The French Muslim Council (CFCM) urged the government on Monday to ban a far-right group that occupied a mosque on Saturday and issued a “declaration of war” against what it called the Islamization of France.
CFCM President Mohammed Moussaoui said the Council also wanted better protection for mosques and Muslim cemeteries against racist attacks, which he said jumped sharply in 2011 and continued to rise this year.
VIERZON, France — When the Rev. Alain Krauth preached to his dwindling flock at Mass last Sunday, the subject was real estate. But it was also Christian charity, tolerance and, indirectly, the gnawing malaise in France over an increasingly visible Muslim minority.
Dozens of far right extremists stormed atop an unfinished mosque in western France on Saturday to show their hostility toward it and denounce immigration that has brought millions of Muslims into the country, a regional official said.
About 70 protesters traveled from around France for Saturday morning’s demonstration in the city of Poitiers, which has symbolic meaning as the place where a French medieval ruler once drove away Arab invaders, regional prefect Yves Dassonville said by phone. After police arrived, the protesters dispersed without resistance – and three were detained to face accusations of “incitement of racial hatred” and damage to property, he said.
A Roman Catholic cardinal has caused an uproar at the Vatican by screening a spurious YouTube video that makes alarmist predictions about the growth of Islam in Europe.
The seven-minute clip, called “Muslim Demographics,” was the talk of an international gathering of bishops on Monday, two days after Cardinal Peter Turkson screened it during a free discussion period.
CCIF member distributes pain au chocolat in Paris
First Cornish pasties shook Westminster, now Paris faces its own baked-goods political storm after the humble pain au chocolat was hijacked by rightwing politics.
It began at a rally on the Côte d’Azur this weekend when the hardline Jean-François Copé, fighting a tough race to take over Nicolas Sarkozy’s rightwing UMP party, served a pastry-related anecdote that has been repeating on him ever since.
Having already complained of what he called “anti-white racism” on French estates, Copé said he identified with “exasperated” parents who, after a hard day’s work, got home to find their child had had his pain au chocolat “snatched” from him outside the school gates by “thugs” who said: “There must be no eating during Ramadan.” He then tweeted: “There are neighbourhoods in France where children can’t eat their pain au chocolat because it’s Ramadan.”
Last month stickers produced by the far-right movements Terre et Peuple and Oeuvre Française were stuck on the walls of the mosque at Muret on the outskirts of Toulouse. One of them featured the slogan “In the face of invasion, resistance and reconquest” and another “France for the French”, while a third sticker warned that the white race faces extinction because only two per cent of white women are of childbearing age. Over the following days individuals drove at full speed past the mosque shouting “France for the French. Go home.”
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that a halal butchers in the Les Minimes area of Toulouse has been gutted by fire. The outbreak of the fire was accompanied by an explosion and press reports indicate that there is no doubt it was arson. CCIF points out that the fire follows graffiti attacks on halal butchers in Chalon-sur-Saône and Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Around 50 women gathered Saturday afternoon outside the city hall at Rennes to denounce the Islamophobic discrimination faced by veiled women. The collective, made up of Muslims and non-Muslims, women veiled and non-veiled, sought by this action to call on public opinion to combat prejudice.
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that last night vandals sprayed Nazi graffiti on a halal butcher’s shop in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in north-central France. The CCIF notes that last year the municipal council broke off negotiations over the sale of public land to an association that planned to build an Islamic cultural centre there, following an Islamophobic campaign.
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that last Thursday night a halal butchers at Chalon-sur-Saône in eastern France was defaced with Islamophobic graffiti. When the owners went to the police to file a complaint on Friday morning they found that other businesses had been similarly targeted.