A recent poll suggests that one-third of French people agree with the ideas of the Front National. What lies behind this apparent normalization of France’s once outcast far-right?
Category Archives: France
France: Anti-Muslim incidents rise for the third consecutive year
Last week the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l’homme (National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, CNCDH) released its annual report on racism, antisemitism and xenophobia in France.
The report found that there was a 30% increase in anti-Muslim incidents in 2012 – 53 acts (up from 38 in 2011) and 148 threats (up from 117) – confirming the trend in 2011 when there was a rise of 34%.
CNCDH president Christine Lazerges argues that while antisemitism is cyclical, anti-Muslim racism is more worrying. “We are dealing with a much more structural phenomenon, as we see an increase for the past three consecutive years,” she states. “Numerically the figures are small, but they show only the visible part of the iceberg.”
Backlash against French ruling upholding headscarf at private nursery school
Backlash is growing in France against a court ruling in favor of a Muslim employee of a private nursery school who was fired after she refused to take her headscarf off. A new poll has found that four-fifths of people in France would back a proposal to ban Muslim headscarves and other visible signs of religion in private companies.
France’s Interior Minister, who is in charge of religions as well as being the top security official, came out against the ruling last week.
In the poll released Monday, 85 percent of respondents opposed the decision, and more than 80 percent said they back a ban in private workplaces and schools. France already bans headscarves and other “ostentatious” signs of religion in public buildings and has outlawed face-covering veils in all.
Associated Press, 25 March 2013
Update: See also ANSAmed, which reports: “Socialists, intellectuals, politicians and humanitarian NGOs signed an online petition launched by Marianne weekly, calling on the government to enact a new, tougher law in defense of secularism, one that will explain with ‘pedagogy and clarity’ where and when the principle of secularism is to be applied. Prominent signatories include philosophers Elisabeth Badinter, Alain Finkielkraut and Jean-Pierre Le Goff, Socialist Party secretary Harlem Desir, and several former ministers.”
Pork-filled envelopes sent to French mosques
Loonwatch draws our attention to an article in Al-Kanz reporting on a series of recent incidents in which French mosques have been mailed envelopes containing pork.
Since the beginning of February, mosques at Meximieux, Mulhouse, Brest, Mandelieu-la-Napoule, Nice and Aubervilliers have all been targeted in this way, in some cases twice.
Al-Kanz notes that while nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the campaign, French fascists have openly advocated this tactic (see illustration above).
Al Kanz has also issued an appeal for other mosques who have been targeted in this way to contact them and the Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France so this latest manifestion of Islamophobia can be exposed.
France: Nursery worker wins court case over hijab sacking
A French creche assistant who was famously fired for refusing to remove her Islamic head-scarf had her dismissal annulled by France’s highest appeals court on Tuesday. The court judged the sacking was “religious discrimination”.
Fatima Afif, a nursery assistant sacked in 2008 by the ‘Baby Loup’ creche for refusing to remove her Muslim headscarf at work, won an appeal against her dismissal on Tuesday.
In delivering their verdict judges at Paris’s ‘Cour de cassation’ – France’s highest appeals court – said her firing “constituted discrimination based on religious convictions and must be declared invalid.”
Frenchman convicted of veil assault
A Frenchman who ripped a Muslim woman’s veil off her face as she strolled in a fairground was Wednesday given a five-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to compensate his victim.
The 30-year-old man, who admitted charges of aggravated assault, had justified the September 2012 attack at the time as an attempt to uphold a controversial law banning women from wearing niqabs, face-covering veils, in public.
That defence was thrown out by public prosecutors, who accused him of acting as a vigilante and carrying out an assault motivated by his victim’s religious faith.
The man, who was not publicly identified on the request of his lawyers, was also convicted of presenting a false identity to police.
The incident in the western city of Nantes was the latest in a series triggered by France’s controversial ban on the wearing of full face veils in public, which came into force in April 2011.
France to ban website documenting police violence against Muslims
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7swHkq4XrXw
Alleging defamation, France’s interior minister Manuel Valls is trying to shut down a website which gives a voice to the victims of police harassment. The site has become especially popular with France’s Muslim population, who often claim that police target, harass and even kill them with impunity.
Manuel Valls’ double standard on religious headwear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hERkZGLl_L4
Via Loonwatch, here is French interior minister Manuel Valls demonstrating the double standard he applies to religious headwear, in a video put together by the Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France.
Mosque in Alsace is sent letter containing ham
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that a mosque at Mulhouse, in Alsace, was the victim of an Islamophobic act earlier this week. Exactly as happened at Meximieux last month, officials at the place of worship were mailed an envelope containing ham.
The CCIF adds that, as was also the case with the Meximieux mosque, this is not the first time that the Mulhouse mosque has been targeted in an act of hatred. About a year ago more than 70 nails were found along the front of the building where worshippers usually park their cars. When Daoui Hanafi, president of the mosque, attempted to file a complaint, the police refused to register it and only agreed to record a statement.
Anti-fascists demonstrate against Marine Le Pen
About 200 people have protested in Cambridge ahead of the French politician Marine Le Pen’s appearance at a university debating society.
The leader of France’s far-right party Front National was invited to speak by the Cambridge Union Society. The society’s president, Ben Kentish, said: “To silence views we might find extreme or abhorrent is a dangerous step in a bad direction.”
The protest has been organised by Unite Against Fascism. Sabby Dhalu, joint secretary from the the anti-fascist group, said it was not against freedom of speech.
“We have to remember the total devastation of the fascist-led World War II, when almost 70m people lost their lives worldwide,” she said. “Those people who lost their lives did so in name of freedom – it’s the fascists who oppose freedom.”
See also Huffington Post, 19 February 2013