‘Allah is the one god,’ Muslim migrant damages a shrine in Japan, threatens native towards praying

A video has been going viral on social media through which a person in yellow apparel can also be noticed vandalising a worship position. The video is reportedly from the Tarumi Ward in Japan’s Kobe Town the place the accused known as Mamadou Balde had vandalised the Mizuoka Hachiman shrine within the house.

Balde is a Muslim local of the Republic of Gambia in West Africa, who migrated to Japan and now lives in Tarumi Ward, the place the incident came about.

The accused, who was once later arrested via the Jap police, reportedly broke an providing field stored within the shrine. He additionally, reportedly, threatened a neighborhood worshipper towards providing prayers on the shrine claiming Allah to be the one God. The incident came about on Might 3, 2023.

Japan: Muslim migrant vandalizes shrine, tells worshipers that ‘the one god is Allah’https://t.co/ZrFEsVeXaQ percent.twitter.com/DU1PL8WlY1

— इंदौरी?? (@indoriladka) Might 25, 2023

The CCTV pictures published that the Muslim guy, wearing yellow apparel gave the impression within the precincts of the Jap Shinto shrine at round 9:30 am on Might 3. He kicked the providing field stored within the shrine.

Shinto Shrines are puts of worship in addition to the dwellings of the Shinto gods- kami. Sacred articles of devotion representing the kami are stored within the shrine’s innermost chamber, the place they can not typically be noticed via someone. In some circumstances, a mountain, waterfall, or rock in the back of the shrine development can also be the thing of veneration.

Every other safety digital camera additionally confirmed the bamboo pipes within the chozuya, the place the worshippers wash their fingers sooner than providing prayers within the shrine, and a wood field stored on most sensible of every other offertory field being slammed to the bottom.

The accused additionally reportedly advised a lady devotee who was once visiting the shrine on the time, “There’s best Allah (the god) of Islam, so there is not any God right here, so don’t pray right here.”

Reacting to the incident, Mizuoka Hachiman Shrine, leader priest, stated: “It’s actually disappointing, I will best say that.” 

Upward push of Islam in Japan

It’s pertinent to notice right here that as according to to be had knowledge, Islam has grow to be the fastest-growing faith in Japan on the subject of proportion build up, with its fans increasing via 110%, from 110,000 in 2010 to 230,000 on the finish of 2019, out of the full inhabitants of Japan of round 126 million. In accordance to a couple assets, there have been 30,000 Muslims in Japan in 1982.

Some of the number one causes for this demographic alternate is the pointy upward thrust in marriages between Muslims and Jap voters and Jap converts over 20 years. This has led to a seven-fold build up within the selection of mosques that experience mushroomed within the nation. A learn about via Hirofumi Tanada, professor emeritus of sociology at Waseda College in Tokyo confirmed there have been 113 mosques throughout Japan in March 2021, up from best 15 in 1999.

Particularly, the primary touch between Japan and the Muslim global can also be traced again to the sixteenth century when Jap buyers started organising industry routes with the Center East and Southeast Asia. Those interactions offered some Jap to Islamic customs and practices.

Within the past due nineteenth century, Japan skilled a wave of migration because of industrialization and financial construction. This resulted within the arrival of a small selection of Muslim migrants, basically from India, Turkey, and different portions of the Center East. Those migrants performed a vital position in laying the root for Islam in Japan.

Islamic organizations started to emerge in Japan all over the mid-Twentieth century. Some Jap people started changing to Islam, both thru non-public learn about or interactions with the Muslim neighborhood in Japan.

Within the Nineteen Sixties masses of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims migrated to paintings in Japan and become settled. Moreover, Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh larger within the past due Eighties as visa waiver techniques had been offered via the Jap executive. Consistent with knowledge supplied via the Global Group for Migration (IOM), the inhabitants of migrant Muslim employees in Japan doubled to succeed in greater than 2 million on the finish of 2011.