The attack on the political class. On June 8, 2023, a Syrian refugee attacked the knife of young children in Annecy. Immediate indignation. Then boss of the Republicans (LR), Eric Ciotti summons a press conference to denounce this “terrorist” act. Before backtracking. The suspect, of Christian confession, launched “in the name of Jesus Christ” during his assault. A yellow LR deputy: “When he is a Muslim, we make a press conference, when he is a Christian, we don’t do it!”
Does the right have selective indignation? Bruno Retailleau was pinned for having delayed going to the Gard, where a faithful Muslim was killed on Friday in his mosque. The Minister of the Interior invokes the gray areas of the investigation – the investigators have several avenues of work, the suspect’s lawyer assures that he did not act by hatred of Islam – and brandishes a message published on X as soon as the crime is discovered. Around him, we are annoying the reproaches of the audiovisual media, they who initially covered with shyness this news item.
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Insufficient for the detractors of the Beauvau tenant. Here he is suspected of sorting between the dramas which serve his political agenda. Didn’t he rush into a Nantes college, theater on April 24 of the murder of a teenager, to denounce “the entertainment” of society? This controversy highlights a reluctance of part of political leaders to spontaneously seize acts hostile to Muslims. Their simple qualification-should we use the term “Islamophobia”? – is subject to controversy.
“Fracturing of society”
When he denounces the crime committed in the Gard, the boss of the deputies LR Laurent Wauquiez takes care to add to his denunciation of “Islamophobia” that of “anti-Semitism” and “anti-white racism”. As if the first hatred should be diluted in a larger set in order to remove its singularity. From the condemnation of a crime does not result here any more general and developed remarks on specific discrimination targeting Muslims. Would empathy towards this population be less strong? An executive advisor notes a form of “relativism”: “There is a great fracturing of society, subject to an identity withdrawal. And many French people look at Islam as a foreign body that attacked them.” The political class would only be the reflection of a fragmented opinion, sometimes less sensitive to the victims of anti-Muslim racism than other types of hateful behavior.
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-Sunday, April 27, Place de la République in Paris, the four Parties of the New Popular Front, respected a minute of silence in tribute to Aboubakar C., according to a “rally against Islamophobia”. Jean-Luc Mélenchon wiped a few tears by hugging a crying Muslim woman. Marine Tondelier, dark green jacket, thundered against Bruno Retailleau, “who practices a form of harassment against Muslims”. Olivier Faure, for his part, called to “get out of the quarrel of words, (…) to fight together everything that distinguishes humans and discriminates them according to their religion, their skin color, their gender, their sexuality …” The usual semantic battle between the proponents of the concept of “Islamophobia” and those who prefer to speak of “anti-Muslim racism” seems to have been left.
“Double speech”
The united left nevertheless felt good alone. It denounces the hemiplegia of the right and the center, in terms of anti-racism. “Aurore Bergé Minister of the fight against discrimination has still not reacted to the assassination of Aboubakar. We knew it more reactive and not always wisely …”, was surprised the first of the roses on X, one day before the interested party reacts. The environmentalists, they go so far as to provide for a time of exchange in the assembly with the family of the victim. The observation is bitter: “One of our failures lies in the fact that the whole of the political class and of French society has not been able to come together on this simple watchword: no to discrimination, racism and Islamophobia”, admits Stéphane Troussel, president of the department of Seine-Saint-Denis (PS), which ensures that “the highest authorities of the State should have called to this rally”
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The parties are not at the origin of this rally, but the rebellious France (LFI) called for mobilization. In this fight, the rebellious are a double -sided actor: here, the radical left movement is a vehicle of the struggles against racial discrimination; There, a convenient rejecting for his contemptors. The party is referred to its inadequacies in the fight against anti -Semitism – the few ambiguous declarations of members of rebellious France not pleading in their favor. Mélenchonists are suspected of making anti -racist fight the screen of supposed compromises with Islamism. It is not necessary any more so that Bruno Retailleau and Laurent Wauquiez desert the rally: “I will not demonstrate with rebellious France because I am not fooled by their double speech”, confided the Minister of the Interior on BFMTV.
Confusion of words of orders and flags, the rebellious lends the flank to criticism. “When I hear Jérôme Guedj being called a Zionist accomplice of genocide by proxy of the movement, or a collaborator of deputy LFI call for the constitution of self -defense brigades, I fear that the defense of the minorities of Muslim confession will become something that part of the policies looks from far,” says the socialist senator Patrick Kanner. The inability of the political class to give birth to a consensual doctrine to fight against racism towards Muslims.
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