France: Islamophobic attacks up sharply last year

Anti-Muslim hatred has significantly risen in Europe in general in recent years. Far-right extremism and xenophobia have fueled anti-Muslim hatred in Western countries, where terror attacks by Daesh and al-Qaida as well as a migrant crisis are used as an excuse to legitimize those views.

In France, Islamophobic attacks rose by 54% in 2019, the president of the National Observatory of Islamophobia said. In a written statement, Abdallah Zekri said there were 100 attacks against Muslims in France in 2018 and this rose to 154 in 2019. The attacks mostly occurred in the Ile-de-France, Rhones-Alpes and Paca regions of the country, Zekri said.

Abdallah Zekri, president of the National Observatory of Islamophobia, recently issued a written statement saying the years of misinformation and propaganda spread through international media linked Islam with individual or collective acts of terror, leaving Muslims all over the world in a precarious situation and threatening their existence on the planet.

One of the main reasons behind the rising hate crimes against Muslims has been the wave of terrorist attacks in recent years despite many officials in the French government asking people not to confuse the actions of radicalized individuals with the religion of Islam and turn Muslims into soft-targets for the far-right, white supremacist groups.

A handful of alleged plots involving far-right extremists have made headlines in recent months. In June 2018, 13 people with links to the radical Action des Forces Operationnelles (Operational Forces Action) group were arrested by anti-terrorist police over an alleged plot to attack Muslims. The Guerre de France (War for France) website of the shadowy radical group depicted an apocalyptic battle scene under the Eiffel Tower and claimed to prepare "French citizen-soldiers for combat on national territory." France's TF1 television said the group planned to target radicalized imams after their release from jail, as well as veiled women in the street chosen at random. France registered 72 violent anti-Muslim acts in 2017, up from 67 in 2016.

There have been intermittent attacks on mosques in France since 2007, when 148 Muslim headstones in a national military cemetery near Arras were smeared with anti-Islamic slurs and a pig's head was placed among them. In June 2019, a gunman wounded an imam in a shooting at a mosque in the northwestern city of Brest, but police ruled out a terror motive. In March, workers building a mosque in the small southwestern town of Bergerac found a pig's head and animal blood at the entrance to the site, two weeks after a gunman killed 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, in a shooting spree at two mosques.

But facts have barely mattered to those who hate Muslims simply for their religious identity. As a result, French Muslims are reeling under the threat of radical anti-Muslim forces who over the years have felt emboldened to even take the law in their hands and engage in what can easily qualify as acts of terrorism. Whenever terror groups such as Daesh and al-Qaida carry out attacks anywhere in the West, these anti-Muslim groups find an excuse to inflict violence upon French Muslims.

Macron has said that no one should be stigmatised for wearing the headscarf or veil. Yet his government's efforts to combat extremist violence increasingly look like a cultural assault on Islamic religious practices. France's interior minister, in a speech to the National Assembly, listed conservative religious behaviour, including "regular and ostentatious" praying, growing a beard and declining to exchange kisses with a woman on greeting, as potential signs of radicalisation. A public university outside Paris, Cergy Pontoise, subsequently asked its staff to report students who might be displaying a similar list of indicators of orthodox practice - later apologising following an outcry.

France already has an aggressive regime of measures that overwhelmingly target Muslims, first introduced under the state of emergency that followed the November 2015 Paris attacks, and then passed into law two years ago. Individuals may be assigned to residence, subject to restrictions on their freedom of movement, subject to house searches or dismissed from employment, based largely on secret intelligence information without due process. Speech that is judged to be an "apology for terrorism" can also result in prosecution.

Discrimination against minority communities is not only unlawful, but it is also counterproductive for two reasons. First, repression and discriminatory treatment invariably breed resentment and reaction. And second, relations with affected communities, who are the best allies of the police in the effort to maintain public safety, are damaged.
France needs to regain the battered confidence of its Muslim citizens. And it needs to start by ending this witch-hunt.

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