In the wake of recent terrorist attacks and with barely a year until France elects a new president, the country is fiercely debating a new law that seeks to rein in Islamic extremism, which critics say only further stigmatizes Muslims.
Activists rallied Feb. 21, 2021 in Paris to demand that the French government abandon a bill aimed at rooting out Islamist extremism that the protesters say could trample on religious freedom and make all Muslims into potential suspects. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
(CN) France’s politics are shifting to the right some worry to the far right in the run-up to next year’s presidential elections and French Muslims are bearing the brunt of this turn as they come under attack as enemies of the nation’s founding republican values.
İslami ayrılıkçılıktan beyaz ayrıcalığına : Fransa da ırkçılığın ayak sesleri » Yeni Balkan yenibalkan.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yenibalkan.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In the course of a few weeks, France, which has the highest proportion of Muslim citizens in Europe, has been subjected, once again, to bloody assassinations by attackers shouting “Allahu Akbar”. The first was the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty, who had been discussing the
Charlie Hebdo cartoons with his class. This was followed two weeks later by the killing of three Christian worshippers inside Notre Dame church in Nice. The Nice attacker cut the throats of Nadine Devilliers, sixty, and sexton Vincent Loques, fifty-five. Simone Barreto Silva was repeatedly stabbed and died of her wounds. These two atrocities were perpetrated by young male immigrants from Chechnya and Tunisia. In a third incident, an Orthodox priest was wounded by a shotgun blast when he was closing his church in Lyon. These three attacks were all symbolic: targeting non-Islamic faith and criticism of Islam.