Category Archives: France

Air France accepts that Muslim women don’t have to remove veils on plane

Posted on by Bob Pitt

French cabin crews have no right to tell Muslim women to remove their burqa aboard Air France flights – despite a nationwide ban on full face veils, the airline has ruled.

Islamic passengers can be ordered to remove the garment while waiting in French airports to board the plane at the gate. But once on board, they are free to put their burqa back on, according to an internal memo to staff from Air France’s legal department.

The company’s lawyers said: “Flight crews on board planes can not ask a person to uncover their face if they are hiding it. The law can only be enforced by police and other public officials on the ground.”

But pilots said they had “no issue” with women wearing burqas during flights – as long as they had been through security checks before the flight. One told French daily Le Figaro:

“As long as burqa-wearers have been checked before getting on board, then I can’t see the problem. Security on board a plane does not have much to do with whether one’s face is visible or not. Besides, on long-haul flights a lot of passengers hide their face with eye masks when they go to sleep.”

Daily Mail, 9 November 2011

Islamophobia in France on the rise

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobia is on the rise in France, according to figures released by the French Muslim umbrella group, CFCM. Attacks and insults perpetrated against Muslims went up 22 per cent in the first nine months of this year, the group says, and it fears that there will be more ahead of next year’s general election.

Citing Interior Ministry figures, the CFCM says that 115 cases were reported to the police between the beginning of January and the end of September. But they are a gross underestimate, according to CFCM president Abdallah Zekri, because victims are often loath to go to the authorities. “We can say that the rise, according to statistics we have, is about 50-55 per cent,” he told a press conference in Paris Thursday.

The figures cover profanation of cemeteries and mosques, physical attacks, insults, provocations and burning or profanation of the Koran.

Zekri called on Interior Minister Claude Guéant to put pressure on the police to “arrest at least some of the people who have committed these acts”, expressing frustration that vandals who attacked cemeteries have not been identified.

RFI, 3 November 2011

French satirical magazine to publish ‘Sharia Hebdo’ issue in protest at Ennahda’s election victory

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Charlie Hebdo Charia en LibyeFrench satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo has named the Prophet Muhammad as “editor-in-chief” for its next issue to mark the electoral victory of Islamist party Ennahda in Tunisia.

It will be renamed Sharia Hebdo, the weekly said in a statement on Monday. The publication’s editor-in-chief and cartoonist Charb said they were not trying to be especially provocative.

Ennahda won the most seats in Tunisia’s October elections and is now trying to form a coalition caretaker government. “To fittingly celebrate the victory of the Islamist Ennahda party in Tunisia… Charlie Hebdo has asked Muhammad to be the special editor-in-chief of its next issue”, the magazine said in a statement. “The prophet of Islam didn’t have to be asked twice and we thank him for it,” the statement said.

The cover of the next issue, which comes out on Wednesday, shows Muhammad saying “100 lashes if you are not dying of laughter”. It will also include an editorial piece by the Prophet entitled Halal Aperitif and a women’s supplement called Madam Sharia.

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French court cancels construction permit for Marseille ‘mega-mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Non a la MosqueeA French court Thursday cancelled a construction permit for a mega-mosque in the southern city of Marseille that had been touted as a potential symbol of Islam’s growing place in France.

The city’s administrative tribunal ruled the project, which had already been under suspension for 18 months, would have to be cancelled because of failures to meet urban-planning requirements.

It raised particular concerns over the project’s failure to finalise a deal for a 450-place parking lot and to reassure planners that the mosque would fit with the urban environment. The tribunal noted “a lack of graphical material permitting the evaluation of the project’s integration with neighbouring buildings, its visual impact and the treatment of access points and land.”

The project was granted a permit in September 2009 but construction was suspended following complaints from local residents and businesses.

The 22-million-euro ($31-million) project would have seen the Grand Mosque, boasting a minaret soaring 25-metres (82-feet) high and room for up to 7,000 worshippers, built in the city’s northern Saint-Louis area. Originally scheduled to open next year, it would have also hosted a Koranic school, library, restaurant and tea room.

Muslim leaders in the Mediterranean city had hailed the approval of the project as a key step in recognising the importance of Marseille’s large Muslim community.

France’s second city is home to an estimated 250,000 Muslims, many of whom flock to makeshift prayer houses in basements, rented rooms and dingy garages to worship.

AFP, 27 October 2011

French court backs private nursery over Islamic headscarf sacking

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Baby LoupA French court has ruled that a private nursery had the right to fire an employee for wearing Islamic head-cover, leading its lawyer to hail an advance for secular forces in the country.

An appeal court in Versailles backed up an earlier ruling by a labour court that the Baby Loup nursery in Mantes-la-Jolie was within its rights to sack Fatima Afif in 2008 for refusing to take off her headscarf.

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French court confirms acquittal of man who burned and urinated on Qur’an

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An appeals court on Tuesday confirmed the acquittal of a Frenchman accused of inciting racial hatred after posting an internet video of himself burning a Koran and then urinating on it.

Ernesto Rojas Abbate was arrested in October 2010 after posting footage of himself wearing a devil mask and tearing pages from the Islamic holy book before setting it on fire and later urinating on it to extinguish the flames.

Prosecutors, who had been seeking a three-month suspended sentence and €1,000 ($1,400) fine, appealed after a court acquitted him in May on charges of inciting racial hatred.

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French court issues first fine over niqab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A French police court on Thursday issued its first fines against two women charged with wearing the full-face covering Islamic niqab.

Police have issued several on-the-spot fines since the ban came into effect in April but these are the first court-issued fines, with the women vowing to appeal their case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.

Hind Ahmas, 32, was ordered to pay a 120-euro fine, while Najate Nait Ali, 36, was fined 80 euros. The court did not order them to take a citizenship course, as had been requested by the prosecutor.

The two women arrived too late to attend the court’s deliberations. One of the women had not been allowed into the court in May because she refused to take off her niqab to show her face.

Yann Gre from the Don’t Touch My Constitution association that is defending the two women who were arrested in May in front of the town hall of Meaux, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Paris, said that they would appeal. If the fines are confirmed by a higher court, they will take their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, he said. “This law forbids women in niqab from leaving their homes and going out in public. It’s a kind of life-sentence to prison,” he said.

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France’s burqa ban: women are ‘effectively under house arrest’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An informed article by Angelique Chrisafis on how the veil ban is playing out in France. So far no judge has handed out a fine, and the law will be challenged in the European Court of Human Rights as soon as a fine is imposed. Meanwhile, the ban has led to a rise in physical asaults on women wearing the niqab.

Guardian, 20 September 2011

Racist slogans found on Muslim graves in French military cemetery

Posted on by Bob Pitt

About 30 Muslim graves have been desecrated in Carcassone, south-west France. A legal inquiry has been launched to find the perpetrators and punish them.

The caretaker of the military cemetery of Saint-Michel de la ville discovered racist and Nazi slogans daubed on the gravestones when he closed up on Saturday.

The graves belonged to Muslims killed fighting for France during World War I and were immediately repainted and restored.

The graffiti were “really racist” and “particularly disgusting”, according to Carcassonne prosecutor Antoine Leroy, who has opened an inquiry into the incident.

RFI, 18 September 2011

See also Ouest France, 18 September 2011

Paris: Muslims banned from praying in the street

Posted on by Bob Pitt

muslim of France pray on the streets of

Praying in the streets of Paris is against the law starting Friday, after the interior minister warned that police will use force if Muslims, and those of any other faith, disobey the new rule to keep the French capital’s public spaces secular.

Claude Guéant said that ban could later be extended to the rest of France, in particular to the Mediterranean cities of Nice and Marseilles, where “the problem persists”. He promised the new legislation would be followed to the letter as it “hurts the sensitivities of many of our fellow citizens”.

“My vigilance will be unflinching for the law to be applied. Praying in the street is not dignified for religious practice and violates the principles of secularism, the minister told Le Figaro newspaper. “All Muslim leaders are in agreement,” he insisted.

In December when Marine Le Pen, then leader-in-waiting of the far-Right National Front, sparked outrage by likening the practice to the Nazi occupation of Paris in the Second World War “without the tanks or soldiers”. She said it was a “political act of fundamentalists”.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s party denounced the comments, but the President called for a debate on Islam and secularism and went on to say that multiculturalism had failed in France. Following the debate, Mr Guéant promised a countrywide ban “within months”, saying the “street is for driving in, not praying”.

Under an agreement signed this week, believers will be able to use the premises of a vast nearby fire station while awaiting the construction of a bigger mosque. “We could go as far as using force if necessary (to impose the ban), but it’s a scenario I don’t believe will happen, as dialogue (with local religious leaders) has born fruit,” he said.

Sheikh Mohamed salah Hamza, in charge of one of the Parisian mosques which regularly overflows, said he would obey the new law, but complained: “We are not cattle” and that he was “not entirely satisfied” with the new location. He said he feared many believers would continue to prefer going to the smaller mosque.

Daily Telegraph, 15 September 2011

See also “Ban on praying on street draws ire of Muslims in France”, Today’s Zaman, 15 September 2011