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Nora, Sonntag, 09. November 2003, 15:06 (vor 7958 Tagen)

Islamophobia = racism?


Islamophobic editor slams ´pious´ outcry

PARIS, Nov 7 (AFP) - The editor of a leading
French news magazine said on Friday that he was
the victim of a witch-hunt after he was denounced
as a racist for describing himself as
"Islamophobic."

Claude Imbert, founder of the right-leaning weekly
Le Point, was condemned by the opposition
Socialist party and by anti-racism groups after he
told the 24-hour news station LCI that he regarded
Islam as backward-looking and intolerant.

"Personally I am slightly Islamophobic and I don´t
mind saying it. I am not the only one in the
country who thinks that Islam ... is weakened by
various archaisms - they way it demeans women, the
way it wants to supplant the rule of law with the
Koran - that make me Islamophobic," he said on
October 24.

The Socialist party issued a statement accusing
him of promoting racism. "How could a man of
culture like Claude Imbert make such hate-filled,
intolerant and xenophobic remarks about a
religion?" demanded spokeswoman Annick Lepetit.

The Movement Against Racism and for Friendship
between Peoples (MRAP) described his comments as
"extremely dangerous and all the more unacceptable
because they encourage a worrying and unacceptable
trivialisation of Islamophobia, behind which hides
hatred of the Arab-Muslim population."

It also demanded that Imbert stand down from the
High Council for Integration, an official
20-member body that advises the government on
immigration-related issues.

In Friday´s edition of Le Point, Imbert
counter-attacked, accusing his accusers of trying
to stifle intellectual debate.

"It is for trying to draw a distinction between
the critique of a religion and the execration of a
race that the party of the politically pious is
now trying me for witchcraft," Imbert wrote.

"All I have done is put forward the arguments of
an agnostic against a revealed religion,
reinforced by the reaction of a French citizen to
the erosion of our secular tradition," he said.

France is in the grip of a bitter debate over what
allowances the state should make for the country´s
five million Muslims, many of whom remain attached
to controversial religious traditions - such as
the wearing of headscarves by teenage girls.

In the editorial Imbert angrily denied the charge
that he was racist. "For 30 years I have been
defending the idea of immigration. Not because it
is inevitable, but because I believe it is a
positive benefit for a cocooned, aging society,"
he wrote.

But he repeated his view that Islam has been
"ossified" for the last 700 years and is in need
of a reformation similar to the process of
intellectual modernisation that Christianity went
through from the 15th century.

"It is clear that a reform-minded, modernist Islam
is trying to escape from the Middle Ages. It is
equally clear that more and more Muslims are
developing patterns of free thought that loosen
the grip of religion. But this whole process can
only exist if there is open criticism of dogma and
practice," he wrote.

Staff at Le Point were reported to be divided over
their editor´s views, and they were meeting Friday
to decide what position to take.