President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, which has called the debate for Tuesday, has been accused of trying to poach votes from the far-right National Front (FN) party which made strides in last month’s local elections.
Sarkozy’s closest advisor before becoming minister in January, Gueant said that France’s secular law dates from 1905 when there were “very few Muslims,” while their number today is between five and six million.
The SOS Racisme rights group said it would lodge a legal complaint against Gueant, while the opposition socialists hit out at the minister’s provocation.
“Since becoming interior minister, every time Claude Gueant says something, there’s controversy,” said Francois Hollande, a potential Socialist Party candidate in next year’s presidential election. “He’s obsessed with talking about Muslims.”
Gueant in March provoked the ire of the political left and rights groups after saying that French people “sometimes no longer feel at home” because of “uncontrolled immigration.”
Such statements could have come straight from the mouth of FN leader Marine Le Pen, whose anti-immigration party is on the rise according to opinion polls, to the detriment of Sarkozy and his UMP party.
Several polls put Le Pen, who took over as party head in January from her father Jean-Marie, ahead of Sarkozy in a hypothetical first round presidential election.
Since taking over the party, Le Pen has tried to align her party with the European far-right, axed on the place of Islam in society.
She has repeatedly lashed out at Muslims who, lacking prayer space, worship in the streets of a tiny number of neighbourhoods in France.
The so-called “traditional” right has picked up the message, with Sarkozy himself condemning praying in the street while UMP head Jean-Francois Cope has vowed to take measures on the matter “in the coming days.” Cope is the driving force behind the contentious debate on Islam the UMP is hosting late Tuesday, which has been criticised by the left and the right, threatening even to implode the UMP.
Sarkozy’s Prime Minister Francois Fillon will not take part in the debate having in February warned against any measure that could lead to the stigmatisation of Muslims in France.
In response, Cope last week accused Fillon of “not being a team player.” Other ministers have sought to distance themselves from the initiative, which will examine 26 UMP proposals on maintaining France’s strict
Cynics will argue that Sarkozy is a gambler, staking his re-election next year on the throw of the military dice. But even though he’s wildly unpopular, and a political calculator nonpareil, the truth is that Sarko is also showing his own peculiar brand of sincerity. He genuinely believes, for instance, that France’s failure to stop the Rwandan genocide was dishonourable (as a junior minister, he argued in favour of intervention). And he has form: a couple of years ago, he authorised a raid against Somali pirates, resulting in the rescue of our hostages and the pirates being showily taken back to France for trial.
Any image of the French as pacifists is misleading. We hate losing wars, but we believe in both la gloire and in hard-nosed choices that we sell to ourselves as idealism. We have forgiven Sarko a botched (and fatal) attempt to free two hostages from an al Qaeda affiliate in Mali, and are remarkably quiet about our 10-year presence in Afghanistan. French troops have also been an almost constant presence in Ivory Coast over the past decade, more than once stepping in to prevent a Liberian-style civil war – and to protect French nationals and interests.
Cynics will argue that Sarkozy is a gambler, staking his re-election next year on the throw of the military dice. But even though he’s wildly unpopular, and a political calculator nonpareil, the truth is that Sarko is also showing his own peculiar brand of sincerity. He genuinely believes, for instance, that France’s failure to stop the Rwandan genocide was dishonourable (as a junior minister, he argued in favour of intervention). And he has form: a couple of years ago, he authorised a raid against Somali pirates, resulting in the rescue of our hostages and the pirates being showily taken back to France for trial.
Any image of the French as pacifists is misleading. We hate losing wars, but we believe in both la gloire and in hard-nosed choices that we sell to ourselves as idealism. We have forgiven Sarko a botched (and fatal) attempt to free two hostages from an al Qaeda affiliate in Mali, and are remarkably quiet about our 10-year presence in Afghanistan. French troops have also been an almost constant presence in Ivory Coast over the past decade, more than once stepping in to prevent a Liberian-style civil war – and to protect French nationals and interests.
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