French Muslim leaders gathered outside the Bataclan concert hall on Sunday to honour the 89 people who died there in the bloodiest attack by jihadi terrorists France has known. They carried white roses, which they laid among the hundreds of candles and bouquets left by members of the public and were accompanied, as a show of inter-faith solidarity, by representatives of the French capital’s Jewish community.
As the group stood at the barriers around the music venue where heavily armed gunmen went on a murderous rampage on Friday night, they broke into a ragged rendition of La Marseillaise.
The message and symbolism was perfectly clear: the four gunmen who stormed the Bataclan, cutting down concertgoers in a hail of bullets then picking survivors off one by one with cold-blooded precision, may have claimed to be killing on behalf of Islamic State, but their actions had nothing to do with Islam.
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| I appreciate the sentiment and hope that it is the case. Now then, if you really want to demonstrate your loyalties, rat out the crazy hard boyz hiding in your midsts in the Parisian suburbs. |
In case anyone – specifically France’s far right and its supporters – were minded to miss it, Hassen Chalghoumi, the imam of Drancy, a Paris suburb, spelled it out.
“Anyone who uses hate speech has no place in France and those places that preach hate are not places of prayer but are those of a sect. After this tragedy and the more than 100 deaths, now is the time to close these places of hate,” Chalghoumi, president of the imams’ conference of France, told the crowd.
Chalghoumi, who says he is the subject of an Islamic State “fatwa” calling for his killing, said: “1.5 million people are hostages of Daesh, 1.5 million people are hostages of these barbarians who are sullying the name of Islam and Muslims. It’s time to say no to this barbarity.”
The flower-laying ceremony, initiated by the Polish-born French Jewish author Marek Halter, came as political analysts warned that Friday’s series of coordinated attacks across Paris could play into the hands of the far-right Front National (FN) just weeks before regional elections.
| Because, silly as it may seem, Ms. Le Pen has been consistent in her message, and voters understand that. |
The FN president, Marine Le Pen, who met France’s president, François Hollande, on Sunday afternoon, has called for a series of measures to combat Islamic extremism. These include stripping those linked to radical Islamist movements of their French nationality and expelling them from France and for the state to “rearm” and wrest back permanent control of its borders, in defiance of Europe and the Schengen agreement.
Le Figaro reported that some insiders at the FN headquarters outside Paris feel the public mood is swinging their way and is reflected in the combative tone adopted by the French government.
“As always, it risks being a lot of words and not much action and we have the impression, for the moment, that they’re saying what the country wants to hear. But there’s a new urgency … people want a complete change of politics,” one FN source told the newspaper.
Laurent Bouvet, a professor of political science at Versailles University, said the fearful atmosphere created by terrorism made the FN’s message seem relevant. “People in Paris tell journalists they are not confusing Islam with terrorism, and that is true, but Paris is not France and that is not necessarily how people outside the city, in FN strongholds like the Nord Pas de Calais or Provence Alps Cote d’Azur, see things. Or how they vote,” he said.
| People throughout France are perfectly willing to recognize the distinction between Islam and terrorism. They also understand that Ms. Le Pen will kill the latter, and distrust the other pols to do the same... |
“Fear, insecurity, questions of nationality, closing borders and cracking down, all this kind of talk can benefit Marine Le Pen.”
Earlier, the imam of Bordeaux, Tarek Oubrou told Le Journal du Dimanche: “From a religious point of view, Islam’s position is very clear: these murders call for a triple condemnation – ethical, legal and theological.
“Ethical because no morality allows for the killing of innocent people, legal because these acts do not respect war as it is decreed in the Muslim tradition and theological because these suicide bombers are convinced they’re going to heaven when they actually risk finding themselves in hell.”
He said that communications from Muslim institutions, however, were not enough: “Muslims must also demonstrate to say ‘stop’ – to say that we don’t accept these actions being done in the name of our religion.”
| And rat out the hard boyz. |
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