Arson Attack on Nantes Mosque Days Before Ramadan, Police Investigate

It is one of the three entrance doors of the mosque located north of Nantes that caught fire on Friday, April 9, reports Lemuslimpost, which sees it as a rather symbolic act, because committed a few days before the start of Ramadan. The fire started from three garbage cans full of cardboard, placed in front of the mosque. Cans of gasoline found at the scene indicate the criminal origin of the fire, pending the conclusions of the police investigation to whom the surveillance camera images will be entrusted.

"What are the perpetrators looking for? I don’t know. In front of the door, we never leave anything lying around, which means they moved the garbage cans in front of the door to set them on fire," explains Abdeslam Bahloul, a member of the association that manages the mosque, who denounces "a criminal act". More scared than hurt, behind the wooden door, there was a metal shutter that withstood the fire, details the site.

The condemnations did not take long to come from political leaders. Among them, Pascal Bolo, the deputy mayor of Nantes in charge of security, the deputy of Nantes, François de Rugy, and the Minister of the Interior, cites the same source, who deplores the lack of measures to secure the premises.

In 2019, recalls the media, on the eve of Ramadan, the walls of several mosques in western France had been covered with Islamophobic tags, to the great anger of the National Observatory against Islamophobia (ONCI) and the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) who had called on the French government for the security of the mosques. Two years later, they continue to be the object of Islamophobic acts.