Pig’s head found in Australian University mosque's bathroom
Student makes gruesome discovery before prayers last Sunday
Last weekend, a student at the University of Western Australia discovered a decapitated pig’s head in the toilets adjacent the University’s Muslim prayer rooms.
Majdi Fal, a Tunisian PhD student, came across the gruesome object when preparing for prayer in the bathrooms near the prayer rooms. He photographed the pig’s head, which had been left face down in the bowl of a squat toilet, and posted it to Facebook, adding “If this happened at a university, then THINGS ARE ESCALATING”. The post has since been removed.
Fal told ABC News that the fact that it was a pig’s head wasn’t the problem, saying, “it can be anything, any other animal; it was the message that was clear”.
“It was not the best start to the day,” he said.
The University’s guild, an organisation equivalent to our student union, condemned the act, calling it “damaging and offensive” and “designed only to incite religious and racial hatred” on their Facebook page. Garnering over a thousand likes, commenters on the guild’s post pointed out that footpaths through this part of the university are fully accessible by the public, and that it may not necessarily have been the action of a student.
The leader of Western Australia’s Muslim Youth group, Shameema Kolia, described the difficulty of being a Muslim after Islamist-motivated terror attacks, saying: “We’re grieving for the loss of human life, but before you can even get through and process that, you’re already expected to condemn what happened, answer for the actions of people you have no idea about.”
After the mass shooting in San Bernardino last Wednesday, where fourteen people were killed, there were fears of revenge attacks on the Muslim community.
Last week, the President of Liberty University in the US, encouraged a crowd of students to get permits to carry concealed arms, saying that if more people did, “we could end those Muslims before they walked in”. The University, which is a private Christian college in Virginia, swiftly released an official statement clarifying his use of “those Muslims” to mean “the Muslim terrorists who attacked innocents in San Bernardino, California, and Paris, France”.
Donald Trump this week called for a “total and complete shutdown” of US immigration of Muslims. This would include Muslims from abroad attempting to get tourist visas. One Scottish University has since revoked an honorary degree they awarded him in 2010. He remains ahead of his Republican counterparts in the polls.
