Ramsey vows to track down pig head provocateurs; Nutter likens Trump to Hitler [updated]
ListenReligious leaders of all denominations joined together at City Hall Tuesday to decry an act of desecration at a mosque in North Philadelphia.A pig’s head was left outside the Al Aqsa Islamic Society Mosque in North Philadelphia Monday, an insult to Muslims who are not permitted to eat pork according to the Quran.
Marwan Kreidie of the Philadelphia Arab American Development Corporation said the provocative act plays into the hands of ISIS.
“This will help them in their recruiting, this will help them in their propaganda,” he said. “We cannot let these extremists win.”
City Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey vowed to track down those responsible for leaving the head outside the mosque door.
“Anyone who has information about the individuals responsible for the incident … let us know,” he said. “We have some video that we are trying to enhance to see if we can get a tag number, but we do need the public’s help on this.”
Mayor Michael Nutter reiterated his condemnation of Donald Trump’s call to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., saying that the GOP presidential candidate is spreading hate.
“He’s taken a page from the playbook of Hitler, to demonize a group, blame that group for a country’s problems and then seek to ban or eliminate that group as some kind of a solution to a problem that does not exist,” Nutter said Tuesday afternoon.
If he could, Nutter said, he would ban Trump from town.
“Nothing more vile or ignorant could be said, whether it’s in a political environment or any other environment,” Nutter said. “If I had the power the only banning that would be done is that I would ban him from Philadelphia. We don’t have any room for that kind of stupidity here.”
The mayor also described the pig’s head outside a mosque as an “act of Ignorance.”
“The Philadelphia Police Department will aggressively investigate and review any surveillance tapes, interview any potential witness for this kind of ignorant act,” Nutter said.
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