“I’m extremely worried,” said Chems-eddine Hafiz, rector of the historic Grande Mosquee in Paris. “We are in a society that is divided and looking for itself, a society that is weakened and scared after the pandemic. The fact of the search for a scapegoat – there were precedents to this: in 1930, when the finger began to point to the Jews who became “the problem of an entire society”… Today they are no longer Jews, they are Muslims κα I thought in the 21st century we would be safe from this kind of speech “. Hafiz published a book this month, With all due respect, We Are Children of the Republic, to refute what he called the strong anti-Muslim rhetoric sweeping the French right during the election campaign. With center-right Emmanuel Macron leading the polls and a favorite for re-election next month, some rival candidates have focused on Islam and immigration. The far-right outsider candidate Eric Zemmour, a former television expert convicted of racial hatred, regularly refers to the discredited “big replacement” conspiracy theory, in which he claims that local French people could be replaced by a new Muslim country on the brink of civil war. In a televised interview after announcing his candidacy, Zemmour called on Muslims in France to renounce the practice of their religion. In a televised debate last month, he told a voter that he stood by “rescuing France from Islam” and “replacing” the French. The far-right Marin Lepen, who intends to hold a referendum on immigration and ban the Muslim headscarf in all public places, is seen by opinion polls as the most likely candidate to face Macron in the April 24 final vote. Valérie Pécresse, who is a candidate for Nicolas Sarkozy’s traditional right-wing party, Les Républicains, has been criticized for referring to the big rally replacement theory in Paris. He has vowed to restrict the use of the Muslim headscarf in certain public places, including athletes at sporting events. All the candidates on the right referred to a mood of fear in France after the terrorist attacks of the Islamists in Paris in 2015 and the horror of the beheading of a French secondary school teacher, Samuel Patti, in 2020. Chems-eddine Hafiz outside the Grande Mosquee in Paris in April 2021. Photo: Nicolas Nicolas Messyasz / SIPA / Rex / Shutterstock Hafiz said he was the first to condemn Islamist terrorism and that his mosque was at the heart of work to combat radicalization in France. But he feared that the majority of law-abiding Muslim French citizens would be confused with terrorist attacks, despite the fact that they were often victims of terrorism. “For several years now, in every election in France, some candidates have been talking about the ‘problem’ of Islam, linking Islam to immigration or terrorism,” he told the Guardian. “French Muslims have faced stigma or insults or the view that Islam is incompatible with the rules of the French Republic or the West. But in this election, it is much more serious because there is a candidate who leaves himself completely free and talks about the “big replacement” and who forcefully confirms that Islam and Muslims can not stay in France, that their place is elsewhere. “and if they want to stay in this country, they must no longer practice their religion.” Hafiz said other right-wing candidates appeared to be competing with Zemour in Islam, such as during the Les Républicains’ internal qualifier. He said that despite the French voters’ main concerns being issues such as how to get by, it had become “almost fashionable” for candidates to “criticize Islam and Muslims, see them as undesirable, dangerous or insecure”. . He said: “We are in 2022, we are in the fourth, even fifth, generation of Muslims in France and they are still considered foreigners.” It is estimated that there are between 800,000 and 1 million people who go to mosques or Muslim prayer halls in France. Hafiz said he feared anti-Muslim sentiment could increase after the election. He said other elements of Zemmour’s speech were troubling, including his claim that Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Pétain had saved French Jews instead of helping deport them to death camps. Zemour, the Paris-born son of Jewish Berbers who immigrated from Algeria in the 1950s, responded last week to Hafiz’s call for Muslims to vote in the April election to fight hatred. Zemmour wrote on Twitter: “The rector of the Grande Mosquee in Paris has called for a vote against me. Do you intend to obey him? “ Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist Party candidate who is languishing in the polls, recently visited a mosque in Paris, warning that the presidential candidates were “scapegoats” of Muslims. He said he was extremely concerned about the “hateful” political rhetoric that hurt the “brotherhood” in France.
