French Govt. Seeks to Shift Blame To Muslims After Teacher Murder

Meanwhile, the French government, which has found another excuse to fuel Islamophobia, banned a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli group that is said to be close to the Hamas Movement under the cover of what President Emmanuel Macron called a fight against “the Islamist radicalism.” 

Macron on Tuesday announced that his government will dissolve a group allegedly with close bonds to the Gaza-based Palestinian movement for its “direct” role in beheading of the French teacher last week. He added that the decision to dissolve “Sheikh Yassin Collective” that advocates the Palestinian ideals will be implemented on Wednesday. The group is named after the founder of Hamas. 

Although the claim has not yet been proven by any court in France and so far all of the terrorist attacks in France have been carried out by takfiri groups especially ISIS— whose ideology is rejected by a majority of Muslims—, the French government is seeking to damage the image of the Muslims and particularly the resistant groups in West Asia. 

Abdelhakim Sefrioui, the founder of Sheikh Yassin Collective, is now in detention for his publishing of a video on YouTube in which he condemned the French history teacher Samuel Paty for insulting Prophet Muhammad. 

The man called for the teacher to be fired after his daughter, a schoolgirl, told him that the teacher showed in the class insulting cartoons of the Prophet. 

But while the blasphemy, Islamophobia, discrimination, and poverty among the French Muslim community are the main instruments used by the takfiri groups to recruit forces, the French government resorts to sweeping the problem under the rug instead of addressing the root causes of radicalism which are systematic discrimination and restrictions against the Muslim beliefs. 

Macron, managed to get rid of the “yellow vests” protests against his policies thanks to the coronavirus pandemic outbreak and now is strongly seeking to rebuild his image among the public opinion, during his visit to the Paris suburbs, where the murder took place said that the citizens expect actions and “we will increase our actions.” 

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Jean Castex told the lawmakers that the government has targeted all of the organizations with affiliations to the Islamism fundamentalism. 

Minister of Interior Gerald Darmanin vowed that the “enemies of the republic” will not be given a minute to take action. Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer on Tuesday said Paty would be posthumously granted France’s highest award, the Légion d’Honneur. 

The French officials said that they shut down a mosque and arrested ten people. They, however, did not reprimand the school that insulted the major sacred figure of the Muslim world and keeps providing material containing disrespectful material to Islam. 

A couple of days before the killing of the French teacher, the mosque published a video in which it came against the abusive remarks against the Prophet Muhammad. 

The interior ministry said that the mosque, in which around 1,500 people attend for daily and Friday prayers, will remain shut for six months. 

The murderer, who was shot dead at the scene, was a Chechen man named Abdullah Anzurov. He was reportedly 18-years-old. The police arrested 16 in relation to the murder, including four members of the Anzuruv family and five students charged with identifying the teacher for the attacker in return for payment. 

France sowed wind and reaped whirlwind 

The stance taken by the French officials against what they call Islamist fundamentalism to win the public support and gratification is blame-shifting and meant to deceive the French and global public opinion. 

Firstly, instrumental use of terrorism and fundamentalism to press with political agenda and geopolitical schemes especially after the eruption of the Syrian crisis and the Western and Turkish intelligence service’s support to transfer terrorist fighters from Europe to Syria and then Iraq and equipment of them with modern arms to implement a partition plot in the two countries is something the regional and international observers as well as the Syrian, Russian, and Iranian officials highlighted repeatedly, calling it a dangerous trend even for the security of the Western countries. 

Now after the obliteration of ISIS and a large number of terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq thanks to sacrifices made by the Axis of Resistance nations, a large number of the terrorist elements and their families with Western nationalities are being held in camps but their Western home countries do not take them in. In 2015, the French counterterrorism service stated that 800 French nationals traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the terrorist battle against the governments of the two Arab countries. If those showing willingness to join the fighting in Syria and Iraq are counted, this number would rise to 1,600, it continued. Could not France arrest these radicals before their travel to frontlines? Or was it a big political project underway and the French government is now resorting to shifting the blame and Islamophobia to distract people from figuring out the reality?

Secondly, the French government has always neglected the promotion of hatred against Muslim beliefs and sacred icons in the name of supporting the freedom of speech. Allowing several-time publishing of insulting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by Charlie Hebdo, which rendered millions of Muslims around the world furious, is an example of misperformance of the French officials who neither condemn nor move to stop ambitions of a magazine that resorts to cultural terrorism for more sales and prominence.