The anti-Muslim decree issued by Donald Trump rightly shocks global public opinion. But we, the French, are sadly accustomed to this Islamophobic logic because it is the one implemented and desired here by the French right-wing parties: deliberate conflation of Islam and Islamism, preferential treatment based on religion in accepting refugees, and a distorted, anti-Muslim understanding of secularism.
The Trump decree banning the entry of nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen) into the United States due to the terrorist threat is, as rightly pointed out by the UN, contrary to human rights. It is an intolerable religious discrimination.
But what Trump is doing is nothing new: he is doing to all Muslims from certain countries what French officials have done to refugees, and what some wish to do to all Muslims.
In fact, the logic defended by Donald Trump and that defended by Eric Ciotti, Christian Estrosi, Laurent Wauquiez, or Marine Le Pen are strictly the same: “ban” Muslims because of the terrorist threat.
When Eric Ciotti condemns the acts of solidarity by Cédric Herrou (a compassionate citizen of the Roya Valley who helps refugees), it’s by applying the same logic as Trump: “Who can say with certainty that among the hundreds of migrants Mr. Herrou boasts of assisting, there isn’t a future terrorist hidden?” (Nice Matin, 30.12.2016).
When several right-wing local politicians, in 2015 and 2016, overly publicize their support for Eastern Christians, choose to welcome only Christian refugees, and thus refuse to welcome Muslim refugees, they are already applying the logic that Trump follows today. After attempts to establish national preference by the FN, the “Republicans” established, in France, amid general indifference, religious preference.
The first, in the French public debate, to publicly declare that jihadists were infiltrating among migrants to oppose the acceptance of refugees was none other than Christian Estrosi, the then mayor of Nice. He has for a long time deliberately conflated Islam and Islamism by claiming that Islam is incompatible with democracy. A forerunner in the process of the radicalization of the French right through a clash of religious identities, he also declared that the “Third World War” was underway between “Islamo-fascism” and “Judeo-Christian civilization.”
If we follow this logic to its end, which involves seeing every Muslim as a potential terrorist, it targets all citizens of the Muslim faith. This is precisely the semantic shift Marine Le Pen has operated by progressively replacing the figure of the immigrant as the scapegoat and main target in her speeches and in the FN’s language elements with that of the Muslim.
At the heart of the logic of Trump, Le Pen, Ciotti, or Estrosi is therefore the conflation of Islam and Islamism and the intolerable suspicion of terrorism cast upon all Muslims.
But, even worse, this conflation was institutionalized under François Hollande’s mandate, by the government of Manuel Valls and by Bernard Cazeneuve, then Minister of the Interior, by wanting to reform Islam in France to fight terrorism. Indeed, making the reform of a religion a tool to combat jihadism cements the guilty association between the followers of this faith and terrorists.
Ban Muslims by preventing them from entering American soil, says Donald Trump. Ban Muslims from our beaches and universities, say, in unison, here, the defenders of a distorted, harsh, discriminatory, and anti-Muslim secularism. Everywhere, the same logic that vindicates those who have long talked about Islamophobia. Everywhere, the same rejection that pushes citizens of the Muslim faith towards community withdrawal. Everywhere, this absurd and counterproductive logic plays into the hands of jihadists.
The current events show us where this logic leads and should serve as a lesson for the upcoming elections. Trump’s “Muslim Ban” is nothing other than the practical application of the policy desired by the French right-wing parties, under their different forms and appellations.
Let us recall, in conclusion, the words of Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, after the terrorist attack on a mosque in Quebec the day before yesterday: “Diversity is our strength.”
by David Nakache, Association Tous Citoyens
