The World Owes an Apology to Samuel Paty

Last October 16th, a French teacher was beheaded near his school over "Islamophobia" accusations for doing his job by teaching a class on freedom of speech

Shortly after last year's trial of 14 people accused of helping Islamist terrorists kill 12 people and injure 11 others in 2015 as a response to Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, another Islamist attacked the former Paris office of the secularist left-wing magazine on September 25th, wounding two people and failing to set it on fire as he planned. French people and secularists around the world responded to the incident on social media with the hashtag #ToujoursCharlie in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, a magazine that's known in France for being critical of all religions and of both the traditional Catholic far-right and Islamism. #ToujoursCharlie is a continuation of #JeSuisCharlie which started in 2015, the same year that has also known the deadliest terrorism on French soil in modern history leaving 130 people dead by Islamist terrorists during November 2015 Paris attacks.

It is in this context that the French President Macron delivered a long speech one week after the terrorist attack that injured 2 people. In his speech, Macron spoke of separatism in French society and the crisis that Islam is experiencing today all over the world, and he also acknowledged the role of France's colonial past and French responsibility in the ghettoisation of workers of foreign origin. Vowing to crackdown on foreign influence on Islam in France, he presented an "Islam of Enlightenment" as an alternative, and he advocated introducing Islamic philosophers Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Ibn Khaldun in French schools, the two of them being major figures in philosophy who were both attacked by Muslim extremists during their lifetime for their defense of reason and enlightened values. Ibn Rushd is a pioneering defender of freedom of speech who might be more by the side of Charlie Hebdo today than by the side of the Muslim extremists who attack it now and used to attack him as well. Macron also encouraged teaching more Arabic in school and doing research about Islam in higher education for which he promised €10 million in support.

Most of what Macron said was not mentioned by the Islamists who were outraged by his speech, only the part where he stated that Islam is experiencing a crisis today was cherry-picked to present him as an "Islamophobe." We might ask then if it's wrong that Islam is experiencing a crisis when from all the religions in Charlie Hebdo's drawings and writings, only one of them leaves their offices red from blood. Furthermore, France hasn't seen a single year without Islamist terrorism since 2012, and most of the deadly terrorist attacks around the world since 2013 are caused by Islamists with the overwhelming majority of their victims being Muslims themselves. Is it wrong that Islam is experiencing a crisis when the majority of the worst ten countries in the world for women are Islamic countries? And as Egyptian feminist journalist and author Mona Eltahawy points out, their economies alone fail to predict this, countries as rich and stable as Saudi Arabia and countries as poor and unstable as Yemen are almost equally bad for women. Is it wrong that Islam is experiencing a crisis when every single country or region in the world today where homosexuality can be legally punished by death is under Muslim rule? While in Nigeria, this is only the case in some Muslim-majority states and not in the Christian-majority states. Is it wrong that Islam is experiencing a crisis when every single country in the world today where apostasy (being an ex-Muslim), atheism, and blasphemy may be legally punished by death is an Islamic country? Or when the last country in the world to abolish slavery is the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, while it continues to have the highest proportion of people in slavery in the world. And when Mauritanian blogger and abolitionist Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir, who was born into an oppressed caste, criticised the religious basis of slavery, he was sentenced to death for apostasy and blasphemy. His life is now saved thanks to France, where he currently lives in exile.

The outrage over Macron mentioning an obvious fact about the state of Islam in the world today and the attempts to distract people from paying attention to the reality of Islamism in France that has killed hundreds of people there in recent years alone, by focusing on alleged "Islamophobia," that has caused the death of exactly 0 person in France during the same recent years, have created an environment that further encourages Islamism, its narratives and its propaganda, leading to a turning point when a baseless accusation of "Islamophobia" directly led to the brutal death of an innocent human's life. A French schoolgirl lied to her Muslim father by claiming that her teacher asked Muslim students to leave the class while he showed Charlie Hebdo's cartoons, and said that she was suspended from school when she objected. In reality, Samuel Paty, the teacher, was doing his job by teaching a class on free speech, he warned the students before showing a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad and said anyone who thought they might be offended could close their eyes. The schoolgirl on the other hand was suspended the day before the class from school because of repeated absence. Her father organised an online campaign against the teacher emphasising the fact that he showed a Charlie Hebdo's cartoon and accusing him of "Islamophobia." One of the Islamists interested in the campaign got the message very clear by understanding the function of the term "Islamophobia" in a country like France where terms like "Kafir" and "Murtad" can't be used to directly call for the murder of people who bother Islamists. "Islamophobia" can serve the function of a dog whistle for exactly what "Kafir" and "Murtad" imply. The lies and the propaganda were directly linked to the beheading of the middle school teacher near his school in an Islamist terrorist attack.

The reaction of Islamists to the horrible crime was, of course, further crying about "Islamophobia." It was time for "Islamophobia" accusations by Islamists to play a second role after their first role as a terrorist dog whistle, the role of distraction. In Morocco where I'm from, a campaign of boycotting French products organised by Islamists immediately intensified allegedly over Macron "insulting" Islam by stating that it is experiencing a crisis. The cherry-picked part of his speech was presented outside of its context while often directly misquoting him. Bigger attention was paid to his statement after the terrorist attack against Paty when his speech was in fact more than a week before the crime, which shows that it was specifically used by Islamists to distract people from paying attention to the actual victim who was beheaded. Many progressives in Morocco on the other hand, myself included, spent their time exposing Islamist hypocrisy and lies and showing solidarity with France instead of attacking it. This contrast between progressives and Islamists was also seen in other Islamic countries. Leftists and left-leaning liberals in Morocco are very aware of the degree that radicalisation touches our diaspora in Europe and the exploitation of our people by Islamists there. We are aware that Islamism has been used during all of modern Morocco's history either as a far-right tool against the left or, at best, as right-wing, with the recent emergence of "moderate" Islamists in the Maghreb. And the Islamisation of society was used as another strategy, other than direct state persecution of democracy and left-wing activists during the Moroccan Years of Lead, to stop the spread of leftism in Morocco. We understand how Islamism caused the failure of the democratic reforms fought for by the youth-led February 20 Movement during the "Arab Spring," when Islamists exploited the movement for their own goals which are anything but a democracy where human rights are respected. We recognise the hypocrisy in boycotting French products for alleged "Islamophobia" when Muslims there have full equal rights and are legally protected from anti-Muslim discrimination, including anti-Muslim hate speech which is illegal, meanwhile no such campaign of the same scale was ever organised about Chinese products despite the fact there is a severe persecution against Uyghur Muslims in China at the moment of writing this, and many have described the CCP's actions as genocide. Islamist Turkish President Erdogan who was happy to give lectures to France about respecting religion and said Macron needs mental treatment for supposedly having a problem with Muslims is at the same time getting closer to China which is making him now silent about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims. The Islamic theocracy of Iran also remains silent about China's concentration camps, and Saudi Arabia defended them. The Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan who, just like Erdogan, was happy to give lectures to France about "Islamophobia" is silent about what has been described as a genocide in China, and his Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari shared a completely baseless lie about France giving ID numbers specifically to Muslim children and compared Macron to Nazis. The Human Rights Minister of Pakistan is of course more worried about alleged "Islamophobia" in France and spreading lies than the fact that an eight-year-old Hindu child in her country was charged with blasphemy and faced possible death penalty before getting saved by the pressure of the international community, and she doesn't seem very concerned about the minority of Ahmadi Muslims getting death sentences for alleged blasphemy or about ex-Muslims who get the same punishment. It's almost as if Islamists are more concerned about defending their ideology than defending Muslims as human beings. This gets very clear when we consider that a cartoon angers them more than a genocide, and that the majority of the victims of Islamism are Muslims themselves.

The reaction of Islamists to the death of Samuel Paty and their hypocrisy were not at all surprising to me or to any of the MENA progressives I know. What was very surprising and shocking to me was the Anglo-American reaction. The New York Times Magazine reported about the beheading of a French teacher by an Islamist terrorist for teaching freedom of speech under the headline, "French Police Shoot and Kill Man After a Fatal Knife Attack on the Street." The man killed by the police being the Islamist terrorist, making it a completely ridiculous projection of American racism and tensions with the police into a completely different French context. Imagine if mainstream French media reported about the US Capitol attack with "US Police Shoot and Kill a Woman" as the headline referring to the death of pro-Trump insurrectionist Ashli E. Babbitt. Politico published an article with the headline "The Dangerous French Religion of Secularism," almost as if a secularist terrorist beheaded a teacher near his school for teaching Islam and not the exact opposite. Other mainstream US and British media outlets published equally ridiculous articles. Among left-leaning journalists, academics, and PhD holders on Twitter, I saw some wondering why France is making a big deal about a teenager, referring to the Islamist terrorist who is of an adult age, but when American teenager Kyle Rittenhouse was accused of white supremacism, homicide, and attempted homicide for shootings that occurred during the protests of the Jacob Blake shooting by the police, it was allegedly only white supremacists and, at best, conservatives, defending him by "it's just a teenager." The standards seem very different when it's a confirmed Islamist terrorist. I also saw the same left-leaning people sharing the lie that France is giving Muslim children ID numbers, and sharing every Anglo-American ridiculous article about alleged French "Islamophobia." Instead of taking the incident as an opportunity to speak about the issues religious and non-religious minorities, ethnic and racialised minorities, women and LGBTIQ people face inside Islamic countries and communities, or at least showing minimum respect to Samuel Paty and the people who loved him, or minimum solidarity with French people, they took it instead as an opportunity to be useful idiots for Islamists.

It didn't matter that the highest Muslim authorities in France, the Great Mosque of Paris, the Great Mosque of Lyon, the Great Mosque of Saint Denis de la Réunion, the Rally of Muslims in France (RMF), the French Federation of African Islamic Associations of the Antilles and Comoros (FFAIACA), and the Coordination of Muslim Associations of Paris (CAP) have all directly and clearly denounced the manipulation of Muslims, the youth, and the international opinion by Islamists, and denounced the suggestion that Muslims in France are subjected to a policy of state racism or a policy of hatred against Muslims. It didn't matter that the two biggest anti-racist organisations in France have been in the opposite side of Islamist propaganda, LICRA (The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism) denounced the allegations of state racism in France, and SOS Racisme described Charlie Hebdo as anti-racist. It didn't matter that Anne Hidalgo, Socialist Mayor of Paris, denounced any ambiguity from the part of the left in showing solidarity with Samuel Paty, or that it was the President of the Occitanie region from the Socialist Party, Carole Delga, who supported projecting Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the three major religions in France onto two town halls in her region, challenging Islamists and all religious fundamentalists. Instead of listening to French Muslims, French anti-racists, or the French republican left, a large part of the international community has listened instead to a propaganda campaign against France led by Islamists around the world and supported by Anglo-American media.

France is a very diverse country. It is home to the largest diaspora of several of its former colonies, especially Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia from the Maghreb. It is also home to the largest Muslim population in the West, the largest Jewish population in Europe, and the third-largest Jewish population in the world after Israel and the United States. Like all countries in the world, racism exists in French society and it can have very serious consequences, but the number of racist acts in France remains low when compared to most other countries. The majority of racist acts in France are based on religion, police data indicates 1052 anti-Christian, 687 anti-Jewish, and 154 anti-Muslim acts were perpetrated in 2019 despite the fact that the Jewish population in France is much smaller than its Muslim population. In recent years, Islamist terrorist attacks have killed hundreds of French people, while no Muslim in France has died from any anti-Muslim attack. These figures may appear very surprising to many people who use English-speaking media as their source of learning about French politics. It is also true of course that Muslims face discrimination by racist individuals, and can be discriminated against in housing and employment. The law on the other hand is strict against all forms of racism and discrimination, anti-Muslim hate speech is illegal, but not blasphemy against any religion, including Islam, which is considered freedom of speech.

France is also a very secularist country. A recent survey shows that a majority of French people don't believe in God, and it is one of the most institutionally secularist countries in the world with secularism being mentioned directly or indirectly three times in the first article of its constitution. It's true that French secularism, laïcité, is more strict than forms of secularism found in most of the rest of the world, but it does not harm or single out Muslims in anything, and it's the historical result of opposition to Catholic fundamentalism, not Islamism. Hijab is not banned in France no matter how many times you see it repeated by some journalists and on social media. People are generally free to wear any religious signs they want in public or in private, but covering your face publicly is not allowed for security reasons and it applies to anything that covers the face not just to Niqab. Not a single French law about religious signs is applied to Islamic signs without getting applied to Christian and Jewish signs as well. People who work in the public sector in France are expected to respect the secular neutrality of the state they have chosen to work with in its public sector so they can't wear religious signs during their work, this is also true for ideological non-religious signs. In most other countries, the latter is normal, it is not expected from people to be wearing a communist flag in the workplace, but when the same principle is applied to religious signs, it is suddenly considered discrimination and "Islamophobia." One might agree that religions and non-religious ideologies are both ideas and should be treated the same way but object by saying that religious signs also represent ethnic identity. However, while this might be the case with ethnic religions, it's certainly not the case with Islam and Christianity, both of them being universal religions. Most Muslims in France are of Maghrebi origin, Maghrebi people are mostly of Amazigh or "Berber" background, and Amazigh women do not traditionally wear the veil so Hijab is not an issue if the majority of French Muslims are interested in showing their ethnic identity. Even in the case of ethnic religions, there is no legitimate justification for considering it necessary to display one's ethnic identity in the workplace.

French public school is secularist as well. It is considered an opportunity for children to leave what their parents might have enforced on them at home and learn in a secular neutral environment where they can develop their own ideas and beliefs. This is why children do not wear religious signs in school, and this has been the case for a long time, but after getting increasingly challenged by parents of children of immigrant background in recent years, the 2004 law enforcing secular neutrality in public school came to existence, supported by most of the left and the right and opposed at the time by the far-right and Christian fundamentalists because it is applied equally to Muslims and Christians. Despite the fact that this law was opposed by the anti-Muslim far-right, we are told today that it is an "Islamophobic" law.

French diversity and secularism are both worthy of protection, but French diversity can't be protected by attacking egalitarian secularist French values that treat non-religious and religious people equally without giving religious people legal privileges as is normalised in many other countries. The Humanists International's 2019 Freedom of Thought Report gives France the 4th best ranking in the world, while the UK is ranked 132th out of 196 countries. Anglo-Americans should worry more about the state of secularism in Western countries like the UK instead of French secularism that gives full liberty and equality to both religious and non-religious people. French secularism can't be supported by attacking French diversity either, and secularism in itself doesn't do this. The French far-right that is bothered by their country's diversity has repeatedly opposed every secularist law including the recent neutral so-called "Islamophobic" anti-separatism law fighting all religious fundamentalisms, which ironically led some Anglo-American commentators to claim that the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is defending Islam against Macron's government while she was actually bothered by the law's neutrality and the fact that it is applied to Catholics as well. Potential far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour also said that laïcité is not enough and France needs to go back to its Catholic roots and identity. In contrast to Anglo-American countries' obsession with race, and MENA countries' obsession with religion, France is defined by its republican universalism, which rejects reducing people to their origin or religion. It's true that the French anti-racist secularist ideal is far from being a full reality, France continues to officially celebrate Catholic public holidays in what could be seen in contradiction with secularism, while the Alsace-Moselle region still makes an exception for itself in respecting French secularism inside of the Hexagon. France allows an exception for religious people, especially Muslim and Jewish people, in ritual slaughter of animals, and does not give enough protection to children born into Muslim and Jewish families from male circumcision. The traditional Catholic far-right also continues to present a threat to minorities in France. And it is not Islamists who are going to protect French ideals. Secularists, left-wing or otherwise, who care about France's republican universalist values must be against Islamism that tends to represent the far-right of the political spectrum in Islamic countries and feeds the far-right in the rest of the world. Fighting the racist far-right in France can't succeed by defending the same Islamists, in the name of "anti-Islamophobia," who leave French streets red from blood, and will not succeed by attacking French secularism that the traditional French far-right is as happy to attack. There is French secularism on one side, and Islamism alongside the French far-right on the other side. The French Republic, that Samuel Paty died teaching its values, knows what its side is, and you now know the side of the people who were very busy attacking French secularism after the beheading of the teacher in total disrespect of an innocent human being's life and the people who loved him.

France is now having a two-day national homage, including a minute of silence, after a year from the terrorist attack against Paty. Secularist writer Damion Daniels tweeted: "The anniversary of #SamuelPaty's murder was marked with a minute's silence in France today. And a year's silence everywhere else." The world owes an apology to Samuel Paty.