College and bookstore closed, no more slaughterhouse for Eid, unease sets in among Muslims in Nice

For several months, the Muslim community of Nice has been shaken by political speeches and pressure from the administration. This Sunday marks the Eid festival, a complicated celebration to organize because there is no longer a slaughterhouse in the Alpes-Maritimes.

Eid el-Kebir celebrated this Sunday has a bitter taste. For the 20,000 Muslims in Nice, impossible to carry out ritual slaughter in the Alpes-Maritimes. The last approved site in the department for sacrifice was pinned down by the courts. More than 600 sheep and 45 cattle were seized there at the end of May. By comparison, five sites are approved in neighboring Var. Result: in Nice, many families have decided to send the sacrifice money abroad.

Those who can have gone to the neighboring department, more than 60 kilometers away, or an hour’s drive, to slaughter the sheep as tradition dictates. Some families have decided to send the sacrifice money abroad.

A community shaken up in recent months by political speeches and incessant pressure from the administration.“It seems like we’re not full citizens.”explains Imam Otmane Aissaoui, president of the Union of Muslims of the Alpes-Maritimes (Umam), denouncing “Islamophobic acts” in high schools or universities, “Women wearing headscarves are viewed negatively, unexpected checks in mosques… We feel it more here than elsewhere.”

The discomfort is not new. Islam has regularly been a campaign theme politics locally. The attacks of July 14, 2016, the trial of which was held in Paris and Nice via a broadcast room, then the Notre-Dame basilica in 2020, provoked reactions of hatred which targeted even the relatives of the Muslims killed on the Promenade des Anglais. With the arrival in September of prefect Hugues Moutouh, then the repercussions of the Hamas attack on October 7 and the Israeli response in the Gaza Strip, the situation has become tense.

While Mayor Christian Estrosi (Horizons) flew the Israeli flag on the pediment of the town hall, the prefect banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations, arguing that the department was “in the top three” regarding anti-Semitic acts.

But these bans were overturned each time by the administrative court. They don’t have ceased only in January.

Then, in February, the prefect of Alpes-Maritimes ordered the temporary closure of a small bookstore Muslim, criticizing the presence of fundamentalist books. A decree also challenged by the administrative court. Because the books in question are also on sale in mainstream bookstores.

Evoking a great lack of understanding, the manager invited the prefect to drink the tea in her shop, where she has been selling scarves, abayas, prayer rugs and books on spirituality for two decades. But she never received a response from the prefect, who had made himself known in his previous post in Hérault by an order prohibiting demonstrators from using “portable sound devices”, that is to say pots and pans.

The absence of dialogue also dominated the crisis around the Avicenna college, an establishment Muslim outside of contract welcoming around a hundred students in the sensitive Ariane district, whose prefect ordered the closure in March, at the request of the Ministry of National Education.

The quality of teaching was not in question, especially since the students shine for the certificate then in public high schools. But Avicenna fumbled to meet the requirements of the law against separatism in terms of transparency on the origin of its financing.

Here too, the administrative court ruled in summary proceedings that the errors noted in the establishment’s accounting did not justify the closure, in terms leaving little suspense as to the decision on the merits, expected at the end of June.

Paradoxically, the college has seen its applications double and will create a class additional in September. But its director, Idir Arab, keeps “a feeling of injustice” And “relentlessly”. He protests: “You have a small project that’s working in a neighborhood where everything is collapsing, why go and close it?” The college, where the teachers are of all faiths and the clothing very diverse, has been asking in vain for years to be put under contract. “They talk about separatism, but it is we who suffer from this separatism,” regrets Idir Arab, also hurt by the unreserved condemnation of the college by Christian Estrosi.

In this context, the mayor of Nice’s proposal to religious associations to rent once again the vast hall of the Nikaïa palace for the end of Ramadan last April, less than 48 hours before the celebration, remained a dead letter.

Contacted by AFP, Christian Estrosi did not respond and Hugues Moutouh did not could not respond due to electoral reservation.

(with AFP)