French President Emmanuel Macron received the annual Lord Jacobowicz Award from the Conference of European Rabbis (CER), which is given to European heads of state and government who combat anti-Semitism and defend the freedom to practice Judaism. The award ceremony took place on the evening of December 7, with the lighting of the Hanukkah candle in the reception hall of the Palace. Elysee In memory of the Israelis who were killed during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7. One of the ironies of the French contradictions is that the celebration of Hanukkah in the presidential palace preceded by two days the anniversary of the National Day of Secularism, which fell on December 9, while opposition French voices rose, denouncing Macron’s contradiction, to which he responded that presenting a religious gesture or participating in a celebration does not mean a lack of respect for secularism.
Macron had sparked a similar controversy in the country by attending a mass held by Pope Francesco on September 23 in Marseille, where the representative of the “Proud France Party” Bastien Lachaux accused him of mocking secularism and trampling on its principles, and mocking the separation of religion and state, and the neutrality of… The state towards religions, although his government, in the name of these same principles, banned the wearing of the abaya in schools.
France, under the pretext of secularism and defending it, has banned the hijab in its schools since 2004. Not only did it do so, but it also banned female students from wearing the abaya last September, ahead of the new academic year, and banned religious practices in universities in the spring of 2021. Last June, Christian published Estrosi, the mayor of the city of Nice, issued a statement on social media platforms, in which he said that he had received information from the inspector of the city’s academy that there were dangerous actions represented by a number of Muslim students praying in the courtyard of primary schools in the city during their rest period, while the French Minister of Education, Pape Ndiaye, described prayer in schools. This is a dangerous and intolerable matter, because it is an attack on the secularism that governs France, according to his claim.
Macron, who received the Lord Jacobovich Prize for his defense of the freedom to practice the Jewish religion, was the one who pushed the draft “Principles for Promoting Respect for the Values of the Republic,” which was approved by the French Parliament on July 23, 2021 and was initially defined as “Combat Separatist Islam,” which is a law. It specifically targets Muslims and restricts them, almost imposing restrictions on all aspects of their lives, stipulating the imposition of oversight on mosques and the associations responsible for their management, and monitoring the financing of Muslim civil organizations. It also places restrictions on the freedom of families to provide education for their children at home.
The double standards in France’s dealings with issues of Islam and Muslims are blatant and blatant, and it does not require much effort or in-depth research to prove them. In France – which criminalizes anti-Semitism – its president Macron arrogantly supports insulting and mocking the Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, under the pretext of freedom of expression, and then files a complaint against a French billboard owner – named Michel Fleury – because he depicted Macron in August 2021 as Hitler, In protest against coronavirus restrictions in the country. Fleury mocked Macron, saying he defended the cartoons of the Messenger as freedom of expression, but sued him over his satirical images.
Since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, the official French position has sided with Israel in an extreme manner, adopting American propaganda claiming Israel’s right to defend itself. The French President announced his strong condemnation of the attacks on Israel, describing them as terrorist, and Macron expressed his full solidarity with the victims, their families, and those close to them, tweeting in French, English, and Hebrew on the X platform. When he visited Israel two weeks after the Al-Aqsa flood to show solidarity with it, he proposed forming an international coalition against Hamas, similar to the coalition against ISIS (Islamic State) in Iraq and Syria.
France stands firmly in support of minorities in the Middle East. It called for a meeting of the Security Council on March 27, 2015 to discuss the situation of minorities in the Middle East, and then a conference was held in Paris in September of the same year on minorities persecuted in the Middle East by groups. Extremist groups, including ISIS, were attended by about sixty countries and numerous organizations to support and protect minorities.
France, which supports minorities in the East and calls for their protection and their right to political representation, and whose “secular” President Macron recently announced a doubling of the funds allocated to help Christian schools in the Middle East, is restricting its Muslims and persecuting them in a significant and exaggerated manner, interfering in their private lives and controlling their religious affairs. The Muslim minority in France, which constitutes about 10% of the population, is marginalized. French Muslims hardly have any representation in Parliament, even before the legislation of the “Principles for Promoting Respect for the Values of the Republic” and other laws targeting them.
For decades, French people of Arab and Islamic origins felt marginalized and oppressed. In the fall of 2005, violent riots and clashes broke out between the police and young people of immigrant origins, sparked by undeclared policies of discrimination and racism, which were exacerbated by the then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy’s description of them as rabble and scum.
The feeling of persecution and inferior treatment of French people of immigrant origins constantly constitutes a latent tension in the souls waiting for a spark to explode, which is what happened last summer when the French police killed a boy of Algerian origins under the pretext that he refused to stop for them when asked to do so, which sparked acts of violence, sabotage and clashes. Violence between the police and angry crowds of young people of immigrant origins, who feel that they are being treated as third-class citizens.
France’s colonial history is extremely bloody and oppressive, especially in Algeria and the killing, abuse, rape, and burning of cities and villages it did, until the number of Algerian martyrs at its hands reached about 6 million, according to some estimates. This bloody history did not prevent France from resolving its political differences with Erdogan’s Turkey for more than a decade by passing a law criminalizing those who deny the “Armenian genocide,” even though Turkey reiterates its demand for an international investigation into the Armenian issue and says that it has documents that refute the allegations of genocide.
Even more than that, France’s role in Rwanda in modern history has been criminal, bloody, and miserable. In his testimony before a committee formed by Rwanda in 2006 regarding the genocide to which 800,000 people were subjected in 1994, Jacques Bihozagara, who served as Rwanda’s ambassador to Paris, said: France sent soldiers and weapons, trained the killers, and set up barriers to facilitate their mission of exterminating the Tutsis, and then sought to protect them later when it was leading the mission sent by the United Nations and called Operation Turquoise.
French President Macron, who and his country are suffering from political, moral, legislative and legal crises, and within a long context of his ongoing transgressions and abuses against Islam and Muslims, claimed in a speech on October 2, 2020, that Islam is today in crisis everywhere in the Islamic world. As an example of the crises ravaging France, the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence against Children in the Country, which was established in 2021, revealed large and shocking numbers, indicating that about 160,000 children are exposed to incestuous assault annually, and that there are about 5.5 Millions of victims in the country, and the majority of victims are female (9 out of ten), and one out of 4 victims was sexually assaulted when she was under 5 years old. Who is experiencing the crisis, France or Islam? Does fighting Islamic values, such as chastity, the veil, and family values, add a new dimension to France’s moral crises, in addition to its racism and imbalance, with its brutal and bloody colonial history?
