WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL Press Release: Faced with the Islamophobic wind sweeping through the country: pull the emergency brake (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The far right is closer than ever to power. All the dams are bursting,

to the point that the Prime Minister can pay tribute to the "fight" of
the neo-fascist collective Némésis. Unbridled state Islamophobia is one
of the fuels of the country's fascisation. Recent weeks have given rise
to astonishing situations, which outline a particularly difficult period
for Muslims and all racialized minorities by the French state. ----
Comedian Merwane Benlazar, invited for his first column on TNT on C à
Vous on January 31, 2025, was dismissed by the Minister of Culture
Rachida Dati after this column, without receiving any support from his
team. The only reason for the dismissal: the indignation of the far
right at seeing a Muslim on television, relayed by the state by means of
its immediate censorship. The process is not new: rapper Médine, singer
Mennel, trade unionist Maryam Pougetoux, and many others had already
been harassed for their simple existence in the media as Arab people,
and their previous statements had already been scrutinized, invented,
distorted, amplified, to justify the relentlessness after the fact.
Nevertheless, the speed with which the Ministry of Culture took up this
affair, transforming Islamophobic barking into a state affair, testifies
to the radicalization and intensification of state racism.

Relay of moral panics, the State is above all a major producer of
Islamophobic policies. On October 28, 2024, France had already been
singled out by the UN working group on discrimination against women and
girls, which had deemed "discriminatory" the ban on the hijab in sports
competitions practiced by certain federations, including football.
However, the bill voted on in the Senate on February 18 with the support
of the government risks extending these discriminations even further, by
transforming them into a legal obligation. In terms of education, a
series of racist laws and decrees, from the 2004 law to the ban on the
Abaya, target Muslims in public schools. On January 6, the Al-Kindi high
school, until then the last private Muslim high school under contract in
France, lost its public funding. Racist exceptional treatment, when many
Catholic establishments, including Bétharram or Stanislas, continue to
enjoy public money despite numerous cases of sexual and LGBTI-phobic
violence within them. At the height of this Islamophobic hatred, the
arson attack on the Jorgeau mosque on the night of Tuesday 25 to
Wednesday 26, a real racist attack that fortunately caused no
casualties. On the subject, total silence from the media.

At the same time, freedom of expression for Muslims is being fiercely
repressed. Imam Noureddine Aoussat, with whom we spoke during the joint
meeting "After July 7, what to do?" on July 7, 2024, was violently
searched at his home because of his support for the Palestinian people.
Abdourrahmane Ridouane, president of the Pessac mosque, was detained for
several months in an Administrative Detention Center and prosecuted for
the same reasons, thereby suffering double punishment with a French
administration seeking by all means to expel him.

These events should not be taken in isolation, nor trivialized. On the
contrary, it is imperative to understand them as a coherent policy,
which consists of systematically attacking all visible manifestations
(real or supposed) of Islam in France. Everywhere, the State and its
fascist relays are attacking Muslim people. The beard, the veil, any
symbol is presented as a civilizational danger, to better justify the
attack on the fundamental rights of Muslims.

To a coherent and systematic racist policy, let us oppose a coherent and
systematic anti-racist policy. It is not enough to react on a
case-by-case basis, when the person or organization targeted by an
Islamophobic attack is close to us. With each Islamophobic harassment,
with each new racist law, with each abusive search, let us stand
alongside those who fight. At the time of the Dreyfus affair, the honor
of the anarchist movement was to understand that their role was to stand
alongside all those who suffer racism, including an army captain accused
of treason by anti-Semitism.

We call for joining all initiatives against new laws, new expulsions,
new racist arrests and dissolutions.  But it is not enough to defend
ourselves: a massive and offensive popular movement against Islamophobia
is urgent. The Libertarian Communist Union will participate in
initiatives aimed at obtaining progress against Islamophobia.

We demand:

- The withdrawal of the 2004 law on the wearing of religious symbols at
school;

- The withdrawal of the 2023 decree banning the wearing of the abaya at
school;

- The withdrawal of the separatism law, passed on Islamophobic grounds
and reducing freedoms of expression and association;

- The withdrawal of all discriminatory regulations against the hijab in
sports competitions, and more generally in public spaces;

- The regularization of all undocumented immigrants, putting an end to
discretionary "case-by-case" regularization policies that promote racist
exceptional treatment.

Libertarian Communist Union, March 1, 2025.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Face-au-vent-islamophobe-qui-traverse-le-pays-tirer-le-frein-d-urgence
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