OSLO // More than 1,000 Muslims formed a human shield around a synagogue in the Norwegian capital yesterday, offering symbolic protection for the city’s Jewish community and condemning an attack on a synagogue in neighbouring Denmark last weekend.
Chanting “No to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia”, the activists formed what they called a ring of peace one week after Omar Abdel Hamid El Hussein, a Danish-born son of Palestinian immigrants, killed two people at a synagogue and a free speech event in Copenhagen.
Following a manhunt, the gunman was shot and killed by police.
“Humanity is one and we are here to demonstrate that,” one of the protest’s organisers, Zeeshan Abdullah, told a crowd of Muslim immigrants and ethnic Norwegians who filled the small street around Oslo’s only functioning synagogue.
Norway’s Jewish community is one of Europe’s smallest, numbering around 1,000, while the Muslim population is 150,000 to 200,000.
Norway has a population of about 5.2 million.
An opinion poll late last year found that 77 per cent of people thought immigrants made an important contribution to Norwegian society.
* Reuters
