Lille Law School Paper Sparks Outrage with Controversial Article on Arabs and Muslims

The Cactus newspaper, "a satirical rag appearing when it can", is distributed at the Faculty of Law in Lille.

The incriminated article begins with unflattering and tendentious words: "We all have one in our entourage. Indeed, this species generally lives among its own kind, apart from society, and although we are used to their presence, they are the subject of a great many debates in our Republic. These are of course the Muslims!"

And that’s not the worst. A little further on, he writes: "It’s time to set the record straight and break all the clichés about these Saracens: to do this, we managed to communicate with one of them, more docile, in order to interview him on the questions that we ALL ask about the Arabs".

According to Lilleactu, a fictional interview then follows where the questions and answers, all more "cliché" than the others, follow one another: "Have you ever exchanged your wife for camels?", "Do you have family in Daesh?", "Does your father like couscous?"...

This was enough to provoke the reaction of the National Union of French Students (Unef) which, on Twitter, condemned "racist and Islamophobic remarks" and demanded that university authorities "take immediate action".

"Between racism and Islamophobia, the @univ_lille must take measures against @CactusLille which claims to be a satirical university newspaper whose infamous content has no place at the university or even in society," can be read among the reactions that condemn the disrespectful nature of this article in the newspaper.