About 250 people clashed with police firing tear gas in a Paris suburb on Friday, in apparent protest over enforcement of France’s ban on Islamic face veils. Four police officers were injured and six people were arrested, while a 14-year-old boy suffered a serious eye injury from a projectile, police said.
On Sunday 14 July in Trappes (west of Paris) a 21-year-old Muslim woman wearing the veil was attacked by two men in their 30s who lived in the same area as the young woman.
As she crossed the bridge in Trappes on her way home, accompanied by her two-year-old niece, the two assailants insulted her: “bitch”, “dirty veiled woman”. She didn’t reply and when she turned towards them one of them said “yes, I’m talking to you”.
Oblivious to the presence of the child, he pulled out a knife with a blade of 10 to 15cm while declaring “anyway we’re going to exterminate you Muslims, and you’ll be the first”. As he approached his victim with his knife, a man intervened and blocked his path, putting the two attackers to flight.
Inna Shevchenko, the leader of topless feminist group Femen and one of the inspirations for the new stamp depicting Marianne, the feminine symbol of France, has created a mini-storm with a tweet slamming Ramadan and Islam in general.
The leader of feminist activist group Femen, Inna Shevchenko, on Tuesday sparked an online controversy after posting an anti-Islam message to her Twitter account.
Shevchenko is one of the inspirations for France’s new official stamp depicting Marianne, the feminine symbol of the French Republic – a fact that makes the accusations of Islamophobia she is currently facing even more inopportune.
The “tweet” in question, published on July 9, reads: “What can be more stupid than Ramadan? What can be more uglier then this religion?” Shevchenko’s tweet has since been deleted – “by Mohamed or by mistake, that is the same”, the feminist posted to her Twitter account.
A neo-Nazi linked to Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been arrested in France today following fears he might stage a large “terrorist act”. Kristian Vikernes, a well-known black metal musician in Norway, was arrested with his French wife Marie Chachet after she recently bought four rifles.
AFP reports that the prosecutor in Reims said today that he is investigating three separate complaints of assaults and insults against Muslim women.
The prosecutor told AFP that a preliminary investigation had been opened after a veiled young woman was assaulted on Friday while crossing a park in the centre of Reims by a man who was “probably drunk”. The victim was hit in the face and wounded with a sharp object by her attacker, who had previously attempted to snatch her headscarf, according to her testimony.
The prosecutor is investigating two further complaints filed at the Reims police headquarters on Sunday: one for physical assault – a blow with an elbow – and racist insults against a woman wearing a headscarf that took place on Saturday, and another for death threats and insults towards two other veiled women, dating back to July 2.
“Within two weeks there have been three Islamophobic attacks in Reims, the last of which was a very violent one against a young woman of 18, and other cities are experiencing the same upsurge”, Abdallah Zekri, president of the national Observatory against Islamophobic Acts, a component of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, told AFP. He denounced the “repeated attacks against Muslims in France” .
Earlier this year the French national railway SNCF and its baggage-handling subsidiary Itirémia were denounced by the SUD trade union, after black and African employees at the Gare du Nord station were excluded from contact with Israeli president Shimon Peres and his entourage, on the grounds that “they might be Muslim”.
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that an official inquiry into this scandal by the health and safety body CHSCT has concluded not only that SUD’s allegations were accurate but also that these discriminatory practices continue, and are not restricted to the SNCF.
“In light of the evidence gathered during the inquiry … we can say there are strong grounds for believing that discrimination of a racial and religious character was carried out by management”, the inquiry’s report states. It adds: “We find that contrary to statements by management these practices are not isolated and have become common.” The report also questions whether it was only local management that was involved in the Gare du Nord case.
The report states: “It is regrettable to see the amalgam that management made with regard to people of the Muslim faith, by treating them as potential terrorists and therefore a danger to society.”
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobe en France has condemned comments by UMP deputy mayor of Nice and former government minister, Christian Estrosi.
Asked whether he agreed with prime minister François Hollande’s statement during a visit to Tunisia that Islam and democracy are compatible, Estrosi replied: “Absolutely not! We can’t claim adherence to secularism everywhere and at the same time say that Islam and democracy are perfectly compatible.”
The Committee against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) says there has been a steady rise in anti-Muslim acts in France in recent years. The CCIF said in its annual report on Wednesday that the number of anti-Muslim acts jumped to 469 cases in 2012 from 298 in 2011, and 188 in 2010.
The report also denounced France’s civil service as “one of the principal vectors of Islamophobia” as it said bureaucrats often over-interpreted official secularist policies to incorrectly reject to serve Muslim women who wear Islamic headscarves.
According to the law, civil servants and girls who attend state schools are banned from wearing headscarves, but adults using a public service are not. However, some French officials refuse to conduct a civil wedding or issue documents if the woman concerned covers her hair, the report said.
The CCIF report added that anti-Muslim acts have increasingly targeted people, especially women, adding that assaults against mosques had approximately doubled in 2012 compared with the year before.
Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration PVV, is hoping to work together with Swedish and Italian nationalist parties as well as Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and the Front National in France, Nos television reports.
Wilders, who has made no secret of his contacts with the Belgian and French nationalists, told Nos he has now had contact with the Eurosceptic Sweden Democrats and will also meet officials from the Lega Nord in Italy.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right Front National, is expected to face charges of incitement to racial hatred in France after the European parliament voted to lift her parliamentary immunity.
The French state prosecutor in Lyon had asked the European parliament to lift Le Pen’s protection from prosecution as an MEP so she could face charges over a speech in 2010 in which she likened Muslim street prayers to the Nazi occupation of France.