Crowds gather for anti-Islam demonstration outside Phoenix mosque
More than 200 protesters, some armed, berated Islam and the Prophet Muhammad outside an Arizona mosque on Friday in a provocative protest that was denounced by counter-protesters shouting "Go home, Nazis" weeks after an anti-Muslim event in Texas came under attack by two gunmen.
The anti-Muslim event outside the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix was organised by an Iraq war veteran who posted photos of himself online wearing a T-shirt with a crude slogan denigrating Islam and waving the US flag.
As the event got underway, demonstrators on both sides screamed obscenities at each other as police in riot gear swiftly separated the two groups, each with about 250 people, using police tape and barricades.
"This is in response to the recent attack in Texas," organiser Jon Ritzheimer wrote on his Facebook page announcing the event at a mosque targeted in part because the two Texas gunmen had worshipped there.
More than 900 people responded on the event's Facebook page that they would attend, and police expanded their presence in the evening in anticipation of growing crowds. Officers with riot helmets and gas masks formed a cordon for several blocks.
Among the anti-Islam protesters, some of whom called Islam a "religion of murderers", more than a dozen men in military clothing carried semi-automatic weapons. Others waved copies of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad drawn at the Texas event. By late Friday night, virtually all the protesters and police had left the area with no reports of violent flare-ups or arrests.
Depictions of Muhammad, which many Muslims view as blasphemous, have been a flashpoint for violence in Europe and the United States in recent months where those displaying or creating such images have been targeted by militants.
Anti-Muslim groups have been active in the United States, buying ads and staging demonstrations characterising Islam as violent, often citing the murderous brutality of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
The Phoenix mosque targeted on Friday has condemned such violence and held a series of sermons at Friday prayers last year by an imam who criticised militant Islamist groups such as Islamic State, al-Qaida and Nigeria's Boko Haram.
The president of the centre had urged worshippers not to engage with the demonstrators. "We should remind ourselves that we do not match wrongness with wrongness, but with grace and mercy and goodness," Usama Shami told worshippers during Friday prayers. While some counter-protesters outside the mosque responded to the anti-Islam protest with obscenities, others followed his advice and chanted "Love your neighbour."
Todd Green, a religion professor at Luther College in Iowa who studies Islamophobia, said that the brutal acts committed by Islamic State and other militant groups have coloured many Americans' impressions of Muslims. "Almost two-thirds of Americans don't know a Muslim," Green said. "What they know is ISIS, al-Qaida, and 'Charlie Hebdo'," referencing the January attack on the Paris office of the satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo" that left 12 people dead over anger at the magazine's cartoons featuring the Prophet. (Reuters)
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