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Muslim offer to clean Nazi graffiti refused

The Local Norway
The Local Norway - [email protected]
Muslim offer to clean Nazi graffiti refused
Pegida head Max Hermansen outside his Oslo bookshop on Sunday morning. Photo: Heiko Junge/NTB scanpix

The Norway head of anti-Islam movement Pegida has turned down a group of young Muslims who offered to clean his book shop's walls and windows after the words “Nazi Swine” were spray-painted all over them on Saturday night.

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“I do not want symbolic actions, I want a new asylum and integration policy,”  Max Hermansen, who led the country’s first Pegida march in January, told Norway’s state broadcaster NRK

Thee Yezan, from "Islamophobia Awareness Norway" made the offer after news that Hermandsen's shop had been vandalised was published on Sunday morning. He said he was part of a group of four young Muslims. 

"We are offering to wash away the graffiti from Max Hermansen's shop, after which we are offering him a cup of Arabic tea and a massage," Yezan, who is not using his real name, wrote on Facebook, adding that others would have to forward the request to Hermansen, as he was blocked from the anti-Islamist's feed.

When Hermansen was alerted to the offer, he rejected it in the strongest terms.

"Muslims want to wash my shop," he Tweeted. "Do they also want to keep watch during opening hours so other Muslims don't throw in a Molotov cocktail?" 

Yezan insisted his offer had been in good faith.

"We believe that it is sad to see that the shop has been defaced in this way," he said. "We want to do this because Hermansen is so negative to Muslims, and we want to say that this has nothing to do with Muslims. "

Yezan told VG the massage was intended to help Hermansen "relax and let his shoulders drop".

Hermansen has complained of increasing victimisation since he launched Pegida in Norway in January, with the local training office he works for telling him they would no longer employ him as a teacher because of his views.

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