Category Archives: France

Bardot campaigns against Muslim, Jewish animal slaughter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bardot_poster

Former screen idol Brigitte Bardot and other animal rights activists on Tuesday launched a poster campaign in France to end Jewish and Islamic ritual slaughter of animals.

“I can no longer accept that in order to please a god animals have their throats slit like in the Middle Ages without being stunned beforehand, when we have modern methods to prevent animals suffering,” the 76-year-old Bardot told AFP.

The Brigitte Bardot Foundation and six other rights groups are planning to put up more than 2,000 posters across France sporting a picture of a cow’s head and a text denouncing ritual slaughter.

France is home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority, estimated at between five and six million, and to the continent’s biggest Jewish community, believed to number up to 700,000.

AFP, 4 January 2010

Muslims seen as threat in France, Germany

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Four in 10 French and German people see Muslims living in their country as a “threat”, according to a poll published on Tuesday by French newspaper Le Monde.

Forty-two percent of French people and 40% of Germans questioned by pollster Ifop said they considered the presence of a Muslim community in their country “a threat” to their national identity, Le Monde said. The findings of the study “go beyond linking immigration with security or immigration with unemployment, to linking Islam with a threat to identity”, said Jerome Fourquet of Ifop, quoted by Le Monde.

Of the sample of people questioned for the survey in early December, 68% in France and 75% in Germany said they considered Muslims “not well integrated in society”. Out of these, 61% of French and 67% of Germans blamed this perceived failure on “refusal” by Muslims to integrate. Eighteen percent of those who said Muslims were not integrated in France and 15% in Germany blamed it on “racism and lack of openness by certain French and German people”.

AFP, 4 January 2011

Sarkozy panders to racism again, backs Marine Le Pen over Muslim prayers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nicolas Sarkozy will take another lurch to the Right with a speech on New Year’s Eve calling Muslim prayers in the street “unacceptable”.

After his expulsions of gypsies and a crackdown on immigrant crime, the French President will warn that the overflow of Muslim faithful on to the streets at prayer time when mosques are packed to capacity risks undermining the French secular tradition separating state and religion.

He will doubtless be accused of pandering to the far Right: the issue of Muslim prayers in the street has been brought to the fore by Marine Le Pen, the charismatic new figurehead of the National Front, who compared it to the wartime occupation of France.

Her words provoked uproar on the Left, whose commentators took them as evidence that far from being the gentler face of the far Right, Ms Le Pen, 42, is no different from Jean-Marie, 82, her father, who has been accused of racism and Holocaust denial.

According to his aide, Mr Sarkozy agrees with the junior Le Pen that the street cannot be allowed to become “an extension of the mosque” as it does in some parts of Paris, which are closed to traffic because of the overflow of the faithful.

“People overreacted to Marine Le Pen’s comments,” said the aide, referring to the furore in which she was accused of rabble-rousing racism. “She is right: this phenomenon is unacceptable.”

The Australian, 20 December 2010

Protest against Paris ‘Islamization’ conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Unis face a l'islamophobieAbout 150 people protested Saturday outside the site of a conference in Paris organized to criticize the “Islamization” of Europe.

Protesters held banners reading “United Against Islamophobia” and “Fascists, get out of our neighborhoods.” Socialist Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe had asked police to ban the conference, but police allowed it to go forward under surveillance.

The conference was organized by several French groups, including nationalist political group Bloc Identitaire, that frequently complain about what they see as Islam’s growing influence over traditional French values. Several hundred people attended the conference, which also was broadcast over the Internet.

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The New Anti-Capitalist Party and Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ilham_Moussaid“The majority of the left in France believe that the hijab is an assault on women’s rights. This position quickly moves into the prejudice that Muslim women in France are more oppressed than non-Muslim women, that the experience of women in, say, Saudi Arabia is merely an extreme case of an oppression which is inherent in Islam.

“Muslim and Arab men are then presented as the major source of women’s oppression and contrasted with the progressive white values of Republican France. So opposition to religious practices on the basis of progressive values can easily turn into a thinly disguised form of racism – and often does.”

In an interview with Socialist Alternative, John Mullen of France’s Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste explains the resignation from the NPA of 12 activists, including former NPA candidate Ilham Moussaïd.

French court annuls fine for driver in Muslim veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lies Hebbadj, Sandrine MouleresNANTES, France — A French court has annulled a fine given to a woman driver wearing an Islamic face veil, months before a ban on wearing the garments goes into effect.

Traffic police in the city of Nantes fined 31-year-old Sandrine Mouleres €22  in April, saying she did not have a clear field of vision, but the court quashed the fine Monday.

Jean-Michel Pollono, Mouleres’ attorney, said the court in Nantes had ruled “we are in a free country, and as a result, everything that isn’t forbidden is allowed.”

The initial fine drew widespread attention amid a nationwide debate over the place of Islamic veils. In September, the French parliament agreed to a ban on face-covering veils – such as the niqab or burqa – from being worn in public. The ban goes into effect in spring.

Associated Press, 13 December 2010

French court rules against hijab wearer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Baby LoupA French court has ruled against a woman who sued a private child-care centre that fired her for wearing an Islamic headscarf and cloak to work. The case has become a symbol of the debate over religious freedom in France.

The Baby Loup nursery, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is located in a poor housing project in the town of Chanteloup-les-Vignes, northwest of Paris. Fatima Afif was fired for wearing a hijab, an Islamic headscarf and a full-length dark cloak. It was not the burqa or niqab, which are face-covering veils.

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Marine Le Pen compares Muslims to Nazi occupation forces

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Marine Le Pen and fatherThe daughter of French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was under fire Sunday for comparing Muslims praying in the streets outside overcrowded mosques in France to the Nazi occupation.

Marine Le Pen said Friday at a rally of the anti-immigrant National Front that there were “ten to fifteen” places in France where Muslims worshipped in the streets outside mosques when these were full.

“For those who want to talk a lot about World War II, if it’s about occupation, then we could also talk about it (Muslim prayers in the streets), because that is occupation of territory,” she said at the gathering in Lyon.

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Headscarf wearing candidate walks out on France’s anti-capitalist party

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ilham_Moussaid2Twelve activists from Olivier Besancenot’s New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) have walked out on the party in protest.

“The numerous acts of defiance and hostility against us have become intolerable and it was time to put an end to the stigma and the witch hunt.” This is what twelve activists from Avignon have written in an internal statement to explain their departure from Olivier Besancenot’s Anti-Capitalist Party. Among them is Ilham Moussaïd, the recent regional candidate who wears a headscarf.

Her candidacy caused a split within the party due to her wearing of a headscarf and the ongoing debate regarding the veil. She is a practicing Muslim and identifies herself as a pro-choice feminist.

Since that election, the headscarf issue has remained unresolved. Outvoted in a recent internal vote, the activists chose to leave. “We did not want the next Congress to be confrontational. We want to allow for a calm debate. Some were afraid of us, but we did not want to Islamicize the party,” said Abdul Zahir, who had not previously made a public statement.

His statement alludes to the fact that some other members of the party accuse Ilham Moussaïd and others of seeking to Islamicize the NPA.

“Some people are torn between anti-capitalism and the political representation of Muslims, which is not the NPA project. We are a feminist party, emancipatory and secular. The representation of the party should be too,” argued Pierre-François Grond, member of the national executive.

Ingrid Hayes – a national political board member and open opponent of the headscarf who calls it a “sign of oppression of women” – warned: “We’re not an atheist party. But religion divides rather than unite.

She said the debate is progressing. “Their departure is linked to the debate and turmoil that rocked our organization following the candidacy of Ilham Moussaid – a debate on the question of religion, feminism, secularism. That debate will be decided at the national convention,” she added.

Abdul Zahir regretted “the expectation of a conference (which seems never to happen) to decide if we have our place in this party. This is neither right nor worthy of a mass revolutionary party.”

Islam Today, 28 November 2010