In Germany, where three million Turks live, more than a million of whom have German nationality, Ankara has been trying for several years to influence elections by calling on voters with dual nationality not to vote for political parties deemed hostile to Turkey’s interests. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s networks are also active in France, although much more discreetly, via the Council for Justice, Equality and Peace (Cojep), which presented – without much success – several candidates in the recent legislative elections.
Summer is just around the corner and the perennial question of the burkini is coming back like a yearly boomerang, just like the Latin beat that should accompany summer people on the beach. However, if musical successes are never predictable, the headlines, comments, condemnations and other resurgences on the legitimacy or banning of this “beachwear”, an extension of the hijab, will certainly be at the heart of the debate.
At a time when Afghan women are deprived of their faces, of work, of school, of going out, doomed by the Taliban to claustration from birth to death, Éric Piolle, the green mayor of Grenoble, has become famous for defending the burkini. A swimming pool chador that would be Islamo-compatible with the French way of life. The mayor brandished different models of the pious fabric before the Council of State, which on 14 June examined the appeal lodged by the municipality of Grenoble after the suspension of the right to burkini by the administrative court.
The perversion of the city, said Plato, begins with the fraud of words. In the case of Islam, we have reached the point in France where words are massacred. If this religion is at the heart of this French presidential election, it is not because of the importance of what Muslim votes could represent in the ballot box, but for other reasons, linked to explosive issues. Why has Islam become a major issue in the election campaign? It is only because of fear or the semblance of fear in the face of the “great replacement”, or in order to refute it. If the right in all its colours has found its Trojan horse in this “great replacement”, the political decline of the left is essentially due to the denial of this situation, which is now at the heart of the political debate in France.
In the electoral campaign for the legislative elections, as in the presidential elections, controversial issues related to Islam (the veil, the burkini, the building of mosques, etc.) are hysterising the political debate. Worse still, like a tree that hides the forest, they overshadow the real issues relating to the fight against Islamism and communitarianism…
When the people point out the real problems, the politicians blithely point their accusing finger!
Thus, in a recent poll conducted during the presidential election campaign (Ifop for Global Watch Analysis), 85% of French people expressed the wish to see the “future president” tackle head-on the rise of Islamism and communitarianism by banning Islamist organisations in France linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafism, the Turkish Milli Görüs and other Tablighs.
The two advertising centers JcDecaux and Insert, which hold a quasi monopoly on the French display advertising market, have just censored a poster campaign intended to promote a book, recently published in Paris, entitled ”The global threat of the Muslim Brotherhood – Report of the US Congress commented by the experts of Global Watch Analysis”.
Beware of polls that seem bent in advance. If there is a lesson to be learned from this French singularity which consists in electing the President of the Republic by universal suffrage, it is this one. These dear ”refractory Gauls” take malicious pleasure in denying predictions, refusing the idea that the media, analysts or polls – these tools for measuring democratic debate, which they moreover love – can ”impose’ ‘ the fatality of an unavoidable electoral scenario.
Issues related to Islam are at the heart of the presidential campaign. In addition to the growing fears caused by the terrorist threat, since the jihadist attacks of 2015, there has been a widespread awareness of the dangers that can arise from communal and separatist excesses.
The French Ministries of Interior and Economy have created a joint working group to better control the financial circuits linked to travel agencies specialising in the sale of tickets and packages for the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
