Newcastle Women Dispel Myths About Islam

MUSLIM women came together to spread messages of love and unity after a series of alleged reprisal attacks following the death of soldier Lee Rigby.

Women and children handed out 500 individual roses to shoppers on Newcastle’s Northumberland Street yesterday in a bid to unite the people of the city.

The group were keen to dispel the misrepresented image of Islam and show people that their religion is in fact about “peace, love and unity”.

Nusrat Ahmed, from Newcastle, said: “We wanted to do this after all the recent events that have been reported in the media since the Woolwich murder.

“People have got quite a negative view of Islam and this is not a true representation of Islam so we wanted to get together to give out roses to people to show that Islam is actually about peace, love and unity.

“We just want to make people smile.”

Since the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, London, on May 22, there have been a number of incidents across the country where Muslims have been targeted in what are thought to be reprisal attacks.

Tina McGovern, who helped organise yesterday afternoon’s event in Newcastle, said that the shocking events that have unfolded since Drummer Rigby’s death spurred them to do something to unite the people of Tyneside.

She said: “It’s kind of divided people with these mosque attacks and we wanted to bring back the feeling of community and not let atrocities like these divide us.”

Similar events have been held in other cities in a bid to return communities to unity and the success of these inspired the ladies in Tyneside to do the same.

They pooled together and bought 500 roses, each individual one de-thorned the night before and each with personal messages attached.

One of the messages read: “A saying of the Prophet Muhammad: ‘Give gifts to one another as a gift removes bad feeling from the heart’.”

The women spent more than an hour handing out the roses to appreciative shoppers who willingly accepted the gestures of goodwill.

“We had been thinking about doing it for a while and we just felt now we needed to do something,” said Nusrat.

She added: “People in Newcastle are really open to these kinds of things and it has been received really well.”