BORDER religious leaders have condemned the Paris terrorist hits but fear they will result in a backlash to the area's Islamic community.
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Islamic Society of Albury-Wodonga president Yakub Mohammed labelled those involved "stupid idiots" whose acts were "absolutely un-Islamic".
"How many kids are there that don't have a dad or a mum because of this?" he said.
"Islam does not represent that and we absolutely condemn that.
"(ISIS is) an organisation out to create a bad name for Islam and it is an organisation that hates Muslims.
"If these people were Muslim they would know it doesn't say in the Koran to go and kill an innocent person."
Mr Mohammed said he had worked hard to strengthen ties between the Muslim and non-Muslim community on the Border through events such as mosque open days.
"This throws you back and you wonder how the hell you can recover," he said.
"There's people in Australia, good and bad, and they'll know it's only these extremist terrorists and then there's these idiots that know it's not all Muslims but will still want to tarnish Muslims."
Mr Mohammed said "unless you eradicate these extremists you can't do much about" such attacks and government help was needed to deradicalise zealots.
Albury Anglican archdeacon Peter MacLeod-Miller, who marked the massacres with a French-themed Sunday service, told The Border Mail he was appalled.
"This is a tragedy, not just in terms of the people it has killed but in terms of the injury to relationships globally," Fr MacLeod-Miller said.
"It's inevitable it is going to make Islam seem more dangerous and threatening, even locally, and that's just a great shame.
"It's a great injury to Islam and everyone that calls themselves Muslim, they must be bruised as well.
"This is the ugly face of fundamentalism and over its history Christianity has suffered from fundamentalism as well."
Sunday's service at St Matthew's opened with the playing of La Marseillaise, France's national anthem, and the reading of the Lord's Prayer in French by parishioner Sue Fyfe.
Prayers went to the victims of the terrorists, the families of the injured and to remedy broken global relations of people of every faith.
Lit candles were placed above a makeshift French flag formed by blue, white and red cloths put atop a catafalque at the front of the church.
"It's about taking a few deep breaths and seeing we all breathe the same air and none of us think this is a good thing," Fr MacLeod-Miller said.
- More Paris terrorist attack coverage: Pages 12 and 13
