An angry letter from a survivor of last November's terrorist attack at an Eagles Of Death Metal gig in Paris which criticises the band's frontman has gone viral and been shared more than 4,000 times.
89 people were murdered when extremists opened fire at Le Bataclan in the French capital during a gig by the US band.
Two weeks ago, lead-singer Jesse Hughes told Taki Magazine website that he saw some “terrorists” in the concert hall before the November 13th show and also saw “Muslims celebrating in the street during the attack”. Back in March, Hughes was forced to apologise for his suggestion that Le Bataclan security guards may have been involved in the terrorist attacks.
Now Ismael El Iraki, who was at the concert and is himself a Muslim, has penned an open letter to Hughes, criticising the rocker's recent statements.
In the letter posted to his Facebook page, El Iraki claims the singer's comments had "reopened a nasty wound" and pointedly said, "As I said I live and breathe rock 'n' roll, and I could not look more Muslim if I tried. But apparently, the big bad Muslim conspiracy missed me. Damn, they forgot to warn me."
Later in the letter he tells Hughes that, "What pains me most is that you do not even realize that a huge number of us who managed to get out alive of this horrible ordeal owe our lives to a Muslim guy...".
You say: "Islam is the problem". I say: "All you fucking bigots and your fairytale shit stories are the problem. Racism and refusal to recognize one another as complex (more complex than ethnicity or race can explain) human beings is the problem.
Two French music festivals recently dropped Eagles of Death Metal from their line-ups this summer following the singer's comments. The Rock en Seine concert in Paris and the Cabaret Vert festival in Ardennes in northern France issued a joint statement in which they said they are “in total disagreement with Jesse Hughes’s recent allegations...".
Back in December U2 closed their European tour in Paris and were joined onstage by Eagles of Death Metal for a cover of Patti Smith's People Have the Power.
At the gig Bono said "They were robbed of their stage, so we would like to offer them ours".
