Category Archives: France

Bruno Gollnisch stripped of parliamentary immunity

Posted on by Bob Pitt

France's far-right National Front political executive director Bruno Gollnisch candidate to succeed Jean Marie Le Pen,attends a news conference in LensThe European Parliament stripped parliamentary immunity from French far-right MEP Bruno Gollnisch on Tuesday, to enable a complaint of “incitement to racial hatred” to be investigated.

French authorities will now interview Mr Gollnisch after asking for the move, following a complaint over an October 2008 press release issued by Rhone-Alpes regional authorities near Lyon, which Mr Gollnisch led, that cited “the invasion of our land and the destruction of our culture and values” by Islam.

The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism launched the complaint, and the European Parliament decided that, as the case related to Mr Gollnisch’s activities as a regional councillor, “applying parliamentary immunity to such a situation ‘would constitute an undue extension of those rules'”, a statement said. Lawmakers voted 511 in favour, 56 against and 65 abstentions.

First elected to the European Parliament in 1989, Mr Gollnisch had his immunity lifted in 2005 and was given a three-month suspended jail term and a 5,000-euro (S$8,848) fine in 2005, although an appeal court threw that out in 2009.

AFP, 10 May 2011

French court acquits blogger who was ‘only having some fun’ when burning and urinating on Qur’an

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A French court on Monday acquitted a blogger of a charge of provoking discrimination related to burning a copy of the Qur’an in an internet broadcast and urinating on the book.

The court in the north-eastern city of Strasbourg found that Ernesto Rojas Abbate had been acting within the boundaries of freedom of expression when he used the Qur’an as a prop in a simulation of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York.

Filming himself with a webcam on October 2, Abbate made a paper aircraft with pages from the Qur’an and launched it at two glasses representing the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. He then burnt the aircraft and the book and urinated on them, to “quench the flames”.

The Mosque of Strasbourg and a local anti-racism organisation had pressed charges against the 30-year-old from the town of Bischheim close to Strasbourg. But the court ruled the video was aimed at terrorist acts and not the wider Muslim community, which “could not be assimilated with the terrorist acts”.

The man told the court he had only been having some fun and that he had nothing against Islam. He said he had been responding to a dare following the burning by US pastor Terry Jones of a copy of the Qur’an.

News 24, 9 May 2011

See also Saphir News, 9 May 2011

Muslim mothers protest against French education minister’s demand that they leave hijab at home

Posted on by Bob Pitt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbEn3hF7b_g

Angry Muslim mothers and rights groups in France rally against a controversial proposal that bans Muslim moms from taking part in their children’s extracurricular activities at school.

Protesters chanted slogans against French Education Minister Luc Chatel, who has asked Muslim mothers that want to accompany their children on field trips to leave home their veils, whether they are the version that also covers the face or the simple headscarves.

With chants of “Mothers excluded, children humiliated”, the female demonstrators criticized the French government for what they described as controlling their lives and their children’s education, a Press TV correspondent reported Monday.

In 2004, France banned students from wearing Islamic shawls but the official anti-discrimination body now says the ban applies only to students and not their parents.

There is concern that a vaguely-worded decree would ultimately prevent women that wear the Islamic headdress from even entering the school or lead to humiliations that render them second-class citizens.

The protesters argue that the proposal fuels Islamophobia and flies in the face of women’s rights. “It’s always women they point their finger at. In 2004, it was a young girl who was expelled from school and today it’s their mothers,” said N’della Paye with Feminists for Equality Collective.

The recent development follows efforts by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to pass anti-Muslim laws, including the recent burqa ban, to seek re-election by gaining the support of the National Front, some observers believe.

Most teachers welcome the participation of parents in school activities with open arms. However, many mothers wonder whether the message being conveyed is that Muslims are a bad influence on children.

Press TV, 3 May 2011

French football chiefs accused of setting racial quotas

Posted on by Bob Pitt

French football chiefs were accused Thursday of using secret quotas to limit the number of Black and Arab players in training programmes. French national team coach Laurent Blanc denies allegations that he supported the quotas.

French investigative website Médiapart published a report Thursday that claimed to reveal a system of racial discrimination against young football players in national training programmes. Citing sources from within the French Football Federation (FFF), the website reported that academies had been asked to recruit no more than 30 percent of their players over the age of 12 or 13 from among Blacks or Arabs.

Médiapart says that “numerous” sources told them of a meeting of the FFF’s National Development Programme (DTN) on 8 November 2010, when the secret quota was proposed. According to the same sources, French national team coach Laurent Blanc responded favourably to the proposition, citing Les Bleus’ Spanish counterparts – the current world champions – as a team “that doesn’t have any problems and doesn’t have any Blacks”.

According to Médiapart, this is not the first time players of foreign origin have been discriminated against. The website reports that, in 1997, young North African players had their bags searched by DTN officials, allegedly to check that they were not carrying prayer mats. It also reported accounts of DTN officials referring to Muslim players as Islamists or Saracens.

Blanc has already been accused of courting controversy since taking on the role of French national coach last summer. One of the first things he did as boss was to ban Halal meat from players’ meals.

France 24, 29 April 2011

See also the Guardian, 30 April 2011

Rachid Ghanouchi rejects association of Islam with violence and terrorism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of TunisiaPARIS — A noted Tunisian Islamic thinker urged the world’s Muslims on Monday to reject extremism and restore the true nature of Islam.

Rachid Ghanouchi, a founder of Tunisia’s once-banned Ennahdha, or Renaissance, party, gave the closing speech at an annual Muslim gathering outside Paris in his first visit to France in more than two decades.

Extremism takes root in injustice, but must be fought, he said. “Today, Islam is associated with violence, terrorism … with refusing religious and political diversity, (being) against women’s rights. Today, it is presented as a plague,” Ghanouchi said.

But, he insisted, extremism “isn’t a legitimate child of Islam. … Our challenge is to respond to restore the image of Islam.” He spoke in Arabic through a translator to a crowd of several thousand at the annual meeting of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, which brings together Muslim fundamentalist associations.

Ghanouchi’s Ennahdha party was branded a terrorist group by Tunisia’s autocratic leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was toppled in a monthlong uprising and fled to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14.

Ghanouchi, 69, himself spent two decades in exile in London after being convicted twice of terrorism-related offences. Today, scholars consider him a moderate.

He was the star speaker at the four-day gathering and his speech drew cheers from a crowd that feels unfairly targeted by French authorities enforcing the nation’s secular foundations, including the recent ban on burqa-style veils. Only a tiny minority of Muslims wear them, and few were seen at Monday’s meeting.

Ennahdha, made legal in Tunisia on March 1, is now among more than 50 political parties formed since Ben Ali fled.

Ghanouchi said the Tunisian revolution, which has sparked uprisings in the Arab world, succeeded because values were shared by an entire population, underscoring the importance of social cohesion. The same case applies to Egypt, which ousted President Hosni Mubarak, he said.

On the other hand, “One cannot imagine that an entire people or nation” follows extremist thought, he said, adding that Islam “insists on balance” and “finding the middle path.”

There are abiding concerns that Islamists in Tunisia could undo women’s rights in the North African country or impose a strict Islamic code. However, Ghanouchi insisted that “Islam marries well with democracy” and respect for equality between men and women.

Associated Press, 25 April 2011

Pig’s head thrown at a mosque in Reims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Le Nouvel Observateur reports that a pig’s head was left outside the door of a mosque and Islamic centre in Reims.

Rachid El Haouari, the president of the association that runs the centre, said this was the culmination of increasing acts of Islamophobia that they had suffered since the construction of the mosque began at the end of 2009. These have included insulting emails, letters containing burnt pages of the Qur’an and a poster campaign against the building of a minaret. In November 2010 there was an arson attack on the site of the mosque.

In a statement the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) condemned the desecration suffered by the mosque and Islamic center and expressed its concern at the upsurge of violence and hatred against places of prayer and meditation. It said the number of such attacks had more than doubled in 2010.

Attacks on multiculturalism linked to economic crisis, IRR study finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes today Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalism – a detailed analysis by Executive Director, Liz Fekete, of key speeches made over the past six months by leading centre-right politicians from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.

These speeches attack multiculturalism and immigration and link them to the economic crisis. The IRR finds that:

  • In singling out multiculturalism as a threat to national identity, the leaders of Europe’s centre-right parties are using the same kind of rhetoric and specious arguments as Enoch Powell did forty years ago. Only this time, it is not one rogue European politician carrying the flag, but the leaders of centre-right parties now replacing race and immigration with culture and religion as the watch words.
  • As multiculturalism becomes code for discussing the ‘Muslim problem’, the language, terms and metaphors used by centre-right politicians subtly (and in some cases crudely) convey a sense of national victimhood, of a majority culture under threat from Muslim minorities and new migrants who demand special privileges and group rights and refuse to learn the language.

In Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalismthe IRR warns that:

  • The attacks on multiculturalism are taking place at a time of economic crisis and swingeing cuts, when politicians are desperate to deflect public anger and explain societal break down. The centre Right is establishing a narrative, with some centre-left parties following suit, to justify the biggest round of spending cuts since the 1920s, blaming the current economic crisis not on the bankers and global financial crisis, but on immigration, and on Muslims.
  • As the extreme Right increasingly enters national parliaments, sometimes holding the balance of power, there are dangerous signs that the centre Right is preparing for future power-sharing with the extreme Right, as well as nativist anti-immigration parties. The fact that mainstream politicians are now speaking to the fear and hatred promoted by the extremists’ anti-multicultural platform, is giving legitimacy to conspiracy theories about Muslims and to anti-Muslim hatred.

Read the IRR’s research Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalism here.

IRR press release, 21 April 2011