Horrified by deadly attacks, French Muslims protect Christian church

https://news.yahoo.com/horrified-deadly-attacks-french-muslims-093050893.html

ANGELA CHARLTON
,Associated Press•November 6, 2020

As a French-born Muslim, Elyazid Benferhat’s stomach turned when he heard about a deadly Islamic extremist attack on a church in Nice. Then he decided to act.

A self-described man of peace and pragmatism, Benferhat and a friend gathered a group of young Muslim men to stand guard outside their town's cathedral for the All Saints’ holiday weekend, to symbolically protect it and show solidarity with Catholic churchgoers.

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. “But I am also Muslim ... and we have seen Islamophobia in this country, and terrorism,” he told The Associated Press.

“In recent years, I’ve had a pit in my stomach,” because every time Islamic extremist violence strikes France, he said, French Muslims face new stigmatization, even though “we had nothing to do with it.”

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.”

Then when three people were killed last Thursday in the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice, Benferhat said he was so sickened that he wanted to do something “so that everyone wakes up.”

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