US Muslim Brotherhood Group Accuses French President Of Islamophobia, Steering Towards Colonial Racism

The Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) has issued a state­ment con­demn­ing French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron, accus­ing him of Islam­o­pho­bia and warn­ing his nation was steer­ing towards the colo­nial racism of its past. Accord­ing to the state­ment by CAIR exec­u­tive direc­tor Nihad Awad:

The French gov­ern­ment has no right to tell Mus­lims or any oth­er reli­gious minor­i­ty how to inter­pret their own faith. Pres­i­dent Macron must reverse course before his nation returns to the colo­nial racism and reli­gious big­otry that haunt­ed so many Euro­pean nations for cen­turies. Pres­i­dent Macron is turn­ing ‘Lib­erté, égal­ité, fra­ter­nité’ into ‘repres­sion, inequal­i­ty and divi­sion.’ “Although France claims to uphold reli­gious free­dom, the truth is that French Mus­lims do not have the First Amend­ment pro­tec­tions enjoyed by peo­ple of faith in Amer­i­ca. It is there­fore our duty to speak out in defense of their reli­gious rights and freedoms.

Read the rest here.

The state­ment comes as Macron has pre­sent­ed the main French Islam­ic umbrel­la French Coun­cil of the Mus­lim Faith (CFCM) an ulti­ma­tum to draw up a char­ter of “repub­li­can val­ues” that must include a dec­la­ra­tion say­ing Islam in France is not a polit­i­cal move­ment and also for­bids for­eign inter­fer­ence in Mus­lim groups.

In late Octo­ber, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that CAIR had warned Mus­lims against trav­el­ing to France, say­ing they may face dan­ger and dis­crim­i­na­tion due to a broad crack­down on groups accused of radicalism.

Oth­er recent GIOR report­ing on CAIR has included:

• A mid-Novem­ber report that CAIR called on Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden to imple­ment sev­er­al civ­il rights reforms, includ­ing end­ing “dis­crim­i­na­to­ry” immi­gra­tion and vet­ting poli­cies and defund­ing anti-rad­i­cal­iza­tion ini­tia­tives.

• An ear­ly Novem­ber report that a board mem­ber of CAIR-Okla­homa was elect­ed to the Okla­homa state leg­is­la­ture in the 2020 gen­er­al election.

• A late Octo­ber report that Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty offi­cials work­ing for CAIR had authored an elec­tion vot­ing guide pos­i­tive­ly rat­ing votes by Demo­c­rat law­mak­ers, includ­ing Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Kamala Har­ris, who ear­li­er had sent let­ters of sup­port to CAIR.

The Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) is part of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a transna­tion­al Islamist net­work cov­ered by the GIOR. It describes itself as “a grass­roots civ­il rights and advo­ca­cy group” and “America’s largest Islam­ic civ­il lib­er­ties group.” It was found­ed in 1994 by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Pales­tine, part of the U.S. Hamas infra­struc­ture at that time.

For more on CAIR, go here.