This is the “disturbing” moment when West Ham fans turned on their own Muslim supporters as they prayed just before half-time at Saturday’s match against Manchester City.
The small group of Muslim supporters were kneeling eastwards and bowing their heads in the concourse of the Sir Trevor Brooking Stand at Upton Park, east London, when they were spotted by fellow fans.
They were conducting their Mahgrib prayers at about 6pm – the fourth of devout Muslims’ five prayers a day. It was about 10 minutes before half-time and the concourse was relatively quiet.
The supporters, who are understood not to have made any complaint, had been invited to the club as part of a highly commended initiative to forge closer links with local community groups. As such the sight of fans praying would have been unusual. They were met first by disbelief, then swearing and finally by increasingly loud chants of “Irons”, the club’s nickname, apparently intended to drown out the prayers.
A gifted student has pleaded guilty to a campaign of terrorist attacks in the Midlands in which he stabbed to death a Muslim grandfather and staged bomb attacks against mosques in an attempt to murder and maim worshippers.
Several hundred protesters took to Montreal streets again Sunday to express their opposition to the PQ’s proposed Charter of Quebec Values, legislation that would ban provincial workers from wearing certain symbols of religious adherence at work.
Religious intolerance is dividing the mostly Christian community of Pretoria’s Valhalla suburb.
The lawyer acting for French Polynesia’s first imam [Hishan el-Barkani, pictured] says he has been given death threats over last week’s brief opening of Tahiti’s first mosque.