A number of French NGOs launched on Friday, November 25, into a diatribe against intellectual Alain Finkielkraut for calling rioters a bunch of “rebels” with Muslim identity.
“Finkielkraut will be sued for inciting hatred,” vowed the chairman of Movement against Racism and for Friendship between People (MRAP), Mouloud Aounit. “There will be no dialogue with racists,” he said in a statement, adding that Finkielkraut and his ilk should know their limits.
Finkielkraut said in an interview with Haaretz last week that the problem with rioters is that they are “blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity.”
“Look, in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is difficult – Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese – and they’re not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character,” he said.
The racist remarks by Finkielkraut further drew vitriol from other French NGOs.
The Audio-Visual Council (Le Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel) urged the France Culture radio to sack Finkielkraut and keep his weekly program from the airwaves.
The Jewish Union for Peace in France also censured the writer, issuing a strongly-worded statement blasting the Finkielkraut’s blatant racism in the interview. The interview’s headline “What Sort of Frenchmen are They?” is a case in point, it said.
SOS Racisme also joined the chorus of condemnation, demanding the intellectual to reconsider his statements hoping that it was just a slip of the tongue.
Senior government officials have frequently said that the recent turmoil has nothing to do with religion. Chief of Interior Intelligence Service Pierre de Bousquet told French RTL channel on Wednesday, November 23, Islam should by no way take the blame for the work of angry youths.
“We must address the roots and real reasons behind the unrest,” he said.
Islam Online, 26 November 2005
Although it was quite clear from Finkielkraut’s Ha’aretz interview that he held deeply racist views, as we’ve already noted his comments on the French riots were significantly milder than the Islamophobic rants we hear from Melanie Phillips.
A multicultural youth association and an anti-racist movement in Belgium have lodged a complaint against the leader of an extreme-right party for his recent comments made in an interview with a Jewish American magazine.
“Declaring takfir on the jihadist leaders is the rhetorical equivalent of fighting terror with terror. The practice of takfir is the hallmark of the most radical, totalitarian fringe of Islamism: the assumption of the right to unilaterally declare a Muslim a non-Muslim and thereby condemn him or her to death (literally or figuratively). Any vision of a liberal or moderate Islamism should reject takfir on principle.”
“I wonder why Prince Charles seeks to big up powerful, theocratic Islam – which already controls so much land and wealth and yet will kill and kill to gain more – and not vulnerable, pluralistic Israel?” Julie Burchill asks.
“… if you try to discuss the Islamic religious and gender apartheid and its dangerous proliferation into Europe and North America (i.e. there have been honor killings in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Jersey City, Toronto, as well as all over Europe and in the Muslim world), this is what will happen to you: If you tell these truths in the Arab and Muslim world, you’ll be beheaded, probably tortured, certainly jailed, exiled if you are lucky…. If you are a North American intellectual, you may not be imprisoned or beheaded but you will be heckled, mocked, and shunned. You might need security in order to speak.”