Plans for an “anti-radicalisation” declaration were rejected because it would discriminate against Muslims, the government has said as it defended its record on extremism.
The Irish Muslim Peace & Integration Council (Impic) yesterday said that it had warned two years ago that extremists were spreading hate messages in Ireland and claimed that the government had done nothing.
Sheikh Umar al-Qadri, chairman of Impic, had proposed that any foreign speakers coming to the country would have to sign the declaration as part of their entry visa conditions.
Yesterday the Department of Justice said that Dr al-Qadri’s efforts to tackle extremism were to be applauded and that it had had a “lengthy” meeting with him on the visa proposals last year.
“However, such an approach presents a number of inherent difficulties and could be seen to discriminate unacceptably against members of a given faith group,” a spokesman for the Department of Justice told The Times.
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“Of course, it should be emphasised that every person granted a visa for the state or entering the state is obliged to abide by the laws here, including laws about inciting hatred or provocation to commit terrorist offences.”
The spokesman said that a multi-agency approach was required to tackle isolated cases of extremism. “Any response to this issue must be proportionate, otherwise there is a real risk of unfairly stigmatising and alienating sections of our community. This would plainly be counterproductive,” he said.
Dr al-Qadri had told RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland programme yesterday that his warnings about radicalisation were proved accurate because of the involvement of an Irish resident in the London Bridge attack.
His comments came as an imam said that Monday’s attack on a Galway mosque was worse than the usual backlash that the Muslim community had come to expect after terrorist attacks.
Ibrahim Ahmad Noonan said that he believed stones were thrown at Masjid Maryam mosque to coincide with the hour of prayer on Monday evening.
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About 100 men, women and children were praying when stones, believed to have been thrown by two men in their early twenties, smashed the window.
“I thought some sort of fuse had blown in the mosque, that’s how loud it was,” Mr Ahmad Noonan said. “They shattered the windows with rocks, big rocks.” He said that children and women were particularly upset by the attack, which took place during Ramadan, but that he continued with prayer. When he went outside to investigate, two young men, believed to be Irish, were running away. Gardaí are investigating for criminal damage.
“People were pretty shaken, all the children were asking, ‘What’s going on?’ I tried to tell them not to worry, that they did not need to know everything,” Mr Ahmad Noonan said.
He was certain that the attack was in response to the terrorism in London. “Every time, whether it is Paris, Belgium, London, there has been some backlash towards the Muslim community in Britain, like a racist or Islamaphobic remark. Around lunchtime the news started to come through that one of the terrorists [Rachid Redouane] had been in Ireland,” he said. “Many members of our community had asked me, ‘Do you think there will be a backlash?’ and I said, ‘I don’t think the Irish people will fall to that level.’ I told our community to be patient, to maybe expect some racist remarks. We did not expect this. But I believe 100 per cent these people did this because of their anger over what happened in London.”
He said that the majority of the community in Galway had been supportive. “The Muslim community have to do our bit to help to root out extremism in Europe, I think it is very important to say that, but I would ask Irish people to take a deep breath after [such attacks] and realise not all Muslims are to blame,” he said.
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• A man was arrested in Limerick on Monday night as part of an investigation into Redouane.
It is understood that identification including a PPS number, which may have been linked to Redouane, was found during a search of an apartment in Limerick city on Monday. A man who had been living in the apartment was arrested on suspicion of theft and fraud offences in relation to alleged false documentation.
It is understood that he was held after information from British police officers was passed to gardaí. The man was released without charge yesterday afternoon after being detained for a few hours.