Mérignac is located within the urban area of Bordeaux in southwestern France, and not far from the center of this small city is the Salam Mosque, one of the well-known mosques in the region.
During the usual Friday sermons, the mosque’s organizers try to stay away from the contents that may draw the anger of the authorities, so the sermons revolve around good morals, faith and solidarity, and words stay away from politics except a little, the echoes of the mosques that have been closed still surround everyone here, the last survivors of the closure was a mosque The municipality of Pessac, which entered into a long legal battle that ended with a historic victory over the Minister of the Interior of Macron, who made a great effort to stigmatize the mosque and its pilgrims with terrorism and extremism, in the hope of closing it, before the judiciary did justice to the administration of the mosque.
The "Al-Salam" mosque and other mosques in France are trying to maintain political neutrality. The concept of neutrality here goes beyond supporting one political party at the expense of another to not talking about public policies, even those that concern Muslims.
However, the imam of the mosque departed a little from this neutrality recently when he called, shortly after the Friday prayer and before Tarawih, for Muslims to go to vote in the presidential elections and choose the most appropriate, so that the opponents of the Islamic presence would not reach the throne of government.
The imam meant enemies of Muslims, often Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.
Some worshipers commented that the imam was inviting people to vote for “Jean-Luc Melenchon,” the leader of the radical left-wing, anti-Muslim France party, but no one can be certain what was going on in the same imam towards Emmanuel Macron, the new old French president, who is preparing for the start of a second term. She may not be kind to the Muslim community in France.
Right glove in left hand
Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the radical leftist France Proud party
Before the first round of the French presidential elections, the Muslim community in France began to mobilize to vote for Jean-Luc Melenchon, the candidate of the radical left. His electoral platform was the only one that did not target Muslims, but rather defended them against Macron and the extreme right.
The choice of Jean-Luc Melenchon by 85% of Muslim voters was normal and expected. The Muslim community in France is not looking for a candidate to defend it. Rather, it is satisfied with a candidate who treats it only fairly, and does not differentiate between Muslims and non-Muslims in rights and duties.
However, the desires of the Muslim community were lost after Melenchon failed to reach the second round after falling behind by a small percentage from Marine Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing National Rally, who won the second round ticket with Emmanuel Macron.
This result went back in time to 2017, when the only option for Muslims was Emmanuel Macron, and if the choice was not easy this time, the French president has changed in the past five years, showing right-wing anti-Muslim tendencies.
Macron presented himself in 2017 as a candidate for the voice of reason against fascist currents, and his participation in Hollande's socialist government made him appear as a leftist who expected to have fewer problems with the Muslim community, but what happened in the end is the opposite of what was expected at the time. Macron did not waste time, and soon Work began quickly on a plan that would focus and monitor the Muslim minority by restricting the activities of Islamic civil society;
This made the work of these associations (and under them a number of mosques) almost impossible.
During the first term of Macron, a major campaign was launched to close Islamic centers and mosques in various regions, and the latest figures indicate that there are more than 718 mosques, Islamic centers and independent schools that were finished off after investigations were opened targeting 24,000 Islamic institutions, while the amount of money that the French authorities put in She has about 50 million dollars in her hand. We are talking here about a community that lives in the highest rates of poverty and economic destitution in the country, and finds it very difficult to maintain its projects in light of the large financial deficit.
Hence, Macron's promises to create a more open society were lost amid political calculations.
In France, you will be considered a Nazi or a fascist if you make racist statements and your name is "Jean-Marie Le Pen", but you can come up with the same statements and convince people of them if you have another name, "Nicolas Sarkozy" for example, or "Francois Hollande", And of course Emmanuel Macron.
The latter specifically took advantage of the changes in the political arena in his first term to turn his administration into a hotbed of fascist ideas, as happened with the notorious "Islamic Isolationism Law", which clearly explained the French president's political intentions to clamp down on Muslims.
During the era of the current president, France became a country equipped with an iron legal arsenal to fight the Islamic presence, and Muslim actors became between two options, either complete submission and practice their activities according to France’s doctrine of reading Islam, or restriction and then imprisonment or a fine.
In addition to these laws, the French government has used parallel steps, such as the “Islam of France” document that was imposed on Islamic societies, in addition to the establishment of some Islamic bodies directly affiliated to the Ministry of the Interior, including the “Islam of France” forum.
The change did not stop there. Macron’s period was marked by the prohibition of talking about “Islamophobia”, as the government succumbed to racist ideas that find anti-Islam justification, which motivated the French to view Muslims as a threat to their personal safety and the safety of their society.
Defending Muslims..again
Macron chose Marseille last February to organize the “Mediterranean World” forum. The choice of this city, known for its large Arab communities, was not arbitrary. Macron worked, albeit indirectly, to reconnect the threads of communication with Maghreb Muslim youth because he knows very well that the voices of The Muslim community plays a key role in deciding the electoral race, especially in the second round.
Macron's strategy seemed similar to the one he pursued in 2017, when he pleaded with the Arab community by condemning "France's war crimes in Algeria," and the French president at that time won 90% of the Muslim vote.
The French President does not hide his pride in what he has presented so far in the file of fighting "Islamic isolationism", but he believes that France, which respects itself, cannot prevent the headscarf in the street despite his negative attitude towards it, nor should it prevent Muslims and Jews from eating slaughtered meat according to their Sharia. .
During the electoral dialogue, the French president accused his opponent, Marine Le Pen, of igniting a civil war if she insisted on banning the headscarf if she was elected president, commenting: “What you are trying to do, Mrs. Le Pen, is a betrayal of France, how can you push millions of citizens out of public space? ?".
The head of the Republic on the Move party realized that the overthrow of Marine Le Pen would only be done by working to appear as a real project owner against right-wing extremism, but without risking the loss of the right-wing grassroots base at the same time.
Apparently, Macron invoked his anti-Muslim policies during his first term to reassure the right-wing public without entirely pushing it to vote for the notorious Le Pen family.
As for "Marin", on her part, she showed a kind of kindness and gentleness during her talk about Muslims, stressing on more than one occasion that she would protect Muslims from fundamentalist Islamists, and in this regard her work came to ban the veil, as she considers it an Islamic ideological dress and not a religious dress, excluded from this ban Grandmothers and mothers who have lived their lives wear a scarf that expresses more of their culture and country, not necessarily creed or ideology.
In his latest interviews with a channel famous for publishing "rap" clips, Macron expressed his rejection of the statements of some of his government ministers, especially the Minister of Education, "Jean-Michel Blanquer", who stressed that there is no place for the hijab in French schools, and whose ministerial era was known to open a debate about banning veiled mothers. of accompanying their children to “school outings”.
In this dialogue, the French president expressed an understanding of people's religious convictions, considering that preventing Muslim women from integrating into their children's school lives means removing children from the republic's schools, which means losing a new generation of immigrants' children.
In the same meeting, the French president did not express any regret about his previous statements regarding the "crisis in Islam," considering that the steps he took and considered by many as targeting Islam and Muslims were nothing but an attempt to find a place for this religion in the French space, saying that it was only an explicit recognition. The importance of Islam in French society.
New state question
Marine Le Pen (right) and French President Emmanuel Macron (left) (Reuters)
With Macron and Le Pen reaching the second round, the French president did not find it embarrassing to use the votes of Muslims to win the elections. He did not condemn the departure of the Paris mosque to organize an iftar with the aim of calling for a vote for Macron against Marine Le Pen, the representative of the far right.
The French president was happy, perhaps, watching the clip in which "Shamseddine Hafez", the first man in the Grand Mosque of Paris, calls on Muslims to vote for him and stand up to Le Pen in order to preserve the dignity of Muslim children in the future and to confront hate projects.
The results resulted in 85% of Muslims voting for Macron, and the majority of voters were not convinced of the man's project, especially with regard to defending the Muslim community. Rather, it was an emergency vote to prevent Le Pen's rise, the worst for them.
However, since the French president did not express much regret over the restrictions that Muslims experienced in his first term, observers expect that the wave of "Islamophobia" will continue to rise in France during his second term, as all the objective reasons for it are present and existing, it is very unlikely that some of the policies will change. Macron is the one who is working to pass it within the European Union, taking advantage of France's presidency of the union in the current session.
It is true that there is a clear difference between Macron and Le Pen in the philosophy of governance. The first exploits organized racism to establish the pillars of his rule, while the second dreams of the opposite, exploiting the rule to lay clear racist foundations for the running of society. The choice for Muslims is now limited to more narrowing and narrowing.
In the end, it is not expected that Macron's policies will change despite his promises to open an investigation into the spread of hatred and racism against religions. To continue working on his project to pursue what he calls "Islamic isolationism".
French President Emmanuel Macron (Reuters)
Macron’s plans for the Muslim community are clear to many, then, which prompted Ghaleb Ben Sheikh himself, head of the “Islam of France” Foundation, which is close to the state, and is classified in France as a liberal Muslim compatible with the values of the republic.
To say that Melenchon was a logical choice for Muslims because it is the closest to defending the Muslims' point of view, as is always the case with the left, while other candidates compete to target this community that lives on the margins of society.
In any case, Muslims in France will not be expected to live in an atmosphere of greater freedom. Government policies and biased media coverage have pushed society to alienate Islamic manifestations. The attacks on Muslims have increased for years, and large segments of Muslims are considering emigration abroad as A final solution, not only because of Macron's policies, but because Le Pen's party - too long or too short - is slowly getting closer to power if it stays at the same pace and continues to garner greater numbers of votes in every due.