French radio station backs Zemmour

Eric Zemmour RTLA leading French radio station said Tuesday it will continue working with polemicist Eric Zemmour despite his controversial comments about Muslims that led to him getting the boot from a TV channel.

“Democracy means accepting and allowing the confrontation of ideas,” RTL radio wrote in a statement, adding that it would never let its editorial decisions to be dictated by others “whatever pressures it may face”.

Zemmour currently appears twice weekly on an RTL current affairs programme and has been working with the station since 2010.

The announcement comes after television news channel iTele said Friday it would cancel a show Zemmour appears on as a commentator following the controversy stirred up by his statements to an Italian newspaper.

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Christine Tasin wins appeal against conviction for inciting anti-Muslim hatred … with assistance of Daniel Pipes

Christine Tasin denounces IslamChristine Tasin is co-leader with Pierre Cassen of the far-right Islamophobic campaign group Riposte Laïque and its front organisation Résistance Républicaine.

Cassen and another Riposte Laïque activist were found guilty of inciting hatred against Muslims in 2012, and earlier year Tasin herself was convicted on the same charge, receiving a 3-month suspended prison sentence and a €3000 fine.

Regrettably, on 18 December Tasin won her appeal against that conviction. According to Breitbart London, her legal costs were covered by Daniel Pipes. They report Tasin as saying:

“Last Thursday was a great day for freedom of expression in France. I said, in Belfort, in 2013, before the mobile Eid abattoir that ‘Islam is sh*t’ to Muslims who had recognized me and attacking me because I claim my Islamophobia.

“I was sentenced to a fine of €3,000 including €1,500 suspended after the Belfort court considered that I had incited hatred against Muslims. The court in Besançon has now acknowledged that one has the right to express opinions and I did not encourage hatred against Muslims, and I can think and say that Islam is a threat to France, that it is a freedom of expression.

“The Resistance to Islam and all those who, in France, fear that freedom of expression is disappearing, and that blasphemy has become a crime again are relieved”.

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Jewish students’ organisation sues French magazine for inciting anti-Muslim hatred

Valeurs actuelles cover

This is the notorious September 2013 cover of the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles.

As we reported at the time, to its credit the Union des étudiants juifs de France (UEJF) began legal proceedings against the magazine’s editorial director for incitement to racial hatred, on the grounds that the cover “contains an explicit exhortation to commit acts of discrimination or violence … against Muslims”.

The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France draws our attention to the fact that the UEJF’s complaint came up in court last week. The UEJF is asking the court to impose a €5000 fine and €1 in symbolic damages. The case will be heard in February.

Éric Zemmour sacked over anti‑Muslim comments

Marine Le Pen denounces Zemmour sacking
Front National leader Marine Le Pen denounces Zemmour’s sacking

France has been split down the middle by the sacking of the nation’s favourite – and at the same time most detested – hard-right, Islamophobe misogynist.

Éric Zemmour was dismissed by the 24-hour news channel i-Télé after telling – or seeming to tell – an Italian journalist that France’s estimated five million Muslims should be “deported”  to avoid “chaos and civil war”.

The channel’s decision was approved by anti-racist groups and some left-wing politicians. It was lambasted by senior figures on the right of French politics – who adore Zemmour – but also by some on the left – who detest him – on the basis of his right to free speech.

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Muslim reporter threatened in Paris metro

Hajer M’tiri's assailant hides face

I was sitting in the last car of the Paris metro, in one of the folding seats close to the door. A number of other people were in the car, as well, though it wasn’t packed.

Two stations before my stop, a large man strode into the car. He was about 6-foot-three (1.90 meters), and he had a big belly and long brown hair. He was unshaven.

He stared at me.

As a Muslim woman wearing the scarf, walking in the streets and taking public transportation in Paris means I often face people’s stares. Sometimes I hear comments and whispers. I am a young reporter, just recently assigned to Paris, but I have quickly gotten used to it.

Still, I was unprepared for what happened next.

“P… de musulmane,” the man snarled. F… Muslim.

Then there was silence. No one spoke a word. I was terrified.

Hajer M’tiri reports.

Anadolu Agency, 20 December 2014

French journalist envisages possible deportation of 5 million Muslims

Eric ZemmourFrench journalist Éric Zemmour sparks controversy once again.

In an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere Della Serra, the essayist, whose remarks are often dubbed as racist, xenophobic and sexist, talked about a potential deportation of Muslims from France.

He said that Muslims’ tendency to isolate themselves in the suburbs and only live with each other will eventually lead to “chaos and civil war.”

Asked whether he would suggest deporting 5 million French Muslims, the controversial French journalist replied: “I know it’s unrealistic, but history is surprising.

“Who would have said that in 1940 almost a million Pieds-Noirs [literally meaning Black-foot, a term referring to people of French and other European ancestry who live in French North Africa], twenty years later would leave Algeria in order to return to France?”

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve issued a statement Tuesday in order to “condemn with the utmost firmness the words of Éric Zemmour.”

“The French nation is defined by living together, and France’s Muslims, like Christians, Jews, believers and unbelievers, are all its children,” he added.

Even internet users were quick to denounce Eric Zemmour comments under the hashtag #ZemmourDeporteMoi.

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Houellebecq predicts Muslim Brotherhood takeover of France

Les Inrocks Houellebecq met l’islam au pouvoirFrance’s most famous living novelist, Michel Houellebecq, appears on course for a fresh literary polemic after it emerged his next book predicts a Muslim will beat the far-Right Front National to run the country in 2022.

Few details had previously emerged about the latest work of France’s literary enfant terrible, who shot to global fame with Atomised and recently won France’s top literary award, Le Goncourt, for The Map and the Territory.

But on Tuesday, it was reported that his next book, out on January 7, is called Submission – a reference to Islam and the submission of infidels to Allah through conversion to the religion.

Set in the very near future, the novel reportedly predicts that despite his record unpopularity, François Hollande, the current Socialist president, manages to clinch a second five-year term in 2017.

However, in 2022, he is knocked out in round one by a far-Right Front National candidate and a certain Mohammed Ben Abbes, backed by the fictitious Muslim Fraternity party. The latter goes on to win the presidency after joining forces with the Socialists, centrist UDI group and Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-Right UMP.

Houellebecq apparently dismisses the idea that Mr Sarkozy will make a triumphant presidential comeback, as he currently hopes.

François Bayrou, a centrist who has run in several presidential elections, is chosen as prime minister, in a scenario that, according to Les Inrockuptibles, “totally overturns (French) society”.

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‘Pork or nothing’: Mayor makes Muslim kids to go meatless at French school

Marcel MortreauA secularism scandal is raging in France, after a mayor in a northwestern town introduced a “pork or nothing” principle at school, even for 27 students who will get no meat substitute.

The rule will apply starting from January 1 in the town of Sargé-lès-Le Mans, and may apply to Jewish pupils as well – though there aren’t any in this particular school.

Mayor Marcel Mortreau bases his decision on the “principle of Republican neutrality.” “The mayor is not required to provide meals that respond to religious requirements. This is the principle of secularism,” Mortreau told Europe1 radio.

The move was backed up by the Town Hall on the grounds that the food providers face extra work if they have to deliver meat substitutes, The Local reported.

The initiative has been supported by some public school officials. “We didn’t open school canteens for partisan, religious, philosophical, cultural reasons,” said Eric Le Moal, director of a public school in Lezignan-Corbieres in the Aude, which also passed the one-dish policy last year.

Muslim parents and pupils expressed their fury at the mayor’s decision, especially due to the fact that a second meal doesn’t cost any extra.

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Far-right leaders vow to ‘save Europe’ at French gathering

Marine le Pen and Geert Wilders at Lyon conferenceRepresentatives of Eurosceptic and far-right groups from Italy to Bulgaria gathered at the National Front party conference in Lyon at the weekend to warn France and Europe of a “neo-Ottoman” onslaught of Islam-preaching, benefit-stealing migrants.

Digging through the history books, Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), warned that “Arab armies plundered Lyon in 725 and are now busy doing the same in Iraq and Syria”.

Strache went on to blast Europe’s mainstream parties for, among other things, stoking “mass immigration, ideological terror, gay marriage and gender theory”.

The Austrian far-right leader was one of seven foreign politicians invited by the National Front (FN) leader, Marine Le Pen, to showcase her so-called “Europe of nations” – which she hopes to build on the ruins of an increasingly unpopular EU.

“Our Europe stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals, not from Washington to Brussels,” she said, calling for closer ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and an end to “US domination”.

The weekend gathering capped a triumphant year for her party, which romped to victory in European elections with a whopping 25% of the vote.

Should France hold a presidential election next week, polls say Marine Le Pen would thrash her challengers in the first round of voting – but would likely come up short in a runoff vote.

Either way, analysts say there is a very real chance the FN, as it is known in France, may one day wield power in France.

Like the French far right, Le Pen’s foreign guests have thrived on the gloom and anxiety sweeping across Europe in the wake of the financial crisis.

Addressing the FN conference, they treated the audience to a mix of fear-mongering and unbridled optimism, claiming their impending victory would save Europe from the present apocalypse.

First to speak was Geert Wilders, the platinum blond leader of Dutch Islamophobic party PVV, who hailed Marine Le Pen as “France’s next president”.

“Just like you, we don’t want foreigners to tell us they are masters in our country. We say: kick the criminals, the jihadists, the illegal migrants out,” he told the entirely Caucasian audience to rapturous applause.

Wilders, who left without listening to his colleague’s speeches, blasted the “betrayal of our multicultural elites, who destroy our identities and traditions”.

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Burqa bans in all public places have no place in a liberal democracy

Writing in the Leicester Mercury, Professor Jill Marshall of the School of Law at the University of Leicester, author of Human Rights Law and Personal Identity, takes issue with the French ban on the face veil:

In 2011 it became a criminal offence to wear face coverings, including the burqa and niqab, in any public place in France. This summer the European Court of Human Rights decided this law did not violate human rights. It interferes with rights to religious freedom of expression and our private life, “personality” or “identity” rights. However, these interferences are justified by the “rights and freedoms of others”: “living together” argued by the French government.

As the two dissenting judges say this is notion is “far-fetched and vague”. It makes a mockery of rights to freedom of expression, religious or otherwise, identity or personality.

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