France, Pessac. A classic example of governmental Islamophobia

While the Gaza genocide was in full swing and with the polls predicting victory for the far right after the snap parliamentary election, Minister of Internal Affairs Gérald Darmanin decided to take advantage of the legitimate issue of security during the Olympic Games. A total of 5,100 Muslims were placed under surveillance¹, 848 homes were searched and 559 people were placed under house arrest².

Among those targeted was Abdourahmane Ridouane, a Nigerien national who has lived in France for 35 years. He is president of the Pessac mosque, in the department of the Gironde³. The Government has initiated deportation proceedings against him, though he has absolutely no criminal record. His residence permit has not been renewed. On 21 May he was subjected to an individual measure of administrative control and surveillance. He was confined to his residence with an obligation to report to his local police station every day or be gaoled. On 4 August the Ministry ordered his deportation from France “in absolute urgency” despite the negative opinion issued by the Deportation Commision. Four days later, Abdourahmane Ridouane was taken into custody and placed in a Centre of Administrative Detention until such time as he could be deported to Niger.

Among the accusations, a quote from De Gaulle

The authorities accuse him of “a constantly virulent contempt for the Government, described as racist, Islamophobic and colonialist” and of defending “an ideology hostile to the values and institutions of the Republic” with on-line posts “participating in the dissemination of messages of an anti-Semitic character and promoting the hatred of Israel and the Jews”.

The Ministry also stressed the “posting of messages in which Hamas is described as a resistance movement”. Among these messages is a quote from General De Gaulle asserting that Israel has encountered “a resistance which it too describes as terrorist”. There is also a statement defining “the Palestinian people [as ] fighters, resistants, among them are Hamas” spoken during a gathering of the Comité Action Palestine. Another incriminated message paid tribute to the memory of Ismaïl Hanieh, head of the political bureau of Hamas, which was described as a“resistance movement”. The Ministry also accuses the suspect of ’“numerous ambiguities [as Ridouane] makes use of very precise terminology, employing regularly the terms”martyr“,”battlefield“, or”persecutor“’. In view of the rise of anti-Semitic actions since October 2023, the Government believes that these statements ”are liable to exacerbate the tensions running through French society“. Ridouane ”might encourage his listeners to take physical or verbal action“by his deliberate use of”a warlike vocabulary".

An unremitting persecution

The Pessac mosque represents a sadly classic example on account of the racist harassment and administrative persecution which it has suffered. Since 2015, on more than seven occasions, Islamophobic graffiti have appeared on the walls of the mosque⁴. Complaints have been lodged but to no avail.

In October 2020, following the murder of Samuel Paty, the police searched the offices of the mosque and the home of its president, but no charges were pressed⁵.

In 2022, an attempt was made by the prefecture to shut it down under the terms of the policy known as “systematic obstruction” initiated by the Government in February 2018 and which led to the abusive shut-down of 1 200 Muslim establishments⁶. The authorities accused it of promoting a “radical Islam” and “a Salafi ideology”⁷. The operation was stymied twice by the courts, in particular by the Conseil d’Etat which put an end to that offensive on 26 April 2022. In the words of France’s highest judicial instance, the shut-down would have been "a serious and clearly illegal infringement on the freedom of worship”.

However, that constant pressure has recently crossed an unprecedentedly critical threshold, the Government having decided to deport Ridouane, including him in its program of purging the national territory of “religious extremists”. Since Emmanuel Macron took power in 2017, 734 Muslims have been deported, accused of harbouring dangerously anti-Republican political and religious convictions. Many foreign imams have fallen prey to this procedure. Minadi Almada in 2018, Hassan Iquioussen in 2022 and Mahjoub Mahjoubi in 2024 are only a few examples of this Islamophobic McCarthyism capable of deporting someone for quoting a Quranic Sura in public⁸.

Subdue, muzzle, prevent

So Abdourahmane Ridouane’s deportation is not an ancillary phenomenon. It is a logical part of the inner workings of a system developed long before 7 October and whose vindictive activities continue despite the present political crisis. The power structure uses all available means and finds new justifications in current political events, be it public security during the Olympics or the repression of anti-Semitism - both perfectly legitimate. But the 7 October attacks, deliberately taken out of context, are being instrumentalised in order to silence any Muslim who speaks out in favour of the Palestinians, made to appear as the “enemy within”, whose allegedly ambiguous rhetoric necessarily conceals some murderous conspiracy. And this allows the Government to guarantee the success of administrative offensives begun much earlier. In the past, neither Ridouane nor the Pessac mosque had ever themselves been defeated in court. Those days seem to be gone forever.

Deliberately conflating support for Palestine with anti-Semitism and the advocation of violence, the power structure has managed to catalyse a punitive reaction, quasi-systematically validated by the courts. Disregarding the rights of the defence, the Ministry of Interior Affairs went so far as to demand that disciplinary and penal charges be pressed against Ridouan’s attorney, Selen Guez Guez, unfairly accused of having impeded the enforcement of the deportation order - an accusation which prompted a protest from the French Attorneys’ Union⁹.

Here as often, an administrative measure is used to punish a Muslim, assumed to be a future danger on account of his beliefs. This preventive procedure, typical of anti-terrorist and Islamophobic legislation, is often termed “Precrime”, in reference to Philip K. Dick’s novella The Minority Report¹⁰. Abdourahmane Ridouane considers himself a political prisoner in the hands of a predictive police administration.

However, it would be a mistake to believe that this type of repression will remain confined to the Muslim community. Republican and neo-liberal authoritarianism is set to prosper. The warning expressed by the American writer is still relevant:

Yes, be very careful,“he advises young Witwer, his successor.”The same thing could easily happen to you, at any time!

Translated by Noël Burch.