Islamophobia Watch

"Brigitte Bardot is facing prison if convicted for a fifth time of inciting racial hatred. Brigitte loves animals and hates Muslims, which is why she sent a petition to the president about halal butchers: 'I've had enough of being led by the nose by this whole population which is destroying us, destroying our country, imposing their ways.' Sarkozy takes a tough line on this sort of abuse. 'When you live in France', he is fond of reminding voters, 'you respect the rules. You don't have lots of wives, you don't circumcise your daughters, and you don't use the bath of your apartment to slaughter sheep in.' The peace prize is in the post, M President."

Fiachra Gibbons in the Guardian Paris Diary, 6 May 2008

When Sylvain Gouguenheim looks at today's historical vision of the history of the West and Islam, he sees a notion, accepted as fact, that the Muslim world was at the source of the Christian Europe's reawakening from the Middle Ages. He sees a portrayal of an enlightened Islam, transmitting westward the knowledge of the ancient Greeks through Arab translators and opening the path in Europe to mathematics, medicine, astronomy and philosophy – a gift the West regards with insufficient esteem.

In a new book, he is basically canceling, or largely writing off, a debt to "the Arabo-Muslim world" dating from the year 750 – a concept built up by other historians over the past 50 years – that has Europe owing Islam for an essential part of its identity. For a controversy, here's a real one. Gouguenheim, a professor of medieval history at a prestigious university, l'École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, is saying "Whoa!" to the idea there was an Islamic bridge of civilization to the West.

Le Figaro and Le Monde, in considering the book in prominent reviews, drank its content in a single gulp. No suspended endorsements or anything that read like a caution.

"Congratulations," Le Figaro wrote. "Mr. Gouguenheim wasn't afraid to remind us that there was a medieval Christian crucible, a fruit of the heritage of Athens and Jerusalem," while "Islam hardly proposed its knowledge to Westerners."

Le Monde was even more receptive: "All in all, and contrary to what's been repeated in a crescendo since the 1960s, European culture in its history and development shouldn't be owing a whole lot to Islam. In any case, nothing essential. Precise and well-argued, this book, which sets history straight, is also a strongly courageous one."

Published less than a month ago, the book is just beginning to encounter learned criticism. Sarcastically, Gabriel Martinez-Gros, a professor of medieval history, and Julien Loiseau, a lecturer, described Gouguenheim as "re-establishing the real hierarchy of civilizations." They said that he disregarded the mathematics and astronomy produced by the Islamic world between the 9th and 13th centuries and painted the period's Islamic civilization exactly what it was not: obscurantist, legalistic, fatalistic and fanatic.

International Herald Tribune, 28 April 3008

The parents of a nine-year old French boy called Islam are to sue a television company for discrimination after it allegedly refused to let him participate in a game show unless he changed his name. Angel Productions told the boy that his name "represented a religion that was not liked in France," according to the parents cited by Le Parisien newspaper.

Islam Alaouchiche had been shortlisted for a place in a youth game show called "In ze boite" (In the box) on Gulli, a children's channel. But when he turned up for the final audition with his parents, who have Algerian nationality, they were told by a casting agent: "There's a problem, your son cannot keep his first name. Being called Islam if you are a boy is like a girl wearing the (Islamic) veil." The woman suggested Islam use "another Arab name" such as Mohammed or Sofiane. But his mother Farah refused.

The family left the premises to return to their home near Paris and never heard from the company again.

Daily Telegraph, 17 April 2008

PARIS — French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.

Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros (12,071 pounds) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts".

Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries. She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000. Prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court she was seeking a tougher sentence than usual, adding: "I am a little tired of prosecuting Mrs Bardot."

French anti-racist groups complained last year about comments Bardot made about the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in a letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy that was later published by her foundation. "I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts," the star of 'And God created woman' and 'Contempt' said.

Bardot has previously said France is being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims and published a book attacking gays, immigrants and the unemployed, in which she also lamented the "Islamisation of France".

Reuters, 15 April 2008

Update:  But Bardot does have her admirers, including the deputy chairman of the British National Party. See Simon Darby's blog, 17 April 2008

Up to 148 Muslim graves in France's World War I cemetery have been desecrated in an incident that has drawn strong condemnation from the country's president. A pig's head was hung from one of the several tombstones targeted by vandals who also wrote slogans insulting France's Muslim justice minister, officials said on Sunday.

Describing Saturday's incident, Jean-Pierre Valensi, the state prosecutor for Arras, said "the slogans directly target Islam and they gravely insult Rachida Dati, the justice minister", who is the daughter of North African immigrants.

The cemetery attack happened almost exactly a year after neo-Nazi vandals scrawled swastikas on 52 of Muslim graves at the same site.

Al Jazeera, 6 April 2008

Public Lecture

FRENCH GENDER EQUALITY AND THE ISLAMIC HEADSCARF

with Professor Joan Scott

Date: Thursday 24th January 2008
Time: 6.30 pm – 8.00 pm
Venue: New Theatre, East Building, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE

Professor Scott takes a critical look at one aspect of the ban on Islamic headscarves enacted in 2005 in France. She will examine 'a clash of gender systems' as a way of trying to understand some of the force of the reaction to Islam there. Joan Wallach Scott is a Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Politics and History at Princeton, NJ. She is author of Gender and the Politics of History and, most recently, The Politics of the Veil. The event will be chaired by Professor Anne Phillips. Free admission and open to all. Entry is on a first come, first served basis.

For more information please contact:
Tel: 020 7955 6043
E-mail: events@lse.ac.uk

Katrin Bennhold reports from Paris on the debate between Tariq Ramadan and Marine Le Pen of the Front National.

International Herald Tribune, 15 January 2008

"'A kind of aggression'. 'successor to the Berlin Wall'. 'lever in the long power struggle between democratic values and fundamentalism'. 'An insult to education'. 'A terrorist operation'. These descriptions – by former French President Jacques Chirac; economist Jacques Attali; and philosophers Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alain Finkielkraut and André Glucksmann – do not refer to the next great menace to human civilization but rather to the Muslim woman's headscarf, which covers the hair and neck, or, as it is known in France, the foulard islamique."

Laila Lalami reviews Joan Wallach Scott's recently published book The Politics of the Veil.

The Nation, 21 November 2007

Diana Johnstone reviews Bernard-Henri Lévy's new book Ce grand cadavre à la renverse. According to BHL there is, Johnstone writes, "a new 'fascist' enemy to combat: 'Islamofascism' or, as he prefers to call it, 'Fascislamism'." This is evidently a fairly broad category, as BHL identifies Fascislamism "even in the relatively moderate positions of Tariq Ramadan, for instance, not to mention veiled women and Muslims who object to cartoons portraying the prophet Mohamed as a terrorist bomber."

Counterpunch, 1 November 2007

Azar Majedi of the Worker Communist Party of Iran is interviewed by the French secularist magaizine Riposte Laïque (translation in Scoop). In response to the question "Que penses-tu du projet de Grande Mosquée du maire de Londres, Ken Livingstone?" Majedi replies: "Je m'y oppose complètement. On n'a pas besoin d'autres mosquées. Il y en a déjà trop."

Too many mosques? Now where have we heard that before? Ah yes, it was here