The Vienna attack was a series of shootings by a young man on Monday evening that comes after a few weeks of the assaults in France for defaming the religion of Islam. In the deadly attack, four people were killed and 22 others wounded, seven critically. The victims were in a city centre area busy with people in bars and restaurants, near Vienna’s central synagogue.
This incident followed the beheading of the French school teacher Samuel Paty on October 16 by a man angered with showing students some caricature cartoons of the Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH) that had been published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015 and a knife attack at a church in Nice last week that claimed three lives.
According to international media reports, the 20-year old lone gunman, identified as an Islamic sympathizer, opened fire with an automatic rifle in the historic city centre of Vienna. But the real cause of the attack could not be known yet. Inevitably, questions will follow about the actions of security services in this case as the gunman youth was instantly killed by the police.
A dual citizen of Austria and North Macedonia, he was sentenced to 22 months in prison last year because he had attempted to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State (IS). However, he was released seven months later due to laws applying to young adults.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State, in a statement on Tuesday, claimed credit for the shooting spree in the city centre of Vienna.
At a press briefing, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said, “It was an attack motivated by hate-hate for our core values, hate for our way of life, hate for our democracy in which all people are equal in rights and dignity.” But the chancellor should come out to realize the real causes of the incident.
In fact, the chancellor should keep in mind that defaming or joking about is hateful and an act of terrorism. There is no scope for taking moral high ground for hurting religious belief. We Muslims do not do it, not even by those whom you call Islamist terrorists. Muslim countries consistently disapprove terrorism by Islamists but that does not mean the Western countries will encourage acts of terrorism against our Prophet.
There is no intellectualism in hating Prophet of another religion. We find such mental degeneration. Hating the prophet of Islam must be stopped to stop counter terrorism by Islamists. No government of any Muslim country will be successful in containing counter terrorism to punish Islam haters. Please be sensible and cease to hate and ridicule Islam and its Prophet.
Lakhs of Muslims brought angry processions in Dhaka and other place in Bangladesh. The government had difficulty in protecting French Embassy here. But we cannot guarantee that hatred against Islam will go unchallenged.
