PARIS (AP) – Riding the Paris Metro to the city’s Grand Mosque for prayers, Samia Mahfoudia says people shoot sideways looks at her “almost as if they were saying ‘Get off.'”
Ahmed El Mziouzi, a Moroccan who has called France home for 42 years, says he’s seen people staring at Muslims like him “a bit bizarrely” since attackers claiming to be acting in the name of Islam massacred 130 people, traumatizing the city.
These are tough times for France’s Muslims. Muslims were among both the dead and the hundreds of wounded in the Paris attacks. Muslims across Paris and the world also reacted with shock, horror and anger at the indiscriminate slaughter. In the French capital, Muslims have visited the makeshift shrines of flowers and candles outside the Bataclan concert hall and the cafes where the attackers mowed down victims in cold blood.
And all Parisians of every religion are having to adjust to a whole new post-attacks atmosphere of heightened angst and suspicion.
Armed police in thick bulletproof vests cordoned off roads around the Grand Mosque in Paris for Friday prayers and patted down worshippers, scanning them with metal detectors in the cold, driving rain. Soldiers wearing camouflage gear and cradling automatic rifles also patrolled.