People pay tribute to Samuel Paty at Saint-Denis, a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, on October 17, 2020
Islamophobia in the country of human rights – Part 7
By Vincent Delbos-Klein*
France saw a spate of terror attacks in recent months that the authorities attributed to Muslim extremists. In an exclusive series, Vincent Delbos-Klein explains what Islamophobia means in a country which is de facto multi-cultural society.
Also read: It is very rare that a film gathers a casting only made of Black or Arab people in France
Trapped between two far-rights
In this context it is easy for the power to marginalise minorities in the name of the fight against islamism. A few days after the murder of the teacher Samuel Paty, a church has been attacked in Nice, another in Avignon and another in Lyon. But after some day, the two last attacks were “downgraded” from “terrorist attack” to “miscellaneous”. Many articles report very scary news about the extreme right wing fields.
On June 2020, a podcast made from an investigation described the burden of a Black policeman surrounded by racist colleagues claiming Nazis sentences including threats of acting out against Muslim, Jewish, LGBT+ and left wing people. For his own protection, this policeman was transferred in another police station. A very few media covered the event and for what I know, the policemen are still policemen.
It is very interesting to observe which words the main media use to describe a violent event whether it comes from a white extreme right wing person or a muslim person. It is also meaningful to observe how much Muslim people and Islamist terrorists are gathered into a same thing. And this leads to the core of what islamophobia is: a constant message addressed to the people, saying : you are with us or you are against us. Just like in the time when antisemitism was led by the state and jewish people with their allies where considered as enemies.
Nowadays the state enemy is “Islamism” but the message is clear : every Muslim and her/his allies (called Islamo-Gauchiste as Jewish-Bolchevist) must prove every time that she or he is “on the right side”. This process came into its climax after the main attacks.
2015 was a particular dark year. After the attack of Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Casher shop in January 2015, a famous meme appeared : “I am Charlie”. Based on the noble intention of a Facebook follower who wanted to be united with the Charlie Hebdo’s team, this message spread in our troubled society and took a new meaning : “Are you with us?”. But for some people, some children especially, saying, “I am Charlie” had a very different meaning. It was tantamount to betraying his own by supporting a newspaper which has repeatedly humiliated minorities, not only by caricaturing the Prophet but also by making fun of the people themselves with racial stereotypes and animalisation process worthy of pre-war antisemitic caricatures. For this reason, some of them said “I am not Charlie” which for some has had serious consequences such as being fired from schools.
So it is with freedom of speech, in France : you are free to think and say what you want if what you want to say is the right (wing) line. If you claim that you are not Charlie or even if you don’t claim that you are Charlie, you might be a terrorist. This real exclusion machine did not stop after 2015. These last days, after the terrible murder of the teacher Samuel Paty, the government opened cases for pupil who disturbed the minute of silence in memory of the teacher, including 10 yers old kids arrested for apology of terrorism. According to a mother, one of these kids just said “I am disappointed for the teacher, but it would have been better that he doesn’t show the caricatures”.
Is confronting children to such a trauma a remedy against terrorism or, on the contrary, a way of cultivating it? The Islamic state seems to have an answer to this question. According to a very well known anti- terrorist judge Marc Trévidic, “they hit democracies hard to attack Muslim populations. In this case, the Muslim population will join them”. (https://www.rtbf.be/info/dossier/explosions-a- brussels-airport/detail_l-invite-de-jeudi-en-prime-l-ancien-juge-antiterroriste-marc-trevidic? id=9256599).
In other words, all the far-right processes that marginalise minorities play the same game as terrorists (who are also kind of far-right movements in their own way). And recently, these far-right processes dramatically increased. The minister of the interior even complained about the halal food department in supermarkets as the beginning of the national troubles (https://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/religion/religion-laicite/gerald-darmanin-declaration-polemique-sur-les-rayons-halal-et-casher-des-supermarches_4150921.html), and a famous Afro- descendant journalist dedicated to the topic of anti-racism was accused of having armed the terrorist who killed the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, for having simply criticised the racist nature of some of their contents.
On this case again, the message is the same : you are with us or against us, submitted to us or targeted by us and if you are Muslim, you will always have to prove that you are not a terrorist.
*Vincent Delbos-Klein is a Paris-based filmmaker and a researcher in sociology
