The US State Department has released its annual International Religious Freedom Report. You can find information on every country in the world. Readers of ThePolitic.com will be familiar with much of the information on Canada. This, however, was news to me:
A number of mosques were vandalized, including several mosques in the Montreal area, in February and March 2006. At the end of the period covered by this report, police had not identified suspects in these incidents. This followed media coverage of the international reaction to publication in Denmark of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. In April 2006 a mosque in the Quebec city of Trois Rivieres, home to approximately 300 Muslims, was targeted with racist posters.
During the same period, approximately forty-five acts of vandalism against Christian cemeteries and churches were identified in the media. On June 27, 2006, a Manitoba court sentenced three individuals to prison terms of two years minus one day to three years for the arson destruction of a 105-year-old church. An amount of $1 million (C$1.2 million) was levied against the three as restitution. The individuals, followers of a Norwegian musician jailed for a 1993 murder and for the destruction of several churches in Europe, set the church ablaze on February 12, 2006, the Norwegian convict’s birthday. The individual receiving the stiffest sentence had previously been charged with arson in an April 2004 fire that destroyed another church and with the vandalism of tombstones in Manitoba and Alberta. He was scheduled to appear in court on August 3, 2006.
In May 2006 St. Alban’s Anglican Church, located in a Victoria, British Columbia, suburb was vandalized. Church lights and stained glass windows were smashed, Bibles and other religious objects were desecrated, and cigarette butts and empty wine bottles were left in and around the church. Police made arrests in the case, but by the end of the period covered by this report, authorities had not charged anyone. Church officials indicated they did not plan to press charges.
H/t: All American Patriots.

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