Turkish state media is reporting the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has warned Muslims against traveling to France, saying they may face danger and discrimination there. According to the article:
The country’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization issued a travel advisory on its website “amid the French government’s ‘hypocritical and dangerous’ campaign of Islamophobic bigotry targeting French Muslims, mosques and Islamic organizations.” It cited a racist stabbing attack on two Muslim women in Paris and legal prohibitions on religious attire. In a statement, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad called on the French government to end its “irrational, illegal and hypocritical campaign of bigotry against its own citizens.” “Everyone in France should have the right to practice their religion, and everyone around the world has the right to decide which products they purchase,” said Awad. French President Emmanuel Macron recently sparked outrage across the Muslim world by accusing French Muslims of “separatism” and describing Islam as “a religion in crisis.”
Read the rest here.
The warning comes as several Arab nations and Turkey are condemning French President Emmanuel Macron after he proposed legislation to tackle Islamist separatism in the country and also honored a slain history teacher who was murdered after showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class. In a recently televised speech, Turkish President Erdogan urged world leaders to protect Muslims against potential oppression in France and called for a boycott of the country’s goods, accusing it of having an “anti-Islam agenda”. French products have already been removed from some of the shops in Kuwait, Jordan, and Qatar.
After the terrorist attack against the French history teacher in mid-October, the French government ordered a crackdown on groups accused of radicalism, carrying out dozens of raids and temporarily shutting down mosques. The Global Influence Operations Report (GIOR) has reported that, as part of this crackdown, the French interior minister indicated he wants to dissolve the Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France, an Islamist influence operation with multiple relationships to organizations that are part of the Global Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, a transnational Islamist network covered by the GIOR.
The GIOR has also reported that the Council of European Muslims (CEM) issued a statement criticizing President Macron for his speech on combating Islamist radicalism held in early October.
The Council of American-Islamic Relations describes itself as “a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group and as “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group.” CAIR 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.
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