{"id":316337,"date":"2025-08-04T05:11:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T05:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/316337\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T05:11:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T05:11:17","slug":"footballer-journalist-fashionista-whatever-french-muslims-do-were-treated-as-the-enemy-within-rokhaya-diallo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/316337\/","title":{"rendered":"Footballer, journalist, fashionista: whatever French Muslims do, we\u2019re treated as the enemy within | Rokhaya Diallo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being a Muslim in a country with a long colonial history, which has also had to deal with terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam<\/a>, is an everyday challenge.<\/p>\n

In January 2015, for example, I was as profoundly shocked as everyone else in France by the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo journalists<\/a> in Paris. As the country mourned, I was invited by a major radio station to comment, but was first asked, live on air, to \u201cdissociate\u201d myself from the attackers.<\/p>\n

I had been critical of Charlie Hebdo\u2019s publications in the past, but my comments always fell within the scope of legitimate political debate. Nevertheless, as a Muslim, I was now treated as if I was under suspicion. In order to be tolerated on the airwaves, I had to profess my innocence: state publicly that I had nothing to do with the violence.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t hold back my tears \u2013 because, even with a media profile, I was reduced to the most racist perception of my identity. I was strongly defended that night by others who took part in the show, and received much support online, but I couldn\u2019t help thinking of the millions of French Muslims who, unlike me, would have no microphone to defend themselves against vile accusations.<\/p>\n

Some years later I was invited to take part in a TV debate on the thesis: is the white man always guilty. I was expecting a conversation about gender and race. But my opponent, the philosopher Pascal Bruckner, immediately took me to task<\/a>, claiming that I had used my status \u201cas a Black, Muslim woman\u201d to incite hatred against Charlie Hebdo. He claimed that I had, in effect, blood on my hands, that my words had \u201cled to the murder of 12 people at Charlie Hebdo\u201d. I immediately protested, stating as firmly as I could, that I had \u201cabsolutely no responsibility for any terrorist attack\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Bruckner wouldn\u2019t let go. He attacked me for having signed a joint statement<\/a> in 2011, following a night-time petrol-bomb attack at the Charlie Hebdo premises that caused, fortunately, only material damage. Nothing in the statement \u2013 which I did not draft and was co-signed by 20 other academics and activists\u2013 had called for hatred or violence. It had been critical of the disproportionate media treatment of the fire at Charlie Hebdo when vandalism of Muslim places of worship featured rarely in the news. Signatories had expressed dismay at the selective nature of French national outrage, highlighting the indifference shown after an arson attack on a Paris building inhabited by Roma people, in which a man died.<\/p>\n

But Bruckner repeated his accusations in an interview<\/a> the next day, claiming without any evidence that he had simply \u201creminded Rokhaya Diallo of her involvement in political Islam\u201d adding \u2013 as if it were a crime \u2013 that I had \u201ccriticised Charlie Hebdo by calling them Islamophobic and racist\u201d.<\/p>\n

I felt I had no option but to file a defamation lawsuit against Bruckner, believing the accusation to be not just outrageous and insulting, but influenced by my origins and my faith. But defending myself was viewed as another provocation.<\/p>\n

Le Figaro, the leading conservative daily, published a highly offensive article<\/a> on the eve of the trial, which, without even bothering to interview me, stated: \u201cInspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, \u2018anti-racist\u2019 activists like Rokhaya Diallo are multiplying lawsuits to silence critics of Islamism.\u201d Taking legal action as a Muslim woman was framed as a \u201cjihadist\u201d political plot.<\/p>\n

This kind of smear tactic is used again and again to discredit any Muslim who calls out Islamophobia. When the footballer Karim Benzema spoke in support of the people of Gaza in October 2023, the then interior minister Gerard Darmanin declared<\/a> \u2013 without a shred of evidence \u2013 that the player had \u201cwell-known ties to the Muslim Brotherhood\u201d.<\/p>\n

Karim Benzema scores for Real Madrid against Barcelona, 5 April 2023. Photograph: Enric Fontcuberta\/EPA<\/p>\n

In May, a report<\/a> commissioned by the interior ministry into the Muslim Brotherhood fuelled suspicion of all French Muslims by recycling conspiracy theories around supposed \u201cinfiltration\u201d. The report was as the the socio-anthropologist Hamza Esmili<\/a> put it, \u201cintellectually impoverished\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet Bruno Retailleau, the current interior minister, used alarmist conspiracy tropes to describe<\/a> its conclusions, claiming it had identified \u201ca very clear threat to the republic and to national cohesion\u201d and \u201ca quiet form of Islamist infiltration whose ultimate goal is to bring all of French society under sharia law\u201d.<\/p>\n

But even the report stated unequivocally<\/a>: \u201cNo recent document demonstrates any intent by Muslims of France to establish an Islamic state in France or to enforce sharia law there.\u201d It added that the Brotherhood\u2019s members in France today are estimated to number \u201cbetween 400 and 1,000 people\u201d.<\/p>\n

As Esmili argues, French Muslims present a paradox: we are part of every social sphere, yet many of us have not given up our cultural specificities. And that is precisely what we are blamed for \u2013 integration without assimilation. This is why the same government can claim it uses the law to fight against Muslim \u201cseparatism<\/a>\u201d while denouncing the threat of Muslim \u201cinfiltration\u201d. Muslims can\u2019t win: we are blamed for being part of the national community and for being outside of it.<\/p>\n

Thus, no matter what level we reach in the social pecking order, being Muslim always carries the suspicion of association with a radical and dangerous ideology: of being the enemy within.<\/p>\n

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So when L\u00e9na Situations, a major fashion influencer in France, appeared on the Cannes film festival red carpet wearing a long dress with a headscarf, a senior official in Emmanuel Macron\u2019s party suggested on social media <\/a>that she was practising a form of religious \u201cinfiltration\u201d. As if an outfit was in itself proof of extremism. The influencer never mentioned her religion but it made no difference \u2013 her Algerian heritage alone was enough to disqualify her.<\/p>\n

Even non-Muslims who take a stand against this hostile climate are subjected to similar accusations. Emile Ackermann \u2013 a rabbi vocal on Islamophobia \u2013 was accused<\/a> by a self-proclaimed academic \u201cexpert\u201d of being inspired by a \u201cBrotherist\u201d discourse. Such absurd accusations would be laughable if the situation weren\u2019t so volatile, with Islamophobic crime <\/a>on the increase. Take the case of the hairdresser Hichem Miraoui, killed in June in the south of France, in what investigators are treating as a racially motivated act of domestic terrorism<\/a>. Miraoui had been the target of racist rhetoric posted on social media by a neighbour who also denounced the French state as \u201cincapable of protecting us from Muslims\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet, the very same state constantly fuels a narrative portraying Muslims as a problem.<\/p>\n

During the defamation lawsuit I launched against Bruckner, and its appeal, my accuser and his lawyer leaned into these cliches. While the philosopher repeated his accusations and suggested that I was funded by \u201cforeign powers\u201d, his lawyer told the court that, given that Charlie Hebdo\u2019s case files amounted to several tonnes of documents, no one could say for sure whether my name was not mentioned in them.<\/p>\n

Elyamine Settoul, a political scientist and expert on jihadism, testified, however, that terrorists are radicalised through direct contacts and in no way rely on intellectual debates or interventions.<\/p>\n

And the expert and former Islamic State hostage Nicolas H\u00e9nin<\/a> testified that my name appeared \u201cneither in the legal proceedings concerning the January 2015 attack, nor in the research conducted on the subject\u201d. He told the court that \u201cthe jihadist sphere holds nothing but contempt\u201d for people like me because of my \u201cmulticultural progressivism, which aligns with none of their religious doctrines\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bruckner was acquitted in the first instance on the grounds that he had attributed to me only \u201cpurely moral responsibility\u201d and invited me to \u201ctake ownership of the weight of my words and commitments\u201d. The appeal court overturned the initial judgment, recognising the defamatory nature of Bruckner\u2019s remarks, yet still acquitted him on the grounds that he had made his statement \u201cin good faith\u201d.<\/p>\n

Just like the \u201cyellow peril\u201d once attributed to east Asians, or the supposed \u201ccosmopolitanist\u201d trope used about Jews, the image of an allegedly foreign group secretly infiltrating France\u2019s circles of influence is once again thriving, in a sadly familiar strain of dangerous racist rhetoric.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Being a Muslim in a country with a long colonial history, which has also had to deal with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-316337","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114968781324492877","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}