Racist anti-Muslim speech is more than “liberated” in certain media: it is shamefully promoted.

Racist anti-Muslim speech is more than “liberated” in certain media: it is shamefully promoted.

In recent months, Muslims in France have faced an outbreak of hateful and hostile acts: attempts to burn down a mosque with worshipers praying inside, swastika tags, pigs' heads hanging on the walls, Racist remarks, death threats against mosque leaders as well as worshipers and many other infamies which have unfortunately become daily life for Muslims in France.

Racist anti-Muslim speech in certain media is not only “liberated”, it is even shamefully promoted by people with no other competence than that of “hitting” Islam and Muslims. These people, like others wrongly described as Islamologists or anthropologists, often benefit from dazzling media promotion. Attacking Muslims has more than ever become a “profitable business”.

Some media even seem to have a preference for detractors and slayers of Islam and Muslims of “Arab-Muslim origin”. On the other hand, Muslims who practice their religion peacefully and who convey a positive image of it are rarely, if ever, invited.

For many years, some people needed to hide behind the term “Islamism” to cast shame on all Muslims in France. Today, it is clear that political and media figures are now openly and directly attacking Islam and Muslims, and no longer “Islamism”.

This context favors the proliferation of anti-Muslim acts and plunges Muslims in France into a “suffocating atmosphere”. This is what emerges from a survey published today by the newspaper Le Monde. According to this survey, this feeling is now shared by thousands of “well-settled” French men and women of Muslim faith who are increasingly thinking of emigrating.”

This unhealthy atmosphere means that anti-Muslim acts are underestimated. As the Observatory for the Fight against Islamophobia attached to the CFCM has often pointed out, many victims do not file complaints. In fact and by the admission of the Ministry of the Interior, the official figures are well below reality. Without forgetting that no organization with access to certain information is officially responsible for counting it.

They are then minimized and trivialized. Indeed, when they are attacked because of their religious affiliation, Muslims in France do not benefit from the same solidarity as other minorities from our political leaders. They also do not benefit from the same media attention when they are the subject of reprehensible acts which are most often invisible.

The CFCM is not in a perspective of victimization in the face of all these ordeals. But he hears the legitimate concern and growing anguish of Muslims in France.

Its role is also to alert and combat this drift and this anxiety-provoking and nauseating climate worthy of the beginnings of the 1930s.

Finally, the CFCM would like to salute the exemplary attitude of the Muslims of France who, despite all these attacks and in the face of so much adversity, know how to maintain their serenity and dignity.

Paris, April 18, 2024

The French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM)