Foreign Desk Report
PARIS: France has assumed the rotating European Union presidency for the next six months, however, with the country’s anti-radicalism bill having already created an uncomfortable climate for France’s Muslims, experts worry Paris may attempt to impose its anti-Muslim views on the bloc as a whole.
“There are already examples where you can see the interference of the French government on a European level when it comes to the existence of Muslims and Muslim visibility,” Farid Hafez, a visiting professor of International Relations at Williams College and nonresident scholar at Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative told Daily Sabah.
Listing instances of the French government going against the European Commission, Hafez recalled that European Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli was attacked by French ministers for meeting with representatives from a Muslim youth organization that was participating in a campaign organized by the Council of Europe. He also pointed to the civil rights group Alliance Citoyenne, which actively defended Muslim women’s rights but lost its funding.
“Therefore, I think, France will impose its views on Europe. The question is how much other European countries allow the French government to influence how Muslims are seen and positioned in the European Union.”
The French government announced earlier this year that it would step up checks of places of worship and associations suspected of spreading so-called extremist religious propaganda.
The crackdown came after the October 2020 murder of teacher Samuel Paty who was targeted following an online campaign against him for having shown controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during a civics class.
Hafez highlighted that after Paty’s death, France and Austria in particular pushed for the EU to release a harsh statement framing the problem as rooted in Islam. Most EU countries pushed back, he said, explaining that therefore France’s presidency may not directly increase Islamophobic views within the EU.
The attack came in the midst of a heated debate over Macron’s campaign against what he called “Islamist separatism” in immigrant communities, where conservative Muslims are accused of rejecting secularism, free speech and other values taught in school.
“I see that France is one of the most problematic countries when it comes to Islamophobia in Europe,” Hafez said. “France has been one of the harshest governments in the legislation against Muslims, we not only see hijab bans but also after the murder of Paty, the French government used this incident to crack down on the Muslim civil society – raided mosques and even closed anti-racist organizations for nothing else but speaking against Islamophobia.”
According to Interior Ministry figures, since November 2019, 3,881 establishments have been inspected and 126 closed, mostly small businesses but also two schools.
The proposed law and the Cell to Fight Radical Islam program, led by prefects in each region, are just part of a many-layered operation to rout out what authorities call “enemies of the Republic.”
The Interior Ministry said in December that around 100 mosques and Muslim prayer halls out of France’s total number of more than 2,600 have been investigated over recent months because of suspicion that they were spreading “separatist” ideology.
