Prague, Nov 23 (CTK) – Muneeb Hassan Alrawi, chairman of the Centre of Muslim Communities in the Czech Republic, criticises President Milos Zeman for standing side by side with the Bloc against Islam representatives during the celebrations in Prague-Albertov on November 17, in daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) yesterday.
Albertov is a university neighbourhood linked to the events of November 17, 1939, the day of a Nazi crackdown on Czech universities, and November 17, 1989, when the Velvet Revolution broke out after a violent suppression of a student rally by the communist police.
Alrawi in his commentary calls the Czech president “Boko Zeman” and Slovak PM Robert Fico “Fico Haram,” alluding to radical Islamists from the Nigerian Boko Haram terrorist organisation.
“New alliance. Prime Minister [Bohuslav] Sobotka, the head of the Muslim communities in the Czech Republic and [businessman Zdenek] Bakala´s press openly against the president of the republic and the Slovak prime minister,” Zeman´s spokesman Jiri Ovcacek wrote on Twitter in reaction to Alrawi´s article.
Sobotka told Friday´s issue of Hospodarske noviny, owned by Bakala, that the president should not appear at events organised by a xenophobic sect spreading hatred.
Sobotka also said Zeman had joined populists who sponged on the fear of Islamic State and the migrant crisis by his speech at the meeting of the extremist Bloc Against Islam.
Zeman dismissed the criticism, saying his speech did not include “any Islamophobic, hateful statement.”
“In the past few days, I have observed with horror two supreme representatives of the states established after Czechoslovakia´s split,” Alrawi told HN.
Fico said with satisfaction each Muslim is being monitored in Slovakia, while “the Czech president directly stood up among those who would like to strip people of civic rights and if they professed Islam to be minced them into meat and bone meal,” Alrawi said.
He referred to the words by Bloc against Islam chairman Martin Konvicka, standing on the stage with Zeman on Tuesday, who wrote about “Muslims being minced into meat and bone meal” on Facebook.
Alrawi noted that Boko Haram had committed atrocious crimes.
“The only thing that has crossed my mind about the statements by Fico and Zeman is to sarcastically divide the name of this organisation between them,” Alrawi said, adding that he and people in the Czech Muslim communities categorically condemn violence.
“Those atrocities were committed in the name of my faith. But they have actually nothing to do with my faith,” Alrawi added.
hol/dr/pv
