London Mosque Pork Sausage Attack Investigated As Hate Crime

Police are looking for answers after a London mosque was targeted by a pork sausage attack. On May 26, between the hours of 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. local time, a man threw a bag of pork sausages and pig guts over a fence surrounding the Finsbury Park mosque in North London. Because the attack appears to be religiously motivated, local law enforcement is investigating the pork sausage attack as a potential hate crime. The Islington Community Safety Unit has released still images from a surveillance video that shows the face of the man they suspect to be the culprit in the attack.

According to law enforcement, the Finsbury Park mosque was also targeted in a failed arson attack in November of 2015. In that attack, someone threw a petrol (gasoline) bomb over the gates of the mosque. The bomb failed to ignite due to inclement weather, and police haven’t made any arrests or identified a suspect in that attack on the London mosque, reports Express UK.

Hate crime investigation launched by police after man throws sausage at Finsbury Park Mosque https://t.co/TDrQlqmnAV pic.twitter.com/QHOPZ7vCF6

— ITV London (@itvlondon) May 28, 2016

According to Detective Inspector Ralph Coates of the local Safety Unit, authorities are taking the pork sausage attack on the London mosque very seriously, because such attacks cause a lot of problems for both individuals and the community as a whole.

“We take hate crime extremely seriously as we know how destructive these offences can be, both to individuals and to communities. We want to put a very strong message out there that we will not put up with this.”

In addition to local law enforcement, members of the Muslim community and the Finsbury Park mosque, in particular, don’t see anything humorous about the attack. It is being taken very seriously, and according to Mohammed Kozbar, chairman of the London mosque, the pork sausage attack was very “offensive” to mosque attendees.

The Finsbury Park mosque in London rose to worldwide fame due to its association with “hate preacher” Abu Hamza, who was once a regular attendee at the London mosque. Eventually, he and his followers were kicked out of the Finsbury Park mosque due to their extremist views and incitements of violence against the west. As The Telegraph reports, Hamza started preaching in the street surrounding the London mosque after being kicked out.

Ultimately, the hate preacher was convicted of 11 terrorism-related charges in a New York City courtroom, and he will be spending the rest of his life in an American prison for the terrorist acts that were spawned, in part, from his time at the London mosque.

Because of the London mosque’s checkered history and the current geopolitical environment in the UK and throughout Europe, it’s likely that crimes such as last week’s sausage attack on the London mosque will increase. This is part of the reason that they are investigated so aggressively and perpetrators are often charged with “hate crimes” for their incendiary actions. In many areas of London and throughout Europe, racial and religious tensions have become a powder keg needing only a spark to explode. Authorities fear that crimes like the sausage attack on the London mosque could provide that spark.

London has become increasingly diverse in the last decade and has an ever-growing Muslim population. The City of London even elected its first-ever openly Muslim Mayor earlier in May, reports the BBC. Despite the diversity, London has largely been spared much of the violence that has plagued other European cities and nations. In the wake of last November’s terror attacks in Paris and March’s terror attacks in Brussels, Belgium, however, tension between Muslims and non-Muslims are on the rise, as illustrated in the sausage attack on the London mosque.

Such attacks serve no greater good, but rather only inflame tensions that are already stretched almost to the breaking point.

Police are encouraging witnesses to the London mosque sausage attack, or anyone who may have any information about the so-called hate crime, to contact authorities.

What do you think? Is it fair or overkill to investigate the London mosque sausage attack as a “hate crime”?

[Photo by Richard Lewis/AP Photo]