Muslim Leaders Slam French Media’s ’Demographic Threat’ Rhetoric

Another slip-up in the French media. On the France Info set, a guest, Virginie Lecasble, was annoyed by the fact that the immigrant-origin population is "having more children". She also looks askance at the fact that there are many more Muslims than Jews in France. These remarks shocked the Grand Mosque of Paris (GMP). In a statement, the institution led by Chems-Eddine Hafiz denounces "essentialist and stigmatizing" remarks that present Muslims in France as a "demographic threat" and as being "by nature" anti-Semitic.

The GMP sees it as a "racist logorrhea and a conspiratorial imaginary of the ’great replacement’ type". And its broadcast on a public audiovisual service is of "extreme gravity", fumes the institution. It has made a point of recalling that it has always refused to import the Israeli-Palestinian conflict onto French soil and that it has always called for "preserving living together and making the Republic the cement of our unity". These "drifts" are all the more irresponsible as the recent survey it commissioned from IFOP has revealed alarming results: one out of two French Muslims, including non-practicing ones, has suffered discrimination, the Grand Mosque of Paris points out.

For the institution, broadcasting stigmatizing speeches only exacerbates an already deleterious climate. It has therefore decided to seize the audiovisual regulatory authority Arcom "so that such a sequence, on a public service media, does not go without consequences".