The outside of a mosque in a French city has been smeared with excrement, the latest in a series of vandalism incidents involving Muslim places of worship in the country.

The Interior Ministry said Wednesday that police are seeking the culprit or culprits, adding in a statement that “to attack a religion is to attack the (French) Republic.”

The Limoges mosque in central France was vandalized in July with Nazi symbols scrawled on its doors. In the latest incident, excrement was smeared on the doors and elsewhere before dawn.

In August, two pigs heads were hung on two pillars outside a mosque in the southwestern town of Montauban.

The French Council of the Muslim Faith asked the faithful for calm vigilance in the face of what it says is rising Islamophobia.

Associated Press, 12 September 2012

See also “La grande mosquée de Limoges profanée avec des excréments, Valls indigné”, AFP, 12 September 2012