(JTA) Following a suspected terrorist attack that left four dead in Vienna by a shooter who reportedly shouted “Allah,” European rabbis made an unusual appeal for more “control and transparency” over what goes on at mosques across the continent.
“It is important to know what is being preached in mosques and other places of worship over here, by whom they are financed, what foreign influences are promoting such terrible deeds and how social media serve as a vehicle for this,” Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, wrote Tuesday in a statement, which also spoke of shock and sadness at “this cowardly act of terror.”
The appeal came as police in Austria were searching for any possible accomplices of the 20-year-old man who authorities said was part of a possible synchronized terrorist attack Monday night at six locales of downtown Vienna.
