heads near successful beforehand of mosques successful the Paris portion were placed determination by overseas nationals who instantly near the country, with the wide volition of causing unrest wrong the nation,” the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office wrote successful a connection shared with Al Jazeera.
“The purpose is to unsettle our chap citizens, yet raising questions astir the state we unrecorded in, astir their safety, and then, of course, creating divisions betwixt communities,” Paris authoritative Laure Beccuau said.
‘It hurts me’
At the Islah mosque successful Montreuil, an eastbound Parisian suburb, Haider Rassool pulled up video surveillance footage connected his phone.
In the video, a antheral wearing a sweatshirt tin beryllium seen placing a pig’s caput to the near of the mosque’s entranceway earlier taking a representation of his suspected crime.
“We were precise acrophobic astatine first,” Rassool told Al Jazeera. “It’s a calm neighbourhood – we get on with our neighbours. When we learned that we weren’t the lone mosque to beryllium targeted, it’s not that we were reassured, but astatine slightest we knew it wasn’t an enactment of idiosyncratic revenge.”
Still, the incidents travel astatine a infinitesimal erstwhile hatred crimes against Muslims are rising successful France.
France registered 145 Islamophobic acts successful the archetypal 5 months of 2025, a 75 percent summation compared with the aforesaid play the erstwhile year. Recent acts see attempted arson, threats and adjacent killings, specified arsenic the May execution of Malian Aboubakar Cisse.
New IFOP polling obtained by French paper Liberation shows that 2 successful 3 French Muslims accidental they person been the victims of racist behaviour successful the past 5 years.
“As idiosyncratic with a Muslim father, it was conscionable terrible, it hurts maine personally,” Saphia Ait Ouarabi, a French antiracism activist, told Al Jazeera. “Like everyone else, I’m worried. It’s astir reassuring my small sisters oregon my small cousins who inquire maine if thing mightiness hap to them. There are young women wearing headscarves that I conscionable astatine schoolhouse who are acrophobic of being attacked. Honestly, it’s truly hard.”
Rim-Sarah Alouane, a ineligible student and quality rights researcher astatine the University of Toulouse Capitole, noted that overseas actors were capitalising connected “already existing wounds successful French society”.
“The constituent is that they don’t adjacent request to make the part oregon the chaos; it’s already there,” Alouane said. “They lone request to exploit it. This transforms a hatred transgression into a limb of geopolitical disruption.”
Since precocious 2023, prosecutors person identified 9 acts of overseas interference crossed the French capital, often, but not always, with the intent of inciting spiritual hatred.
In May 2024, Paris’s Holocaust Memorial was graffitied with reddish handprints. That aforesaid month, 3 Serbians were arrested successful the confederate French metropolis of Antibes successful transportation with the tagging of 3 synagogues, a edifice and the Holocaust Memorial.
Back astatine the Javel mosque, Benali said communities cannot beryllium destabilised with acts of vandalism.
Immediately aft the pig’s heads were discovered, she was contacted by different spiritual leaders successful Paris.
“[They said], ‘From the infinitesimal 1 Muslim is attacked, it’s similar we’re each attacked’ … They wanted to destabilise america by pitting america against 1 another. Well, they were wrong.”
English (US) ·