THOUGH mosques in non-Muslim states have been targeted in the past, mostly by right-wing and racist elements, Monday night’s arson attack on a mosque in Brussels may be the first intra-Muslim sectarian attack in a western country. A man, apparently an illegal immigrant from Morocco, entered a Shia mosque in the Belgian capital and set it alight, shouting slogans denouncing the bloodshed in Syria, and holding the Shia community responsible for the carnage in the Levant. The Belgian interior minister has suggested the attack had sectarian motives while eyewitnesses described the suspect as “a Salafist”. The mosque had already been under police protection because of threats received in the past from hardline Salafists.

As it is, Muslims living in the West and other non-Muslim societies encounter considerable prejudice due to the antics of religiously motivated terrorists. Acts such as these will further complicate the situation as sectarian poison originating from Muslim-majority countries is exported to the diaspora. While we in Pakistan have seen far too many mosques, imambargahs and Sufi shrines — let alone non-Muslim places of worship — targeted by extremists, Muslims of different denominations in the West generally eschew sectarianism and get along with each other. That may well change as sectarian tensions in the Middle East boil over and have a cascading effect. After Bahrain, the Syrian conflict has taken on an increasingly sectarian colour. If the Syrian quagmire degenerates into open communal conflict, the possibility of more such hate crimes cannot be ruled out. And if hard-liners in the West go ahead with an attack on Iran — and especially if pro-West Gulf sheikhdoms have any role in supporting such an attack — sectarian fissures in countries like Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon and others which have seen bouts of Shia-Sunni violence, are bound to increase considerably.