South African police searching for three men who stabbed worshippers at a mosque near Durban have said the attackers\u2019 motive was unknown but \u201celements of extremism\u201d were involved.<\/p>\n
One Muslim leader said the mosque was targeted because it was a Shia place of worship that had received previous threats, exposing deep tension between the Shia and Sunni population.<\/p>\n
The assailants killed one man by slitting his throat and critically injured two others after midday prayers on Thursday at the mosque in Verulam, a town on the outskirts of Durban.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are elements of extremism,\u201d said Simphiwe Mhlongo, a spokesman for the Hawks police unit. \u201cIt shows hatred towards the worshippers.\u201d<\/p>\n
A local Islamic leader, Aftab Haider, said Shias in\u00a0South Africa<\/a>\u00a0had been subjected to a prolonged hate campaign. He said the attack may be connected to the Sunni extremist group Islamic State.<\/p>\n \u201cThere has been a huge organised hate campaign in different mosques, radio stations and on social media against the Shia community. There have been threats at this mosque before, but not in the weeks leading up to this incident,\u201d Haider said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has all the hallmarks of the Isis style of operations in Iraq and Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n The assailants, who also set off a petrol bomb inside the mosque, escaped in a car. Emergency services found the victims lying in the forecourt.<\/p>\n \u201cThese people were not robbers. They did not want phones, they did not want laptops or money,\u201d said Ali Nchinyane, who was stabbed in the abdomen. \u201cThey came to the gate saying they want to perform prayers. They prayed and afterwards they wanted to kill.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the suspects told me: \u2018I will kill you\u2019. If I did not fight, I would have been dead,\u201d Nchinyane added, saying he used a martial arts weapon to defend himself.<\/p>\n Mhlongo said: \u201cLaw enforcement forces are [looking for the assailants], including private security, local detectives and police.\u201d<\/p>\n The incident appeared to be unprecedented in South\u00a0Africa<\/a>, where about 1.5% of the 55million population is Muslim. The country prides itself on religious acceptance.<\/p>\n The parliament\u2019s police committee condemned the attack. \u201cA mosque is a religious institution, and South Africa\u2019s constitution guarantees and protects the right to religious practices,\u201d its chair, Francois Beukman, said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want our communities to live in harmony, practising their religions without fear.\u201d<\/p>\n South African police searching for three men who stabbed worshippers at a mosque near Durban have said the attackers\u2019 motive was unknown but \u201celements of extremism\u201d were involved. One Muslim leader said the mosque was targeted because it was a Shia place of worship that had received previous threats, exposing deep tension between the Shia and Sunni population. The assailants… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1812,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions\/1812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}