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Some of the symposium’s attendance
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By
Hadi Yahmed, IOL Paris Correspondent
PARIS,
November 17 (IslamOnline.net) - French experts and activists in the
field of human rights have warned of the unprecedented escalation of
Islamophobia and racism against the Islamic and Arab community in
France during the past two years.
“Forms
of racism against Muslims have escalated since January 2001 up to
2003; a period covered by the latest report prepared by the
organization I preside over,” said head of the anti-racism movement
organization Mawloud Eweniti on the sidelines of a symposium,
organized Saturday, November 15, in Paris.
Eweniti
told IslamOnline.net that his organization “received 600 racist
messages against Muslims since January 2001; a number never before
recorded in a two-year time.”
“Forms
of racism against Muslims prevailed over most French cities. Molotov
cocktails have sometimes been used against mosques to put them on
fire,” he reiterated.
On
the other hand, Eweniti pointed out that his organization deems that
passing a law that bans Islamic veils in French schools “won’t
solve the problem but rather escalates ethnic conflicts.”
Eweniti
took part in a symposium organized by
the European Social Forum included several other
human organizations and attended by some prominent Muslim figures such
as the Muslim Swiss intellectual Tareq Ramadan.
Ramadan
has confirmed his stance that denounces all forms of racism, whether
Islamophobia or anti-Semitism and said, “Criticizing Israel in
public has got nothing to do with anti-Judaism as much as criticizing
Saudi Arabia has got nothing to do with Anti-Islamic trends.”
“Paying
much attention to the issue of the Islamic veil has become more
important to some people than the problems of social and economic
marginalization which the expatriates undergo in France,” Ramadan
added.
“For
three years, France has been witnessing an escalating wave of
different forms of Islamophobia,” the French academic Fanson Geseir
of Axin Province faculty said in another symposium held Friday,
November 14.
“For
several intellectuals, denouncing Islamophobia is anti-Semitic as much
as denouncing non-Semitism is, for some, anti-Islamic. It is a
misunderstanding of terminology,” he added.
Islamizing
Insults
Geseir
demonstrated that within the wave of Islamophobia there has been a
remarkable phenomenon during the past few years, represented in racist
insults.
In
the 1960s and 1970s, racist insults included “nasty expatriate”,
then developed into “nasty Arab” or “nasty Moroccan”. Today,
insults have been Islamized and a phrase like “nasty Muslim” has
become more common. It is another form of Islamophobia.
Meanwhile,
the French academic said that “church people are more understanding
and tolerant than secular people. This is most apparent in the issue
of Islamic veil, as some secular people encouraged the passing of a
law that bans such a veil in French schools, while the Christian
community has lately denounced such situation.”
On
the sidelines of the symposium in which Geseir took part, the
anti-Islamophobia movement in France (www.islamophobie.net
) disseminated a statement entitled “Islamophobia is
a crime rather than a sheer opinion.”
The
statement has called upon French President Jacques Chirac to consider
Islamophobia as a new form of racism, punishable by law.
The
statement has also demanded the French Premier to sack the editor in
chief of Le Boine magazine, who said in a TV interview,
“Islam includes such trifles that turn me into Islamophobic.”
