Page - 125 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Souley Hassane | Mainstream Media vs. Ethnic Minority Media 125 point of denying one’s own deep convictions.” This statement provoked intense indignation on the part of the Muslim communities in France. Oumma.com, also target of this affront, responded in this way: “This injurious statement is unacceptable from the mouth of the founder and editor of an important French weekly, who displays, proclaims and justifies his visceral racism against Muslims. This is all the more unacceptable in that it is participating in a frightening and intolerable banalization of Islamophobia, whose backdrop is the hatred of Arab-Muslim populations.” Claude Imbert was the next person to inaugurate a series of Islamophobic or Arabophobic phrases and expressions, engaging in behavior which, up to this point, had been exclusively reserved for the extreme right. Such phrases have been extremely successful in the media sphere, sparking audience interest while leaving the collective conscience cold. They are not uttered involuntarily; on the contrary, their authors are well aware of their media impact. Fath Allah Mezianne says (Mezziane 2003), “Mr. Imbert is unconcerned with the possibility of sanctions, reprobation or condemnation. His Islamophobia is respectable, coming, as it does from on high. He is opposed to the vulgar and impolite racism of the French low-culture bistros.” The counterattacks of Oumma.com are, in every case, without concession. Its journalists read and re-read the editorials of Claude Imbert in which he congratulated the Italien pamphleteer Oriana Fallaci. Le Point published a dozen pages of these scathing articles. It was the thing of the moment. In a 10- page spread, Le Point represented her as “the woman who said no to Islam” (Le Point, May 24, 2002). Oumma.com published protests of the MRAP and of the Muslim Youth of France. The editors share the viewpoint of their readers and religious colleagues. The same effect is produced when Alain Finkelkraut explains “the ethno- religious causes of the riots in the depressed suburbs” in the Israeli journal Haaretz, when Hélène Carrère D’Encausse identifies their cause in polygamy, and when Georges Frêche, president of the Regional Council of Languedoc- Roussillon speaks of the Harkis (Algerian soldiers who fought on the French side) as “subhuman”. Of course, this train of thought is only reinforced when Sarkozy, in his quest for power, calls the youth of the poor neighborhoods “scum” to be best handled with “a pressurized water gun”, etc. This verbal abuse was a source of anxiety and disquiet for the targeted populations, for such words directly counteract the integration of the groups into French society. Moreover, these statements were not at all justified by any actions of Muslims in France. What would the media have written if France had been the victim of a terrorist act? Was there not perhaps an orchestrated need for scandals, provocations, discord and flagrant offences? Without Oumma.com, the reactions to these allegations and instances of defamation