In France, the Muslim community under pressure

n manifest against the "new anti-Semitism" fueled by "Islamist radicalism" published in Le Parisien-Aujourd'hui en France Sunday, April 22 is far from consensus.

Written by Philippe Val (former editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo) and signed by more than 250 personalities (among them three former Prime Ministers, a former President of the Republic, intellectuals, businessmen or actors), the text demands that "the verses of the Qur'an calling for the murder and punishment of Jews, Christians and unbelievers be decreed by theological authorities, as were the inconsistencies of the Bible and the Catholic anti-Semite abolished by Vatican II, so that no believer can rely on a sacred text to commit a crime. "
"The electoral baseness calculates that the Muslim vote is ten times higher than the Jewish vote"
According to the text, "French Jews are 25 times more likely to be attacked than their fellow Muslims" and "10% of Jewish citizens in Ile-de-France - that is to say, about 50,000 people - have recently forced to move because they were no longer safe in some cities and because their children could no longer attend the school of the Republic. "

A silence of the authorities that the authors of the manifesto attributes to a political calculation "because the electoral baseness calculates that the Muslim vote is ten times higher than the Jewish vote".

The signatories of the text, however, defend a call to stigmatize Muslims. "We do not call for stigmatization but the insurrection of good will and good will, reforming Muslims, liberal Muslims, enlightened Muslims are obviously in agreement" says essayist Pascal Bruckner on France Inter Monday morning. "Not only do we not stigmatize, but we have a number of imams who have signed with us and who are themselves horrified by what is happening," he insists.

Certainly some Muslim leaders including Hassen Chalghoumi, former imam of Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis), Mohamed Guerroumi, Imam in Nantes, Imam Aliou Gassama signed the text. But others worry about its scope. "To generalize the idea that the Quran calls for murder is madness," said Tareq Oubrou, a great imam of Bordeaux, according to statements reported by Le Figaro. He will publish a sidebar in the newspaper Le Monde, along with other imams, against anti-Semitism and terrorism.
Competition between anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim acts
The CFCM, main forum for dialogue with the Muslim community in France, has not yet responded officially, but is preparing a statement, according to our sources. "It is obvious that the CFCM can not remain unresponsive to this amalgam of Islam and anti-Semitism."
"The current debate over Islam manipulated by some politicians and media personalities is nauseating and deadly. It's time for them to pull themselves together and stop blaming Islam and Muslims for all their ills, "said Abdallah Zekri, president of the National Observatory against Islamophobia and general delegate of the CFCM in a statement. . The Paris mosque also reacted to this forum, denouncing Monday an "unfair and delusional trial".

Asked Monday morning on C News, CFCM's former president, Anouar Kbibech, believes that the initiative to draw attention to anti-Semitism is "laudable" and "understandable" because of the context - "the explosion of "violent anti-Semitic acts" - but he deplores a form of "competition between anti-Semitic acts and anti-Muslim acts".

He is also surprised by the opposition between a Muslim vote and a Jewish vote, and recalls that Muslims in France are first and foremost French citizens. "There are French citizens of Muslim faith who express themselves through all political parties," says Anouar Kbibech.
It is precisely this exclusion whose text is the mark that worries the French journalist, of Jewish confession, Claude Askolovitch. In a lengthy analysis published on the site of Slate Monday, he believes that this forum is a "devastating violence". "As if it were necessary to calibrate Jewish suffering by the yardstick of a supposed Muslim tranquility, and not in the national community; as if it were necessary to oppose the Jew, child of France, to the "Muslim fellow citizen", who is suspected so much of a Muslim and so little fellow citizen? "

"Demanding from the Islam of France that he" leads the way, "the manifesto makes every Muslim responsible for the violence of a few," wrote Claude Askolovitch.

A "Not in my name" bis?
This debate around the collective responsibility of Muslims to speak is not a first. We must remember the slogan "Not in my name" launched in September 2014 and inviting Muslims to display their opposition to the barbaric acts of Daesh on social networks. An operation initiated by the British Active Change Foundation in the United Kingdom, and actually funded by the British Home Office.

The initiative had also divided the opinion: why should it decide or justify itself publicly for acts it does not approve? "Are we asking Catholics to dissociate themselves from pedophile priests? Corinne Torrekens, a researcher at the Germe (Study Group on Ethnicity, Racism, Migration and Exclusion) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2014, protested.

A few days later, the assassination of a Frenchman - mountaineer Hervé Gourdel - in Algeria exports the debate of "Not in my name" in the French press. Muslims are expected to say loud and clear their condemnation. The attacks of Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015, those of November 13, 2015, July 14, 2016 put in turn the Muslims of France in the heart of the debate: they must show their condemnation of these acts at the risk of passing for accomplices.