French Media Figure Sparks Controversy with Anti-Muslim Comments on TV

16 October 2019 – bySylvanus · 1 min read

Racist and anti-Muslim speech seems to be being liberated in France, especially in the media. After Eric Zemmour and his multiple slips, it is Yves Thréard, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Le Figaro, who is pouring out his hatred on Islam.

"I hate the Muslim religion [...]. We have the right to hate a religion, we have every right to say it," he said on Monday in the LCI program Le Grand soir. This episode was on the theme: "Veil: is the government ambiguous?"

"It happened to me, in France, to take the bus or a boat where there was someone with a veil, and I got off," he said. Responding to a follow-up question, "Just a veil, not a burqa?", he replies "Yes, but with all the clothing, the abaya that went with it".

What next? Yves Thréard strings together certain formulas: "How long are we going to drag these problems?", "We are being nibbled away", "Islamized ghettos"... Paradoxically, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Le Figaro claims that Islamophobia does not exist.