French-Moroccan Man Victim of Retaliation Murder as Backlash Sweeps Europe

As many as 40, 000 people attended a rally with the Anti-Islamic Pegida movement in Dresden, Germany, this week. And at least 50 anti-Muslim incidents have been reported in France since the murders of 17 people at the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket in Paris earlier this month, according to the Central Council of Muslims in France. Twenty-six mosques around France have been attacked with firebombs, gunfire, pig heads, and grenades since the Paris attacks.

On Friday, police revealed that a Moroccan man had been stabbed to death on Wednesday, in his own home in the village of Beaucet, near Avignon in southern France, in what a Muslim group called a “horrible Islamophobic” attack the week after France was rocked by the Charlie Hebdo killings, AFP reported.

Mohamed El Makouli, 47, married, with one child, was attacked by a 28-year-old man who burst into his home in the early hours of Wednesday morning, shouting “I am your god, I am your Islam.” The attacker then stabbed El Makouli repeatedlt, according to the National Observatory Against Islamophobia.

El Makouli’s 31-year-old wife Nadia tried to save him, but after receiving wounds to her hands she fled the house with her child to call police.

The attacker, who reportedly had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was charged on Thursday with murder, attempted murder and possession of drugs, before being admitted into a psychiatric facility in Montfavet. Police said they found the attacker at the scene, in an incoherent state.

National Front leader Marine Le Pen said the attack on Charlie Hebdo was a vindication of her party anti-immigrant agenda. Right-wing groups across Europe have been gaining popularity with ordinary citizens who feel invaded by an alien civilization.

The new German group Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA, drew its largest crowd ever Monday night — 40, 000 — at its weekly rally in Dresden, in a tribute to the victims of the Paris attacks.