In France, Macron Claims That ‘Fear is About to Change Sides’

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Will the murder of Samuel Paty at long last lead France to do what it must to meet the Islamic threat within? Or will there be rhetorical resolution, a laying of flowers, marches of solidarity in major cities, a series of well-publicized roundups and then, again, a relaxing of resolve and of raids, as happened after the Charlie Hebdo murders? The story of what’s going on in France in the wake of that murder is here: “4 students detained after French teacher’s beheading,” by Alexandre Hielard and Clare Byrne, AFP, October 19, 2020:

French police on Monday [Oct.19] launched a series of raids targeting Islamist networks three days after the beheading of a history teacher who had shown his students a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin vowed there would be “not a minute’s respite for enemies of the Republic,” after tens of thousands took part in rallies countrywide on Sunday to honor history teacher Samuel Paty, and defend freedom of expression.

Fifteen people were in custody on Monday, according to a judicial source, including four students who may have helped the killer identify the teacher in return for payment.

This is disturbing. Did these students not notice that the suspect was carrying a large knife, that he was agitated, that he might have murder and mayhem on his mind? They might have replied that “he’s not here” or “he went home.” They might have warned Mr. Paty himself, or the principal. Did any of them think of that, or were they – “just for a handful of silver” – willing to betray their teacher? Or were these four students Muslims who may have been happy to have Mr. Paty appropriately punished for his blasphemy by a fellow Believer?

Those detained also included four members of the killer’s family, as well as a known Islamist radical and the father of one of Paty’s students, who had launched an online campaign against the teacher.

That “known Islamist radical” is Abdelhakim Sefrioui — a Moroccan-born Islamist described by one prominent French Muslim leader as “dangerous.” On Thursday — the day before Paty’s killing — Sefrioui arrived at the school, where he filmed an interview with a female Muslim student who claimed that Paty had told her she might want to “leave the class,” before showing students an image of a “naked man” who supposedly represented Muhammad. After meeting with members of the school management, Sefrioui issued a statement asserting that Muslim children “had been attacked and humiliated in front of their classmates.” He then demanded the immediate suspension of Paty, whom he referred to as “this thug.”

Of course no Muslim children had been either attacked or humiliated in Paty’s class. He had been solicitous of their feelings, telling them they could leave the room during this particular discussion of caricatures of Muhammad. All but one did; that one – who claims she remained “by accident” in the classroom (or did she remain so as to deliberately witness something offensive to Muslims, that she then might later complain about, showing what a good Muslim girl she was?) — told her father. He was enraged, made a video about the class , and that started the sinister ball rolling that ended in the decapitation of Mr. Paty. “French Arrest Antisemitic, Pro Hamas Imam in Connection to Beheading of Teacher,” StopAntisemitism.org, October 19, 2020:

Sefrioui is well-known to French intelligence, whose agents have monitored his statements and activities for nearly 20 years, according to Bernard Godard, an expert on Islam and former adviser to France’s Interior Ministry, in an interview with the news outlet Marianne.

Much of Sefrioui’s activism has revolved around solidarity with the Palestinians, expressed through virulent anti-Zionism and antisemitism. In 2006, he campaigned on behalf of the presidential campaign of the comedian Dieudonné — who was recently banned across a host of social media platforms for his Holocaust denial and his crude antisemitism.

In 2014, as head of a collective of pro-Palestinian organizations named in honor of the late Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Sefrioui was a key organizer of demonstrations in Paris against Israel’s incursion into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, furiously asserting at one rally that the coastal enclave was “the worst concentration camp mankind has ever known.”

Here is what puzzles me. The French police have been watching Sefrioui for “nearly 20 years.” 20 years! They know he has made death threats to the moderate imam of Drancy, Hassen Chalgoumi. They know that he has been guilty of hate speech against Israelis, accusing them of running “the worst concentration camp mankind has ever known.” They know that he has supported the Holocaust denier and antisemite Dieudonné. What else do they need to know to expel Sefrioui back to Morocco as a threat to public order and to the safety of Infidels, especially Jews? Why have they been so lax? It is only now they will at long last do something about Abdelhakim Sefrioui – or at least that is what one hopes. It’s a little late for Samuel Paty. Again from AFP:

Darmanin accused the two men [the father of the student, and Sefrioui] of having issued a “fatwa” against Paty.

That’s exactly what they did: they issued a threat on social media, to be carried out by any good Muslim willing to defend the honor of the Prophet and to punish the blaspheming Infidel. Abdoullakh Anzarov, 60 miles away, saw the video online and answered the call. The father and Sefrioui are both accessories before the fact.

Sources in the interior ministry said there had been a total of 40 raids across France on Monday, mostly around Paris, and 20 per day were planned going forward.

These raids are being carried out with such alacrity that the list of potentially dangerous Jihadis must have been prepared long ago. All it took to set off the series of raids was the murder of Mr. Paty. But why did it take anything at all for the round-the-clock raids on these Jihadis, of whom the French government admits there are “thousands” in France? Why is dramatic action taken only after an atrocity, as with Charlie Hebdo or Samuel Paty? Why the stern warnings issued about how the French forces of order this time will come down very hard, as happened after the killings by Muhammad Merah? It’s always the same script. An atrocity, a show of resolve, raids, and then those police actions inevitably die down, until the next horror is committed by Muslims. Shouldn’t the French state be carrying out dozens of raids each day, hundreds of raids every week, never letting up, in saecula saeculorum? Why are the French police not conducting dragnets in no-go neighborhoods, picking up Muslims for crimes large and small – setting fire to cars, drug dealing, street robberies, house break-ins, rapes, murders — keeping them off-balance? Why does the French state not insist on putting informants in every mosque to record the sermons, that can then be examined for the slightest hint of a call to hate or hurt the Infidels, in which case, the imam in question should be charged with hate speech, fined and imprisoned if found guilty, and upon release, if not a citizen, sent back to his country of origin.

“We want to harass and destabilize this movement in a very determined way,” one ministry source said.

Why didn’t the Interior Ministry want to “harass and destabilize this [Muslim] movement” last month, last year, two or three or five years ago? Why are the police in France always reacting to some Muslim atrocity with asseverations that this time it will be different, that the roundup is on, that no Muslim malefactor will escape, and so on – and in the end, so disappointingly forth?

Darmanin said the government would also tighten its grip on NGOs with suspected links to Islamist networks, including the Anti-Islamophobia Collective, a group that claims to monitor attacks against Muslims in France.

How unsurprising to discover that a group calling itself the “Anti-Islamophobia Collective” is in fact part of an Islamist network. If anyone needed further evidence of the meretriciousness of that word “Islamophobia” that was invented in order to shut down all criticism of Islam, by labeling it, preposterously, as a “phobia” — that is, “an irrational fear or hatred of Islam” – here it is. What Muslims and their willing collaborators label and libel as “Islamophobia” is nothing more than a most rational judgment as to both the immutable contents of the Qur’an and to the observable behavior of Muslims.

“Fear is about to change sides,” President Emmanuel Macron told a meeting of key ministers Sunday [October 18]to discuss a response to the attack….

This latest atrocity by a Muslim, in this case an angry Chechen who, to defend the honor of his Prophet, decapitated a quiet middle-school teacher, appears to have jolted the French government into action, with dozens of raids daily on Muslims suspected of terrorist links, and a promise by the Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, that there will be no letup in the police raids. We can hope, but warily, for we have hoped before.

A photo of the teacher [that is, the teacher’s severed head] and a message confessing to his murder was found on the mobile phone of his killer, 18-year-old Chechen Abdullakh Anzorov, who was shot dead by police….

Anzorov’s family arrived in France from the predominantly Muslim Russian republic of Chechnya more than a decade ago….

What persuaded the French authorities to let the Anzorov family in? Did they claim to be refugees? If so, from what? Chechens in Russia are not mistreated, and some reports claim that Anzorov and his family had been living in Moscow before they left for France. Chechens in Moscow are on the low end of the socioeconomic scale, but that is not the same thing as being persecuted.

Did they perhaps claim that Moscow was only a stopover, and that they were in fact residents of Chechnya? But in Chechnya, the only people who are now persecuted are homosexuals. Surely neither Abdoulakh Anzorov, who was eight years old when he came to France, nor his seven-year-old brother, nor his parents, nor his grandfather, were being persecuted in Chechnya as homosexuals. These were, like so many Muslims who have managed to make it into Europe, or the United States (one thinks of the Tsarnaev family), economic migrants pretending to be refugees in need of asylum.

One education expert warned Monday that the murder might deter teachers from tackling touchy topics in future….

Far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen called for “wartime legislation” to combat the terror threat.

Le Pen, who has announced she will make a third bid for the French presidency in 2022, called for an “immediate” moratorium on immigration and for all foreigners on terror watch lists to be deported.

Le Pen’s suggestion is overbroad. Not all immigrants, just Muslim immigrants, need to be banned. There should be no apologies for such a Muslim ban. It is Muslims who are committing all of these murders – of Jews, of Catholic priests, of people who dared, as cartoonists or teachers, to exercise or discuss the right of free speech – and no one else. Of course with such a ban some inoffensive Muslims will be kept out, but that is the nature of the law; it applies to whole categories of people. There is no sure way to determine which Muslims might engage in violence and which would not. But we know that the Qur’an instructs them to “fight” and to “kill” and to “smite at the necks of” and to “strike terror in the hearts of” Infidels. That being the case, it is only prudent to assume that some will, if given a chance, fulfill those commands.

But Marine Le Pen is right to call for all foreigners on terror watch lists to be deported. What possible argument can there be for not doing so? And why did it take the murder of Samuel Paty to spur the French government to do what it ought always to be doing, around the clock? If suddenly the forces of order have now swung into motion, and rounded up hundreds of people whose names and terrorist sympathies have long been well-known to the authorities (“on lists”), the obvious question is why are they being rounded up only now, and why not when they were first put on the list. Once a foreigner is on a terror watch list, that ought to be enough of a reason to have them expelled from the country. If the existing law does not currently allow someone’s appearance on that list to be sufficient reason for expulsion, then the French need to pass legislation that does allow it.

After the murder of Samuel Paty, the French offered – following the post-Charlie Hebdo template — a national display of sympathy for the victim, with marches and flowers and candlelight vigils and signs saying “Je suis enseignant” (“I am a teacher”) from a populace touched to the quick. There was the posthumous awarding of the Legion d’Honneur to Paty. And there were – again as after the Charlie Hebdo killings — stern declarations by government officials that the fight against the Islamic terrorists will not let up, but from now on will be relentlessly taken to them. The “Islamists” will be shown no quarter by the forces of order, so that, as President Macron said, “fear is about to change sides.”

It is pleasant to think so, but a decade of disappointment makes one wonder. Here are some things the French state could do in order to regain the public’s confidence:

First, the French government could expel all non-French imams who are found to be preaching hatred of Infidels, or contempt for the French state, or the flouting of its laws.

Second, the government could encourage local authorities to refuse to approve the building of any new mosques.

Third, the government could prohibit any foreign funds from being used to pay salaries of imams or for the upkeep of mosques. Local Muslims will from now on have to pay for both. No French government money should be used to support mosques, madrasas, or other Islamic institutions.

Fourth, the French state could insist on recording every Friday sermon delivered in every mosque, to be subsequently checked for content by the police, and if that content proves disturbing enough, there should be prompt expulsion of imams who are not citizens[see the First Point above], and fines and jail terms for offending imams who are French citizens.

Fifth, the government could establish teams of French hackers, employed to disrupt any Islamic sites deemed dangerous to individuals (such as the late Paty), or to groups targeted by Muslims (Jews), or to the French state itself.

Sixth, there should be genetic testing of those Muslims who entered France under the policy of “family reunification” to see if, in fact, those who did so are truly related to the original “anchor relative.” When DNA testing was put in place in the United States, the extensive family reunification claims by Muslims turned out to be largely fraudulent. Why would it be any different in France?

Seventh, Muslim immigration should be halted, in the interests of both public safety and national security. Such a measure, once unthinkable, I suspect will now be enormously popular with the French people who, save for those on the delusional far left, have been forced by grim circumstances to come round to the view that the large-scale Muslim presence in France has created a situation that is far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for the indigenous French, as well as for other, non-Muslim immigrants, than would be the case without that large-scale presence.

Eighth, President Macron should follow the lead of Germany and the U.K., and ban both the “political” and the “military” wings of Hezbollah, as inseparable parts of one terror organism. This will be a major blow to the terror group’s ability both to recruit and to raise money in Europe.

We shall soon see, in the next few months, what steps — possibly including some of those suggested just above — are taken by the French government, not just in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Samuel Paty, but in the long term, to uproot the Jihadist threat and put Muslims on notice that the mixture as before will no longer be tolerated. One hopes that this time there will be no relapsing or lessening of the pressure on Muslims and that, as President Macron promised, “fear is about to change sides.”

First published in Jihad Watch.