France Will Close Controversial French Islamophobia Group

French media is report­ing that the French Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Gérald Dar­manain has dis­solved the Col­lec­tive Against Islam­o­pho­bia in France (CCIF). Accord­ing to the arti­cle:

Gérald Dar­manin announced Thurs­day evening, Novem­ber 19, that he had noti­fied his offi­cials of the dis­so­lu­tion of the Col­lec­tive against Islam­o­pho­bia in France (CCIF), which he accused after the assas­si­na­tion of Samuel Paty of being an “Islamist dis­pen­sary work­ing against the Repub­lic”. In a tweet, the Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or spec­i­fied that the asso­ci­a­tion’s lead­ers had “now eight days to make their case”.

(Trans­lat­ed from French using DeepL.)

Read the rest here.

The CCIF has been at the cen­ter of a media storm since the French gov­ern­ment indi­cat­ed it plans to dis­solve the orga­ni­za­tion, accus­ing it of tak­ing part in a social media cam­paign against a French his­to­ry teacher who was behead­ed after he had shown car­i­ca­tures of the Prophet Muham­mad in class. After the attack, France ordered a crack­down on groups accused of rad­i­cal­ism, car­ry­ing out dozens of raids and tem­porar­i­ly shut­ting down mosques. In ear­ly Novem­ber 2020, the GIOR report­ed that CCIF issued a state­ment claim­ing that uniden­ti­fied indi­vid­u­als close to French Pres­i­dent Macron had used “fake news” from the far right to attack them, say­ing that they planned to extend their activ­i­ties internationally.

In mid-Octo­ber 2020, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR)  con­clud­ed that CCIF is an Islamist influ­ence oper­a­tion, ana­lyz­ing in detail its cam­paign­ing efforts against sec­u­lar­ism and its ties to orga­ni­za­tions part of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe, a transna­tion­al Islamist net­work cov­ered by the GIOR.