Posted on 08/12/2005 8:55:05 AM PDT by Pikamax
'Muslims are not cockroaches'
The relative ease with which France deports Islamist clerics accused of inciting hatred or violence is raising alarm in the Muslim community, writes Jon Henley
Thursday August 11, 2005
It may like to call itself proudly the "birthplace of human rights", but when it comes to dealing with Islamist clerics, France is rarely reluctant to set such scruples aside. The country waited only days after the London bombings before summarily expelling its first two radical preachers. It has since sent two more packing and plans to deport a total of some two dozen by the end of this month.
Underlining a longstanding difference in approach between London and Paris, an interior ministry official said France had "no problem whatsoever" in deporting anyone accused of inflaming anti-western feeling - even if they had French citizenship and were formally recognised as preachers by the Muslim community.
The planned arrests and expulsions follow repeated statements by the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, since the July 7 London attacks that France "must and will act against radical preachers capable of influencing the youngest and most weak-minded". Fundamental rights such as freedom of speech, that in Britain have, until very recently, protected the controversial clerics, count for precious little in France when the speech concerned is considered an incitement to hatred or violence.
French commentators have long looked with disbelief at what Islamist preachers were allowed to say publicly in Britain in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks on the US. London rapidly became known as "Londonistan".
France's strongly contrasting approach has been conditioned by the fact that it is, in many respects, a very different country from Britain.
Central to these differences are the importance of the egalitarian Republican tradition and its rejection of multiculturalism; the ingrained expectation of French politicians that the justice system is at their command; the sheer size of France's Muslim community, put at between 5m and 8m out of a total population of 60m; the fact that France had its first taste of Islamist terror several years before 9/11.
Between July and October 1995, Algeria's Armed Islamic Group or GIA carried out a string of bomb attacks, mainly on public transport targets and mainly in Paris, which killed eight people and injured more than 200. The attacks were aimed at punishing France for its support of Algeria's military-backed government in its long war on Islamic insurgents.
Since that campaign, French intelligence has devoted substantial resources to monitoring closely and even infiltrating the more radical elements in the Muslim community.
By and large, police know who pose a threat and where to find them: ahead of the 1998 World Cup in France, dozens of Islamists considered a potential threat were quietly rounded up and placed in preventive detention for the duration of the tournament. Similarly, in the wake of 9/11, French arrests of militants with a possible al-Qaida link were all but instantaneous.
The latest undesirable to be deported since the London bombings was Amar Heraz, described by police as an "Algerian Islamist linked to terrorist networks", who was put on a ferry in Marseille earlier this week. Heraz, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1999 and barred from France for a year, was expelled on the grounds that he had re-entered France illegally.
He was preceded by Reda Ameuroud, a 35-year-old Algerian who was also staying in France illegally and whose speeches at a radical mosque in Paris's 11th arrondissement - described by police as "violent and hate-filled" - prompted the French intelligence services to classify him as an "ideological reference point".
Ameuroud's brother, Abderahmane, 27, was sentenced to seven years in prison and banned from French territory in May after being convicted of giving "logistical support" to two Tunisians who assassinated the Afghan resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massood in 2001.
Another "part-time" imam, Abdelhamid Aissaoui, 41, was expelled from France earlier this month for urging youths to join the jihad or holy war. He had already served a four-year jail term for his role in an attempted 1995 bomb attack on a high-speed TGV train near Lyon by the GIA.
According to the interior ministry, about 1,100 imams have been identified in France and "the vast majority pose no problem at all". Some 50% are regular speakers, 150 preach only occasionally, and the remainder officiate only at Friday prayers. About 30% are Moroccan, 20% Algerian and 15% Turkish.
Those now being targeted are radical imams and ideologists of mainly North African and Turkish origin, based in or around major cities with large Muslim populations like Lyon, Marseille and Paris. French intelligence services consider that about 40 of the country's 1,500 mosques and prayer centres are under the influence of radical ideologies ranging from "classic fundamentalism to violent and hate-filled rhetoric".
Police and ministry officials acknowledge that the greatest threat comes from occasional speakers who often have no formal training and little knowledge of the Qur'an but can exercise great influence over the impressionable youth of France's deprived big-city suburbs. At least seven French nationals are known to have been killed fighting with anti-coalition insurgents in Iraq, and a further 10 are believed to still be there. Several other young French jihadists also died in Afghanistan and fought in Bosnia.
The latest rash of arrests and deportations, however, has prompted the first stirrings of alarm in the moderate Muslim community. "Is it a crime to be a Muslim? If these people haven't killed, I don't know why they're being kicked out," one Algerian in Lyon told French radio. "Muslims are not cockroaches."
France is a weird place.
Islamofascists aspire to reach the level of cockroaches.
"They've been showing backbone on this for awhile. It's just that alot of people who are surprised at this are uninformed and haven't been paying attention."
I'm afraid it's because some people ARE students of history, informed in the long view; This is only a change in the short run of history and thus a SUPRISE to the educated.
"But France has more experience with colonialism and Muslims than we do."
Yes, but the British know how to win against Muslims....
maybe
LOL. That is just too funny. Thanks.
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