France’s Aboubakar Cissé murder case: Islamophobia and the failings of a political class

How else to describe the murder of Aboubakar Cissé, slain with 57 stab wounds, than as the unleashing of a hatred rarely seen in France? On 25 April, Cissé, a 22-year-old Malian, was cleaning the mosque in La Grand-Combe (South of France) when he was attacked. The alleged suspect, Olivier H., filmed himself insulting his victim's religion immediately after the act. “I did it, […] your shitty Allah”, he said repeatedly.

The tragedy takes place against a backdrop of rising Islamophobia and racism in France. The murder and violence of the alleged assailant have plunged France's Muslim community into deep consternation. “What happened shatters my convictions”, says one person interviewed by Inès Belgacem for Streetpress. “If a Muslim can't feel safe in a prayer room, he can't feel safe anywhere. I'm no longer safe anywhere”

For the Muslims contacted by Belgacem, Aboubakar Cissé's death reflects the deeply unhealthy climate in France today: an increase in violence against Muslims, a spreading right-wing extremism in society, a growing recourse to Islamophobic rhetoric – notably by members of the government – quickly relayed by the media.

In Alternatives Economiques, Hervé Nathan, for his part, regrets that the tragedy has been reduced to a schoolyard feud, where the notions of Islamophobia and secularism serve little more than to pigeonhole members of different political families. “On the right, people are ‘Islamophobic’ because that provides a moral justification for their opposition to a particular (black and Arab) form of immigration. It's the subject of constant verbal identity-building. For instance just recently, when the interior minister, campaigning for the leadership of Les Républicains [a right-wing party], exclaimed: ‘À bas le voile!’  It was a way of saying: there's no bigger Islamophobe than me.”

“On the left(s), the argument is still used to define a conception of secularism, which forms a boundary between 'irreconcilable' lefts. Or, conversely, to designate those who are not truly anti-racist. To paraphrase [former President] Jacques Chirac: while the mosque is burning, we're busy shouting at each other! It's the misery of party politics.”

One public figure has received particular attention from critics: Bruno Retailleau (of Les Républicains), France's Minister of the Interior and Religious Affairs.

In Libération, Daniel Schneidermann catalogues the criticisms levelled at “France's top cop”:

“That Cissé's murder by some fifty stab wounds, in a mosque, to cries of 'Ton Allah de merde', was first described as Islamophobic by [Retailleau] only as 'one lead among others'; that the minister waited forty-eight hours to travel to the Gard, preferring to honour with his presence two internal LR election rallies and the Pope's funeral; [...] that he refused to receive the victim's family, claiming that it was difficult to find 'the real family' of a young man 'in an irregular situation', when he had just met the family's lawyer in the corridors of BFM: all are signs that a young Muslim stabbed in a mosque is not a real victim, that he is only entitled to the back-door entrance, that the family will only be entitled to official condolences after it is checked that his papers are in order.”

Retailleau was the focus of fresh criticism just a few days after Cissé's murder, when he published Ne rien céder: manifeste contre l'islamisme, a transcript of his speech as interior minister in which he defends his very right-wing political project, inveighing against “wokism”, the use of the term “islamophobia”, the rule of law, the left, and so on.

This coincidence of timing was not lost on Richard Godin in Le Nouvel Obs. He echoes the criticisms levelled at Retailleau for the minister’s role in the current political climate. “Suspected of playing down the violence suffered by French Muslims, Bruno Retailleau is also accused by the left of participating in the rise of anti-Muslim racism.” Godin notes that Retailleau promises in his text to differentiate between Muslim faith and “Islamist hatred”, while posing as a defender of religious freedom and public safety in France, but that his mission remains unfulfilled “for representatives of Muslim institutions, who on Tuesday 29 April complained to Emmanuel Macron about the ‘ambient climate of Islamophobia’ and called on him to take ‘concrete action’ to protect them.”

Bruno Retailleau's stance is easily explained: he was running for the leadership of Les Républicains. The prospect of ascending to this position (and the springboard it offers) puts a new gloss on the succession of declarations by the minister and Laurent Wauquiez (already mentioned in my previous press review), the other candidate for the party presidency. For Euractiv, Laurent Geslin details the two conservatives' strategy. It is to tap into the rhetoric of the far right to win back votes. Retailleau ultimately won the leadership vote with 74.31% against his opponent's 25.69%, putting him in a stronger position for a potential presidential bid. But the battle is far from over.

“I don't think the strategy of attracting voters to traditional conservatism will work”, explains Mathieu Gallard, research director at the IPSOS polling institute, interviewed by Geslin. “At best, it could halt the decline of LR seen in the last elections, perhaps attracting a few disillusioned Macron supporters.”

“The risk for LR is clear”, Geslin goes on. “If the party fails to recapture [Rassemblement National] voters, it could face further fragmentation and even political irrelevance, leaving the far right as the dominant force on the French right for years to come.” Geslin also notes the existence of a similar rapprochement between the traditional right and the far right at European level. That “alternative majority” exposes the traditional right to the risk of a new dependence on European radicals.

It is a “vicious circle”, says Jon Henley in The Guardian: in the hope of winning back votes from the far right, traditional parties are indiscriminately adopting its positions. Yet “[some] political scientists say electoral and polling evidence from many countries strongly suggests that, for mainstream centre-right parties, the process of accommodation merely results in their being ‘cannibalised’ by the far right”. After all, why vote for the copy when you can have the original?

The far right does not formally govern every country in Europe. But by dominating the sphere of ideas and thus influencing the policies of traditional parties and the ambient media discourse – which can end in the politicization of tragedies such as the Aboubakar Cissé murder case – it is proving that in some respects, it has already won.