Rapper Médine Sues French Lawmaker for ’Islamist’ Label, Demands Apology

"You have for example this Islamist rapper Médine, you know, the one who said that we should kill the secularists, is it legitimate for a prestigious school like the ENS to give the floor to the one who calls for murder?" Aurore Bergé had questioned on February 18 on LCI, thus referring to the title "Don’t laïk", released in 2015, in which the artist raps: "Let’s crucify the secularists like in Golgotha".

"It’s one time too many. I am witnessing the media turnaround of this fringe of the government that is in the process of radicalizing by adopting a more right-wing, even far-right discourse. She sticks an ideology on me that is, of course, not mine [...] I know the legal path that will allow me to assert my rights," Médine reacted on Mediapart. The rapper contests any call to murder and reproaches the elected official for not seeing the scope of the stylistic dimension of the text.

"The track is a succession of absurdities, oxymorons. This corresponds to a type of writing that exacerbates things. The ultimate goal being to exorcise secularism and restore its letters of nobility. When you want to exorcise something, it’s to dispossess it of its demons," explains the Havrais.

At a time when the controversy is raging around "Islamo-leftism" and the draft law "strengthening the principles of the Republic", Médine believes that being "Muslim, with a beard and from an immigrant background" makes him "a kind of scarecrow that some politicians, lacking buzz and needing visibility, regularly use to relaunch the debate on the Muslim presence in France".

The rapper also hopes for "a conviction and public apologies". "I want to show those who suffer from harassment or false accusations, like those made against me, that we can act and say ’Stop, it’s over’," he added.