This article is published as part of CAGE’s new series of expert essays ‘Perspectives on the War On Terror‘.

The month of September has presented serious challenges to the French Muslim community. Each week has been punctuated with events which, in one way or another, have influenced the daily lives of the entire Muslim community.

First the “Trial of the Century” into the 2015 Bataclan attacks, which began on the 8th of September, was used by some to nurture the idea that Muslims were inherently violent.

Then the government announced the dissolution of an Islamic publishing house, NAWA editions, while the Council of State – the highest French administrative court – validated the 2020 dissolutions of one of the largest Muslim charities and the leading Muslim human rights group in France.

If these events were not enough, the month ended on an even more bitter note. The French Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin gave an appalling interview to Le Figaro on September 28 which requires a closer look.

The unveiling of a State-led persecution

Back in July 2021, CAGE highlighted the infamous ‘Systematic Obstruction’ policy, whose staggering numbers demonstrated the existence of a State-led persecution. As of June 2021, the policy led to the closure of 615 mosques, schools, organizations or businesses run by Muslims, 23,158 controls and €44 million seized by the State. We also stated that the State was willingly covering up its sins, by refusing to actively promote the policy to the public since its beginning in February 2018.

After having silenced the most vocal anti-Islamophobia organisations, the French government faces an almost empty domestic field where it can share the results of its anti-Muslim policy without having to fear the accusation of persecuting an entire minority.

The almost deafening silence which followed the announcements proved the existence of a deep cultural framework of Islamophobia which feeds the State’s policies – and is nurtured in return by them. We should then bear in mind the current presidential race in which Macron’s party will try to seduce part of the right and far-right electorate by demonstrating how he rules Muslims with an iron fist.

This can bolster the President’s chances of being reelected, especially if he faces Eric Zemmour – a French Islamophobic polemist who famously stated that Nazism was not as intolerant as Islâm and who wants to prohibit the use of ‘Muhammad’ as a first name – in the second round of the election.

The Republican psychological warfare

However, another element needs to be highlighted here. In the interview, Darmanin explained very explicitly the overarching spirit of the State policies regarding Muslims:

“We are beginning to spread terror among those who wanted to impose it on us.”

This quote echoes the words Macron pronounced after the infamous Samuel Paty murder in October 2020:

“Fear must change sides. I want Islamists to feel in danger at any time of the day or night.”

Moreover, it also proves how Muslims are perceived by the French state: blind aggressors in the making whose inherent violence is due to a religion “in crisis” – in the words of Macron. The State’s solution is to raise the voice against the perceived threat and secularise, subdue and politically silence the belief system of the imaginary menace.

A totalitarian Republic reinvigorated by propaganda and persecution

The implementation of the ‘Systematic Obstruction’ policy is supervised by an official organ,  the Inter-ministerial committee against Delinquency and Radicalisation. With the advent of the Systematic Obstruction, the committee went through major changes.

A new section was created, the “Republican Counter-Discourse Unit”,  whose task according to the Darmanin interview is to “monitor social networks, flush out the influencers of the “jihadosphere” and prevent their lies and threats from spreading”.

However, when one scrutinises the Twitter account of the organ you will be surprised to discover that the committee functions as a propaganda unit whose function is to whitewash the French State’s Islamophobic persecution framing any form of Muslim critical dissent as a dangerous form of “islamist separatism” which needs to be silenced – and any accusation of State sponsored Islamophobia as “fake news”.

These words, this totalitarian approach which cannot accept any opposition to the Republic, has withstood the test of time. Still, those who are not perceived as sufficiently submitted to the State are deemed aliens and enemies. During the “Terror era”, dissenters were massacred by Robespierre. Closer to our era during the second World War, Vichy France identified the “four confederate States” – an expression coined by far-right French writer Charles Maurras – composed of protestants, jews, free-masons and immigrants as being members of the “Anti-France” front which deserved to be persecuted. Nowadays, a new systematic purge based on Islamophobia, persecution and propaganda gives new life to a State that rediscovers and fully embraces its totalitarian roots. The French cycle of hate, deeply anchored in French history and culture, is nearing a new climax. 

Nowadays, a new systematic purge based on Islamophobia, persecution and propaganda gives new life to a State that rediscovers and fully embraces its totalitarian roots.

A new terror is spreading again, targeting French Muslims. It is time to unveil it at the international level to avoid the terrible and costly mistakes of the past.

Images used courtesy of Flickr/Jacques Paquier