“Muslim in appearance”: geopolitical researcher Pascal Boniface attracted strong criticism on Sunday by using this expression in commentary on a video concerning the socialist mayor of Saint-Ouen, Karim Bouamrane, who chose not to express on the conflict in the Middle East in a broadcast.
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A rising figure in the PS and member of the wing of the party opposed to the alliance with France Insoumise (LFI), Karim Bouamrane was himself indignant at being described as an “appearing” Muslim.
“After 30 years of commitment to the left, elected to the Republic since 1995, this is how a researcher qualifies me and definitively disqualifies himself. The fight against essentialization continues! Long live the Republic! Long live France!”, wrote on X the mayor of Saint-Ouen, of Moroccan origin and whose name had circulated for Matignon after the legislative elections of July 7.
In the France 2 program “Quelle époque”, Karim Bouamrane deplored the importation into France of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “for electoral purposes”, repeating the criticism made to LFI, in particular during the campaign for the European elections of June 9.
“Honestly, I wonder about this man who I don’t know personally. Is he an example of meritocracy? So well done! Or exploited like an apparently Muslim who does not criticize Netanyahu and therefore benefits from big media promotion,” wrote Pascal Boniface on X.
“The assignment of identity is the opposite of our republican pact.”
Many leaders, most of them socialists or Macronists, reacted to this publication by Pascal Boniface.
“No one should be assigned to a supposed religious or cultural identity. No one should prejudge what a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian or an atheist may think. Even less judge that a position could make him a +Muslim in appearance+,” the first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, protested against X.
The Macronist Minister of European Affairs Benjamin Haddad judged that “the assignment of identity is the opposite of our republican pact”.
Pascal Boniface is the founder and director of the Institute for International and Strategic Research (IRIS), one of the main French centers of reflection on geopolitics. A former member of the Socialist Party, he left it after a controversy linked to the publication of one of his notes in 2001 devoted to the party’s positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Pascal Boniface also called on X on Sunday another socialist elected official from Paris, Lamia el Aaraje, to ask her what she thinks “of the continuation of the bombings on Gaza”. “Would he have done it if my name had been Colette Durand?” she asked.
