Over 100 Muslims Attend Catholic Church to Worship with Christians

a priest.
AFP reports that more than 100 Muslims were among the
2,000 faithful who packed the 11th-century Gothic
cathedral of Rouen near the Normandy town where two
jihadi teenagers slit the throat of 85-year-old Father
Jacques Hamel.
“I thank you in the name of all Christians,” Rouen
Archbishop Dominique Lebrun told them. “In this way
you are affirming that you reject death and violence in
the name of God.”
The delegation was led by Nice’s top imam Otaman
Aissaoui in the southern city where a jihadist carried
out a rampage in a truck on Bastille Day, claiming 84
lives and injuring 435 including many Muslims.
“Being united is a response to the act of horror and
barbarism,” he said.
It was also the same thing at the Notre Dame church in
southwestern Bordeaux were a Muslim delegation, led
by the city’s top imam Tareq Oubrou attended the mass.
“It’s an occasion to show (Muslims) that we do not
confuse Islam with Islamism, Muslim with jihadist,” said
Reverend Jean Rouet.
The Muslims were responding to a call by the French
Muslim council CFCM to show their “solidarity and
compassion” over the priest’s murder on Tuesday.
Said a woman wearing a beige headscarf who sat in a
back pew at a church in central Paris: “I’m a practising
Muslim and I came to share my sorrow and tell you that
we are brothers and sisters.”
Giving her name only as Sadia, she added softly: “What
happened is beyond comprehension.”
AFP further reported that the most poignant moment of
Sunday’s mass in Rouen was the sign of peace, a
regular part of the liturgy when the faithful turn to greet
each other in the pews, either shaking hands or kissing.
Archbishop Lebrun used the moment to step into the
congregation and greet Muslim leaders attending, as
well as three nuns who were at the church in Saint-
Etienne-du-Rouvray when Hamel was murdered.
Outside the Rouen cathedral a few policemen and
soldiers stood guard but did not conduct searches,
seeking to reassure a jittery population after the second
jihadist attack in less than a fortnight.
Both of the 19-year-olds attackers, Adel Kermiche and
Abdel Malik Petitjean, had been on intelligence services’
radar and had tried to go to Syria.