A man was taken into police custody on Tuesday evening after committing an act of desecration at the Errahma Mosque in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, France. In the early hours of June 1st to 2nd, at around 3:45 a.m., the individual entered the place of worship, stole a copy of the Quran, burned it, and left it at the mosque entrance just minutes before the first morning prayer. The suspect, whose face was not concealed, fled after the act. A complaint was immediately filed, according to the Interdepartmental Directorate of the National Police (DIPN), as confirmed to BFM Lyon. The arrest took place on Tuesday evening, as reported by Le Parisien, citing sources from the Lyon prosecutor's office and police. An investigation has been opened into the incident, which has been widely condemned by political and religious leaders, who described it as «vile» and «Islamophobic». The Council of Mosques of the Rhône warned of «an increasingly oppressive climate of hatred towards Muslim citizens in France». Recent incidents in «the land of human rights» support this observation: the assassination of Aboubacar Cissé during prayer in a mosque in Gard (April 2025), the racially motivated murder of a 46-year-old Tunisian man in Var (May 2025), the forcible removal of a veil in public of a 21-year-old student (May 2025), and the visible rise of xenophobic rhetoric in public spaces, including a neo-fascist demonstration on May 9th. According to the French Ministry of the Interior, 79 anti-Muslim acts were recorded between January and March 2025 — a 72% increase compared to the same period in 2024. Specifically: 26 in January, 17 in February, and 36 in March. For comparison, 280 anti-Semitic acts and 169 anti-Christian acts were also recorded during the same period. The Socialist Party (PS) mayor of Villeurbanne, Cédric Van Styvendael, condemned this latest Islamophobic act and expressed his solidarity with the mosque's worshippers. Meanwhile, LFI deputy Gabriel Amard took to social media to denounce what he called «an Islamophobic act [and] deliberate desecration, fueled by harmful rhetoric that we hear even from the mouths of the highest state officials».
