The Prime Minister, in an interview published this Saturday, May 3, said on the use of the term “Islamophobia”. A word rejected by some after the death of a faithful in a mosque in the Gard.
François Bayrou defended this Saturday, May 3 in the JDD his job of the term “Islamophobic” – disputed by part of the political class – after the murder of a Muslim in a mosque last week.
“We must have the courage to say things as they are,” said the Prime Minister in an interview published on Saturday evening on the website of the Sunday Journal (JDD).
“To refuse a word because we do not want to look in front of the face is an attitude that I have already encountered in my political life. Here, the facts are clear: a 22-year-old boy, murdered in a mosque while he prayed. And his aggressor films his death while uttering insults against Allah. So I ask the question: if it is not hate directed against Islam, what is it?
“I see the detestation of Muslims and Islam, the detestation of Jews and Judaism. And the detestation of Christians. With crimes in the three cases,” he said. This term is practically not used by the right, which disputes it.
Murder in a Gard mosque: after the suspect’s arrest, the mystery around his motivations
-“There is an ideological connotation of the term ‘Islamophobia’ very marked with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood, who means that in our ministry, we take the precaution not to use it,” explained the Minister of the Interior and Potential Future Patron of the Party Les Républicains Bruno Retailleau after the murder of Aboubakar Cissé in the Gard.
The left divided on the use of the term
A large part of the left used it, but that was not the case a few years ago. “Admittedly, ‘Islamophobic’ is a word that we do not like. Admittedly, we prefer to fight the ‘hatred of Muslims’. But the question posed today is not at all that of the right or not to criticize a religion,” wrote Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2019.
At the time, the left was decreasing on the need to participate or not in a walk “against Islamophobia” organized by the collective against Islamophobia in France, dissolved since because accused of links with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Insoumis now use this word very largely. “Let those who try to drown the subject against a backdrop of semantic acrobatics wake up,” castigated MEP Rima Hassan in the week.
In 2021, the socialist deputy Jérôme Guedj explained to challenge this term which he considered as a “eminently political and pernicious concept”.
“The political battle always begins with the battle of words. This word allows them to increase the dispute of secular laws,” he said then. Its use is still not widespread everywhere on the left. The boss of the French Communist Party Fabien Roussel thus prefers the term “anti-muslim hatred”.
