In a statement primarily signed by those “of Muslim culture,” Islamophobia is under attack. In the manifesto against Islamism published in Marianne, the documentary filmmaker Mohamed Sifaoui, Charlie Hebdo journalist Zineb El Rhazoui, writer Boualem Sansal, and political activist Zohra Bitan rally against the term “Islamophobia.”
According to the signatories, Islamophobia is only a matter of an “intellectual scam” that serves to “anesthetize and weaken the debate” surrounding secularism and the Republic. The signatories notably argue that “Islamists, Sunnis and Shiites, who use Islam for political means, are an extremely noxious poison for societies and living together.”
They state that “the Republic should not tremble,” when faced with the increase in Islamism. The “collective” speaks out against the French Council of the Muslim Faith, who, they argue, is an authority “crossed by currents of political Islam and by others, linked to foreign states, who respect neither the principles of secularism nor the rules of democracy.”
The collective finds it “unacceptable” that the CFCM can claim to represent “more than five million French Muslims,” with the approval of public powers. Among the signatories is the controversial imam of Drancy Hassen Chalghoumi. The authors believe that the CFCM is a “manufactured authority,” who claims to be representative “but only represents a minority and is unable to convey a message challenging archaic and sometimes violent beliefs,” which the writer Abdelwaheb Meddeb referred to as “the malady of Islam.”
