mosque

Attack on Nablus-area mosque is latest in surge of Israeli settler and military violence targeting Palestinians.

Israeli settlers have defaced and set fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, marking the latest incident in a wave of Israeli violence against Palestinians in the territory.

The Wafa news agency reported on Monday that settlers graffitied racist slogans on the walls of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq Mosque, located between the towns of Sarra and Tal, near Nablus in the north of the West Bank.

Worshippers arriving for the day’s first prayers found the damage and a smouldering fire that spewed black smoke across the mosque’s entrance and stained the ornate doorway, The Associated Press reported.

“I was shocked when I opened the door,” Munir Ramdan, who lives nearby, told the news agency. “The fire had been burning here in the area, the glass was broken here and the door was broken.”

Ramdan told AP that security camera footage showed two people walking towards the mosque carrying gasoline or petrol and a can of spray paint, and running away a few minutes later.

The attackers spray-painted graffiti denigrating the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the words “revenge” and “price tag” – a term used to describe attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property.

The assault comes amid a wave of intensified Israeli settler and military violence across the West Bank in the shadow of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the nearby Gaza Strip.

At least 1,094 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers in the West Bank since the Gaza war began in October 2023, according to the latest United Nations figures.

Last week, the UN Human Rights Council warned in a new report (PDF) that Israeli policies in the West Bank – including “the systematic unlawful use of force by Israeli security forces” and unlawful demolitions of Palestinian homes – aim to uproot Palestinian communities.

“These violations, together with pervasive and growing settler violence committed with impunity, are fundamental to the coercive environment that induces forced displacement and forcible transfer, which is a war crime,” the report said.

It added that these policies are aimed at “altering the character, status and demographic composition of the occupied West Bank, raising serious concerns of ethnic cleansing”.

Back in the West Bank village of Tal on Monday, resident Salem Ishtayeh told AP that the Israeli settlers’ assault on the local mosque was “directed especially” at Palestinians who are fasting during Ramadan.

“So they like to provoke you with words. It’s not that they are attacking you personally, they are attacking your religion, the Islamic faith,” Ishtayeh said.

According to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, settlers vandalised or attacked 45 mosques in the West Bank last year.

The Israeli military and police said they responded to the latest incident and were searching for suspects.

But human rights groups say the Israeli authorities have allowed the settlers to operate with total impunity in their attacks against Palestinians.

Israeli organisation B’Tselem has accused Israel of actively aiding the settlers’ violence “as part of a strategy to cement the takeover of Palestinian land”.

The UN also warned last year that settler attacks were being carried out “with the acquiescence, support, and in some cases participation, of Israeli security forces”.

The Sudan Doctors Network said the deadly strike was carried out by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

A drone attack on a mosque in central Sudan has killed two children and injured 13 more, according to a Sudanese doctor’s association, amid a rise in similar attacks across the region. 

The Sudan Doctors Network said the attack was carried out at dawn on Wednesday by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group engaged in a three-year civil war with the Sudanese Armed Forces.

The children were reportedly studying the Quran at the Sheikh Ahmed al-Badawi Mosque in North Kordofan State when the building was hit by a drone in a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law and a grave assault on places of worship”, the doctors’ group said in a Facebook post.

“Targeting children inside mosques is a fully constituted crime that cannot be justified under any pretext and represents a dangerous escalation in the pattern of repeated violations against civilians,” the doctors said.

The Sudan Doctors Network said the RSF has previously targeted other religious buildings for attack, including a church in Khartoum and another mosque in el-Fasher, reflecting a “systematic pattern that shows clear disregard for the sanctity of life and religious sites”.

“The network calls on the international community, the United Nations, and human rights and humanitarian organizations to take urgent action to pressure for the end to the targeting of civilians, ensure their protection, open safe corridors for the delivery of medical and humanitarian aid, and work to document these violations and hold those responsible accountable,” it said.

The UN separately said on Wednesday that a recent series of drone attacks have been reported on civilian infrastructure in Sudan’s South Kordofan, North Kordofan and West Kordofan states.

A World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse in Kadugli was also hit by a suspected rocket attack on Tuesday night, according to UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric. He did not say which group was responsible for the attack.

“The fact that we have to reiterate almost every day that civilians and civilian infrastructure, places of worship, schools and hospitals cannot and should not be targeted is a tragedy in itself,” Dujarric told reporters.

The UN has warned that Sudan’s civil war is expanding from western Darfur into the Kordofan region.

It has documented more than 90 civilian deaths and 142 injuries caused by drone strikes between the end of January and February 6, which were carried out by the RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces.

Targets included a WFP convoy, markets, health facilities and residential neighbourhoods in southern and northern Kordofan, the UN said.

A suicide bomb attack during Friday prayers at a Shia mosque in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad has killed dozens of people and injured at least 170 others.

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Rescue teams reach the site after blast reported at a mosque in Tarlai Kalan during Friday prayers.

At least 15 people have been killed and more than 80 wounded after a blast at a Shia mosque in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, local officials say.

The explosion occurred at Khadija Tul Kubra mosque, in southeastern Islamabad’s Tarlai Kalan area, during Friday prayers.

Rescue teams have reached the site of the explosion.

At least 15 of those injured were taken to hospitals with some of them in critical condition, rescue official Mohamed Amir said, according to dpa news agency.

Islamabad police spokesperson Taqi Jawad said the cause of the blast has yet to be determined, local news outlet Dawn reported.

In November last year, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of the Islamabad District Judicial Complex, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens.

Al Jazeera’s Abid Hussain contributed to this report.

Montreal, Quebec, Canada – Canadian Muslim leaders are calling for an end to Islamophobic rhetoric and fearmongering, as the country prepares to mark the nine-year anniversary of a deadly attack on a mosque in the province of Quebec.

Stephen Brown, CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), said Thursday’s anniversary is a reminder that Islamophobia in Canada “is not benign”.

“It’s something that unfortunately kills people,” Brown told Al Jazeera. “[The anniversary] forces us to remember that there’s real consequences to hatred.”

Six Muslim men were killed when a gunman opened fire at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City on January 29, 2017, marking the deadliest attack on a house of worship in Canadian history.

The assault left Quebec City’s tight-knit Muslim community deeply shaken, spurred vigils and condemnation across Canada, and shone a spotlight on a global rise in anti-Muslim hate and radicalisation.

The Canadian government denounced the shooting as a “terrorist attack” against Muslims and pledged to tackle the underlying issues.

In 2021, it announced it was designating January 29 as the National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec City Mosque Attack and Action against Islamophobia.

But Brown said he was not sure whether the lessons learned after what happened in Quebec City were being fully remembered today, nearly a decade later.

“Right after the Quebec City mosque massacre, there really was a desire in society to try to mend some of the wounds and build some bridges,” he said.

“Unfortunately, what a lot of people are seeing 1769652192 – and especially for Muslims that live in Quebec – … is a massive return to using Islamophobia and spreading fear of Muslims for political gain.”

Laws and rhetoric

Brown pointed to a series of measures put forward by Quebec’s right-wing Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government that human rights groups say target Muslim Quebecers.

In power since 2018, the CAQ passed a law in 2019 to bar some public servants from wearing religious symbols on the job, including headscarves worn by Muslim women, Sikh turbans and Jewish yarmulkes.

The government justified the law, known as Bill 21, as being part of its push to protect secularism in the province, which in the 1960s underwent a so-called “Quiet Revolution” to break the Catholic Church’s influence over state institutions.

But rights advocates said Bill 21 discriminated against religious minorities and would have a disproportionately harmful effect on Muslim women, in particular.

As the CAQ’s popularity has plummeted in recent months, it has passed and put forward more legislation to strengthen its so-called “state secularism” model in advance of a looming provincial election later this year.

Most recently, in late November, the CAQ introduced a bill that would extend the religious symbols prohibition to daycares and private schools, among other places.

Bill 9 also bars schools from offering meals based exclusively on religious dietary requirements – such as kosher or halal lunches – and outlaws “collective religious practices, notably prayer” in public.

“Quebec has adopted its own model of state secularism,” said the provincial minister responsible for secularism, Jean-Francois Roberge.

Roberge has rejected the idea that the bill was targeting Muslim or Jewish Quebecers, telling reporters during a news conference on November 27 that the “same rules apply to everybody”.

But the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) – which is involved in a lawsuit against Bill 21 that will be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada later this year – said Bill 9 “masks discrimination as secularism”.

“These harmful bans disproportionately target and marginalize religious and racialized minorities, especially Muslim women,” Harini Sivalingam, director of the CCLA’s equality programme, said in a statement.

According to Brown at NCCM, the Quebec government’s moves have sent “the message to society that there’s something inherently dangerous or wrong with being a visible, practising Muslim”.

He warned that, when people in positions of authority use anti-Muslim rhetoric to try to score political points, “it gives licence to those who already hold a lot of these Islamophobic views or hateful views to actually take it out on people”.

‘Hate continues to threaten’

At the federal level, Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, said the Canadian government has shown a continued commitment to tackling the problem.

That includes through an Action Plan on Combatting Hate, launched in 2024, which has devoted millions of dollars to community groups, antifascism programmes and other initiatives.

But Elghawaby told Al Jazeera that Islamophobia has nevertheless been rising in Canada, “whether it’s through police-reported hate crimes [or] whether it’s Canadians sharing that they’re experiencing discrimination at work [and] at school”.

According to Statistics Canada, 211 anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported to police in 2023 – a 102-percent jump compared with the previous year. There was a slight increase in 2024 – the most recent year for which the data is available – with 229 incidents reported.

Elghawaby, whose office was established after another anti-Muslim attack killed four members of a single family in London, Ontario, in 2021, said the figures underscore “that hate continues to threaten Canadians”.

“Canada, despite a global reputation of being a country that welcomes people from around the world, does struggle with division, with polarisation, with the rise of extremist narratives,” she said, adding that remembering the Quebec City mosque attack remains critical.

“[The families of the men killed] don’t want the loss of their loved ones to be in vain. They want Canadians to continue to stand with them, to continue to stand against Islamophobia, and to do their part in their own circles to help promote understanding,” Elghawaby said.

“History can sadly repeat itself if we don’t learn from the lessons of the past.”