Category Archives: France
Suburbs are becoming ‘land of Islam’, says French historian
The French suburbs are in the process of becoming “lands of Islam” and many French Muslims aspire to this, according to historian Alexandre Adler, who is worried about “Muslim self-government against the state” in susceptible neighbourhoods.
According to Alexandre Adler, violence in the suburbs can not be explained only by social problems, but because in his opinion there exists “a conception of the land that belongs to Islam”: “There is within the most traditional interpretation of Muslim doctrine the idea that there exists a land of Islam. Wherever Islam has spread, the people there have accepted that this land henceforth Islamic”, he explained in an interview with France Info.
Marine Le Pen reverts to type with halal claims
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen switched her presidential campaign back to immigration on Sunday, accusing Nicolas Sarkozy of bowing to Muslim pressure over how animals are killed for meat, to try to head off his attempts to poach her supporters.
Le Pen had sought to attract voters by shifting from a traditional emphasis on immigration and French identity to leaving the euro and imposing protectionist barriers, to exploit discontent over the debt crisis in Europe and globalization.
But at a congress of her National Front party in Lille, Le Pen returned to familiar anti-immigration territory, saying she had proof that all meat in Paris was halal. “This situation is deception and the government has been fully aware of it for months,” Le Pen said. “All the abattoirs of the Paris region have succumbed to the rules of a minority. We have reason to be disgusted.”
Le Pen’s aides said she would file a legal complaint on the matter. During her closing speech she said the government was bowing down to “Islamic radicals.”
Update: See “Halal slaughter becomes political issue in France”, Reuters, 21 February 2012
French draft law aims to ban hijab for child minders
The controversy surrounding the Islamic headscarf in France is making headlines again as the French National Assembly studies a draft law that will ban religious symbols in all facilities catering for children, including nannies and childcare assistants looking after children at home.
The draft law was approved by the French Senate with a large majority on Jan. 17 and it was sent to the National Assembly to be ratified before being signed it into law by the president.
French cabinet walks out of parliament over Nazi claim
The French prime minister and his cabinet have stormed out of parliament after an opposition MP accused the rightwing interior minister of flirting with Nazi ideology.
The Socialist Serge Letchimy, from Martinique, questioned the interior minister and close Sarkozy ally, Claude Guéant, over his controversial comments this weekend that “not all civilisations are of equal value”, and his assertion that some civilisations, namely France’s, are worth more than others.
Letchimy said Guéant was “day by day leading us back to these European ideologies that gave birth to concentration camps”. After a loud interruption of protests, he added: “Mr Guéant, the Nazi regime, which was so concerned about purity, was that a civilization?”
In a rare move, the entire French government stormed out of the question-time session.
Not all civilisations equal, French minister says
French Interior Minister Claude Gueant, who also holds the immigration portfolio, caused political uproar by claiming that not all civilisations are equal, with some more advanced than others.
“Contrary to what the left’s relativist ideology says, for us all civilisations are not of equal value,” Gueant on Saturday told a conference in the French parliament building, but closed to the media.
“Those which defend humanity seem to us to be more advanced than those that do not,” he argued in his speech at a meeting organised by a right-wing students group. “Those which defend liberty, equality and fraternity, seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred,” he went on his speech, a copy of which was obtained by AFP. He stressed the need to “protect our civilisation.”
How secularism is used to attack Muslims in France
Front National divided over National Assembly candidate’s racist cartoons
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France draws our attention to the controversy over racist and Islamophobic cartoons posted on the Villeurbanne Front National blog by Stéphane Poncet, who is an FN candidate in the forthcoming elections to the National Assembly.
Marine Le Pen, who is struggling to get the 500 nominations she requires to stand in the presidential election and consequently needs to project a moderate image, has dissociated herself from Poncet, stating that she “deeply regrets” the publication of the drawings on an FN website. The party’s vice-president Louis Aliot has said that disciplinary action will be taken against Poncet.
The CCIF wonders how the FN is in a position to take such action “when Marine Le Pen herself adopts this hatred of Islam and foreigners as a founding principle of her political programme”.
Two more French mosques daubed with racist graffiti
“It seems that not a week goes by without a new mosque desecration”, the Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France observes.
Yesterday a mosque in the Glonnières district of Le Mans was found covered with graffiti reading “Islam out of Europe”, “No Islam” and “France for the French”.
On Saturday a mosque in Miramas was also daubed with Islamophobic slogans along with the name of Front National presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. It was the second time in four months that the mosque had experienced such an attack.
France: far-right graffiti on mosque and pig’s heads left at construction site
Fascist graffiti on the wall of Montigny-en-Ostrevent mosque
Saphir News reports on two Islamophobic attacks in France (see here and here). Fascist graffiti were painted on the wall of a mosque that is under construction in Montigny-en-Ostrevent, and two pig’s heads were left at the site where another mosque is being built in Nanterre.
See also “Islam en France : profanation de la mosquée de Montigny-en-Ostrevent”, AJIB, 19 January 2012
And “2 têtes de cochon à Nanterre”, CCIF, 22 January 2012