Crowds gather for anti-Islam demonstration outside Phoenix mosque

(Reuters) The anti-Muslim event outside the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix was organized by an Iraq war veteran who posted photos of himself online wearing a T-shirt with a crude slogan denigrating Islam and waving the U.S. flag.

As demonstrator waves during the
A demonstrator waves during the "Freedom of Speech Rally Round II" across from the Islamic Community Center in Phoenix, Ariz.

As demonstrator waves during the “Freedom of Speech Rally Round II” across from the Islamic Community Center in Phoenix, Ariz. May 29, Christian counter-protesters carried “Love Thy Neighbor” signs. REUTERS/Nancy Weichec

PHOENIX (Reuters) More than 200 protesters, some armed, berated Islam and its Prophet Muhammad outside an Arizona mosque on Friday (May 29)  in a provocative protest that was denounced by counter-protesters shouting “Go home, Nazis.”

The anti-Muslim event outside the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix was organized by an Iraq war veteran who posted photos of himself online wearing a T-shirt with a crude slogan denigrating Islam and waving the U.S. flag.


As the event got under way, demonstrators on both sides screamed obscenities at each other as police in riot gear swiftly separated the two groups, each with about 250 people, using police tape and barricades.

“This is in response to the recent attack in Texas,” organizer Jon Ritzheimer wrote on his Facebook page announcing the event at a mosque targeted in part because the two Texas gunmen had worshipped there. (Two Phoenix area gunmen were shot dead May 3, after opening fire with assault rifles at a heavily guarded Texas exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.)

Police officers with riot helmets and gas masks formed a cordon for several blocks.

Among the anti-Islam protesters, some of whom called Islam a “religion of murderers,” more than a dozen men in military clothing carried semi-automatic weapons. Others waved copies of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad drawn at the Texas event.

By late Friday night, virtually all the protesters and police had left the area with no reports of violent flare-ups or arrests.

Depictions of Muhammad, which many Muslims view as blasphemous, have been a flashpoint for violence in Europe and the United States in recent months where those displaying or creating such images have been targeted by militants.

Anti-Muslim groups have been active in the United States, buying ads and staging demonstrations characterizing Islam as violent, often citing the murderous brutality of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.


‘Love your neighbor’

The Phoenix mosque targeted on Friday has condemned such violence and held a series of sermons last year by an imam who criticized militant Islamist groups such as Islamic State, al Qaida and Nigeria’s Boko Haram.

The president of the center had urged worshippers not to engage with the demonstrators.

“We should remind ourselves that we do not match wrongness with wrongness, but with grace and mercy and goodness,” Usama Shami told worshippers during Friday prayers.

While some counter-protesters outside the mosque responded to the anti-Islam protest with obscenities, others followed his advice and chanted “Love your neighbor.”

Todd Green, a religion professor at Luther College in Iowa who studies Islamophobia, said that the brutal acts committed by Islamic State and other militant groups have colored many Americans’ impressions of Muslims.

“Almost two-thirds of Americans don’t know a Muslim,” Green said. “What they know is ISIS, al Qaida, and Charlie Hebdo,” referencing the January attack on the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead over anger at the magazine’s cartoons featuring the prophet.

Leaders of the Phoenix Muslim community confirmed both gunmen shot dead in Texas earlier this month had attended the mosque targeted in Friday’s demonstration.


U.S. officials are investigating claims that the Texas gunmen had ties to the Islamic State, but said they had not established a firm connection.

Epidemic of anti-Islam sentiment

The Department of Homeland Security spoke with state and local law enforcement and monitored the situation in Phoenix, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Ritzheimer, the main organizer of the demonstration, said the point was “to expose the true colors of Islam.”

“True Islam is terrorism,” Ritzheimer told CNN.

Ritzheimer was a staff sergeant in the Marine Reserve and was deployed to Iraq twice, in 2005 and 2008, the Marine Corps said.

Anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller, who organized the Texas event, said she was not involved in the Phoenix demonstration.

The mosque is a former church near the city’s international airport that can hold some 600 worshippers. The Phoenix area is home to tens of thousands of Muslims.


Friday’s event was part of “an epidemic of anti-Islamic sentiment” that goes beyond protesting against extremism, said Imraan Siddiqi of the Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“Don’t mistake that, they’re not saying they want to rid America of radical Islam, they are saying they want to rid America of Islam,” Siddiqi said.

(Reporting by Paul Ingram,  Alistair Bell, Sharon Bernstein and Curtis Skinner Scott Malone, Alex Dobuzinskis and Dan Whitcomb.)

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