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Keep in mind when reading this that AP and France24, where I found this article, are both mainstream media and, as such, lean well to the left, wokism, and political correctness.
Recent French riots boost support for far right's anti-immigration rhetoric
Widespread riots in France sparked by the police killing of a teenager with North African roots have revealed the depth of discontent roiling poor neighborhoods — and given a new platform to the increasingly emboldened far right.
Issued on: 12/07/2023 - 16:05. 4 min
President for the French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) group Marine Le Pen gestures as she delivers a speech during a session of questions to the government at the National Assembly in Paris on July 4, 2023. © Emmanuel Dunand, AFP
Text by: NEWS WIRES
The far right's anti-immigration mantra is seeping through a once ironclad political divide between it and mainstream politics. More voices are now embracing a hard line against immigration and blaming immigrants not only for the car burnings and other violence that followed the June 27 killing of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, but for France's social problems as well.
“We know the causes” of France’s unrest, Bruno Retailleau, head of the conservative group that dominates the French Senate, said last week on broadcaster France-Info. “Unfortunately for the second, the third generation there is a sort of regression toward their origins, their ethnic origins.”
Britain recognized several years ago that second-generation Muslim migrants were considerably more devout than their parents.
Retailleau’s remarks, which drew accusations of racism, reflect the current line of his mainstream party, The Republicans, whose priorities to keep France “from sinking durably into chaos” include “stopping mass immigration.”
“As soon as we want to be firm,” Retailleau said Tuesday on RTL radio, “they say, ‘Oh la la. Scandal! The fascists are arriving! You’re like the National Rally,'” the main far-right party. “We’re sick of being politically correct.”
His response marked the latest fracture in a crumbling concept dubbed the “Republican Front,” under which French parties, whatever their political color, used to stand together against the far right.
By linking immigration to the riots, Retailleau violated France’s near-sacred value of universality by which all citizens, whatever their origin, are recognized only as French.
The far right appeared to capitalize on a sudden shift in the national mood to make further inroads: Shock and horror at Merzouk’s death quickly morphed into shock and horror at the violent unrest, which spread from the outskirts of major urban areas to cities to small-town France. In just four days, an extreme-right crowdfunding campaign raised more than 1.5 million euros ($1.6 million) for the family of the police officer accused of killing Nahel.
Far-right figures have long blamed immigration from majority Muslim North Africa, and some immigrants' failure to assimilate into French culture, for France’s social problems.
“We suffer an immigration that is totally anarchic,” the National Rally's Marine Le Pen, the leading far-right figure in France, said last week on France 2 television. She claimed the riots were the work of “an ultra-majority of youth who are foreign or of foreign origin,” and said there was “a form of secession of these youths from French society.”
Le Pen’s critics note that successive French governments have failed to integrate new arrivals, and that communities with immigrant backgrounds face disproportionately higher poverty, unemployment and deep-seated discrimination.
But the far-right leader's voice resonates ever more loudly in France. Le Pen has spent years scrubbing up the image of her National Rally, and gained a powerful perch in parliament in legislative elections a year ago with 88 lawmakers. Le Pen now sits at the heart of institutional France.
Le Pen’s party has progressively anchored itself among French voters. She won more than 41% in the runoff presidential vote last year.
“There are practically no more categories of the population immune to a (far-right) vote,” polling agency Ifop said after a recent survey showing a steady rise in voters who have cast a ballot for Le Pen’s party.
President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government took a tough line against the recent violence, but disputes Le Pen’s characterization of those who rioted, with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin stressing that only 10% were foreigners. At a Senate hearing last week, he noted that some children with immigrant roots enter the police force.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne criticized the GoFundMe campaign for the police officer's family as unhelpful in tense times. But its success appeared to reflect a clamor for security, another prize issue of the far right.
Jean Messiha, a former official in the National Rally and the upstart hard-right Reconquest party, called the enormous response to the fund that he started a “tsunami” in support of law enforcement officers “who in a certain way fight daily so that France remains France.”
The French far right has many faces, inside and outside the political sphere, ranging from the National Rally to Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest, whose vice president is Le Pen’s niece Marion Marechal. Both Zemmour and Marechal espouse the racist “great replacement” theory that there is a plot to diminish the influence of white people and replace cultures, particularly through immigration.
The Great Replacement Theory is certainly racist, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. What do you do when the truth is racist?
On France's fringe is an ultra-rightist movement, which includes conspiracy theorists, whose potential for violence worries authorities.
“The terrorist risk it engenders has grown in recent years within Western democracies — France, in particular,” Nicolas Lerner, head of France’s internal security agency, DGSI, said in a rare interview published in Le Monde newspaper. The ultras believe, he said, that they must do the job of the state in protecting Europe from terrorists and the "great replacement,” and one way to do that is to “precipitate a clash to have a chance to win while there is still time.”
Sounds a lot like what I wrote just yesterday, on another warning by retired Intel head Pierre Brochand. Of course, this wouldn't happen if the government was actually doing something to address the problems, but they are not!
Mainstream politics is not inoculated.
The tone of political discourse, even in mainstream politics, can contribute to forging ultra rightists, Lerner warned.
“Last year’s presidential and legislative elections ... marked by debates reflecting traditional concerns of the far right, notably on migratory issues, had a tendency to channel energy,” he said.
(AP)
U.N. Human Rights Council passes resolution on religious hatred
after Koran burning
By Clyde Hughes
The United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday adopted a resolution on religious hate in response to Koran-burning protests. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
July 12 (UPI) -- The United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday approved a resolution calling on countries to take action against religious hatred amid a series of Koran-burning protests.
The council approved the measure that calls for members to "address, prevent and prosecute acts and advocacy of religious hatred" in a 28-12 vote that saw seven members abstain.
The United States and many of its Western allies voted against the measure because of free speech concerns.
The resolution targeted groups that often burn and deface the religion's holy book, the Koran as a form of protest.
In one such incident last month, Turkey condemned Sweden for allowing Salwan Momika, a protester who immigrated to Sweden from Iraq, to obtain a police permit that allowed him to burn the book.
"Those who seek to become our allies in NATO, cannot tolerate or enable destructive behaviors of Islamophobic and xenophobic terrorists," Fahrettin Altun, the head of communications for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said then.
But they must tolerate Islamic laws that call for the murder of Muslims who convert to Christianity, or Christians who convert the Muslims. And they must tolerate charging people with blasphemy for quoting the Bible on social media.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said people should feel free to practice their faith the way they see fit and the burning of the Koran serves no purpose beyond to "express contempt and inflame anger."
Inflaming anger may be the point as it becomes more and more obvious that Islamic hysteria is so easily triggered and not so easily quelled. Europeans have yet to come to grips with the spectacular danger of this Islamic madness.
He accused some of weaponizing religious differences for political gain and asked for the public to not fall into the trap.
"We must not allow ourselves to be reeled in and become instrumentalized by these merchants of chaos for political gain -- these provocateurs who deliberately seek out ways to divide us," Turk said.
They don't create means to divide "us", they merely expose the divisions that are obvious to anyone willing to look.
The most recent protest in Sweden prompted Turkey to stall the entry of Sweden into NATO until this week because of groups there using free speech laws to burn the Koran, angering Muslims around the world.
However, Erdogan, waived the veto on Monday, allowing Sweden to enter the alliance while pushing for Turkey to be granted entry into the European Union in exchange.
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Homosexuality is a heinous crime, says Makkah Imam in Friday sermon
Saudi Gazette, July 8, 2023:
MAKKAH — Sheikh Faisal Ghazzawi, imam and preacher of the Grand Mosque in Makkah, cautioned the faithful to be wary of the growing immoral tendencies in the society, especially sexual perversion, saying that homosexuality is a heinous crime.
In his Friday sermon at the Grand Mosque in Makkah, he underlined the need to uphold moral values and maintain the sanctity of marital relations. “God Almighty has made marriage between a man and a woman a universal law, but Satan misleads the servants of God to transgress the limits set by God and commit what is repulsive to good natures. This situation reached a level where the devilish forces poised to obliterate the innate nature and mislead people to introduce laws legitimizing marriage of a man with a man (gay marriage) and a woman with a woman (lesbian marriage), intermarriage with animals, incitement to sexual perversion and all kinds of pornography as they call it civilization while they take a hostile stance against those who disprove this and label them backward people and extremists,” he said while cautioning that such people fight purity and virtue, as they succumbed to immorality and vice, and subjected to moral degradation, value collapse, and descent into bestial behaviors.
If I heard a Christian preacher say this, I would cheer him on. But it takes more courage than most preachers have to say such things.
Sheikh Ghazzawi affirmed that God Almighty created His servants on the right instinct and made them prefer virtues and hate evil and ward it off.
This is his first deviation from Biblical context. I'm not sure what he is referring to by "His servants", but man, unfortunately, does not hate evil and prefer virtues; it's the other way about. He only comes to the place where he hates evil, pursues virtue, and wards-off evil, when he as come to be born of the Holy Spirit as a servant of Jesus Christ.
The imam stressed that Satan distracted people from the true religion, making them violate God’s laws and rulings, and deviate from what is required by sound minds and generous instincts. God created humans and made them into two types, male and female and differentiated between them. He made each one of them their own characteristics and attributes.
The imam noted that Satan’s intervention to instigate men and women to violate their innate nature. “Then comes someone who contradicts his nature and tries to change natural gender of human beings so that a man turns into a woman, and a woman turns into a man,” he said while quoting the Tradition of the Prophet (peace be upon him) in this regard. “The Prophet cursed the effeminate men and the immodest women.”
Sheikh Ghazzawi denounced Islamophobia and malicious campaign being unleashed against Islam and Muslims, while citing the incidents of burning of the copy of the Holy Qur’an as the latest example for this…..
“Those slanderers who break the innate nature and change the creation of God have become spiritually bankrupt and have negated all human and civilized values, as they are suffering from moral crises and social problems. They provoke the feelings of Muslims everywhere by waging offensive campaigns and hostile acts against the Islamic world under the pretext of freedom of opinion.”
“These acts include burning the copy of the Holy Qur’an, humiliating and desecrating it, and discrediting the Prophet (peace be upon him) through mocking and defaming him and questioning his Sunnah. Thus, they showed their hidden hatred against Muslims and fueled the fire of hatred and violence,” the imam said while noting that all these acts, by the grace of God, are desperate attempts to block the path of God and distort the image of Islam.
Islam distorts its own image in so many ways. The Quran in many ways contradicts the Bible to the point where one has to be completely wrong. The cohesiveness of the Bible through thousands of years shows the progression from righteous Adam to sinful mankind. It shows the progression of the Law of Moses to the Grace of Jesus Christ. The Quran, and all other Islamic books, deny the Saviour of the World and attempt to put their followers back under the law - 600 years after Jesus completed the Law and introduced Grace.
Anyone who follows the Quran, the Sunnah, and the Hadiths, will follow them straight to Hell when they stand before Jesus Christ in Judgment.
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Islamic hysteria continues in Islam's most hysterical country, Pakistan. Can you imagine a Christian country calling for war against a Muslim country for destroying Bibles? Destroying Bibles happens all the time in Islam, but you never hear about it. In this incident, one Quran was desecrated and burned more than two weeks ago and Pakistanis are still up in arms.
Pakistan: Islamic group demands that the government declare war
on Sweden over Qur’an burning
JUL 12, 2023 9:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
Just weeks ago, Pakistan “signed a twelve-point agreement with the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Party (TLP) Pakistan and agreed to book those accused of committing blasphemy and charged with Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code under the Anti-Terrorism Act (1997).”
Now that same group is demanding that Pakistan declare war on Sweden over a Qur’an burning incident, while Pakistan continues its barbaric attacks on Christians and other religious minorities over mostly trumped-up blasphemy charges.
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Declare war on Sweden to end blasphemy: TLP leader Maulana Saad Rizvi
wants Pakistan to go to war with Sweden over Quran burning incident
OpIndia, July 8, 2023:
The protests in Pakistan against Sweden over the Quran burning incident on Eid are still continuing. On Friday, Juy 7, Pakistan observed a day of protests over the incident. On the same day, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) leader Saad Hussein Rizvi said that Pakistan should declare war against Sweden in order to stop blasphemy against Islam.
Pakistan staged nationwide protests against Sweden post-Friday prayers days after a man tore up and burned a Quran outside Stockholm’s central mosque on 28th June. The act led to massive anger among Muslim nations against Sweden even as the NATO secretary general defended it saying that the incident was offensive and objectionable, but not illegal.
Saad Hussein Rizvi said that the Pakistani PM along with its Navy, Army, and Air Force chiefs should summon the ambassador of Sweden to tell the latter that Pakistan is formed in the name of Islam and “you have insulted our Quran so we declare Ailan-e-Jung (war) against you”. He said that by doing so, blasphemy across the world would end in one minute.
The protests in Pakistan were called by Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif. He wrote, “In order to express our feelings and emotions about the desecration of the Holy Quran at the hands of an unlucky person, we will all protest nationwide today under the title of Holy Quran Day and after Friday prayers all Pakistani Muslims Tabaqat will raise the flag of the Holy Quran and record their peaceful protest.”….
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