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After beheading a teacher: dozens of Islamists arrested in France
After the brutal murder of a French teacher, Head of State Emmanuel Macron and the central government are stepping up their crackdown on radical Islamism.
As Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Monday on the Europe 1 radio station, there were numerous police operations against “dozens of people” from the radicalized milieu. Operations of this type should continue in the coming days. He will also propose the prohibition of two associations that are hostile to the republic, said the department head.
47-year-old history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded Friday in a northwestern Paris suburb on the street. The 18-year-old suspect with Russian-Chechen roots was shot and killed by police. Shortly after the fact, he bragged on the internet and wrote that the educator had looked down on the prophet Muhammad.
The teacher had shown Muhammad cartoons in class on the subject of freedom of expression. Then, the father of a schoolgirl mobilized massively against him online. Immediately after the crime, Macron spoke of an act of Islamist terrorism.
Interior Minister Darmanin said the father who had mobilized against the teacher online and others had “issued a fatwa against the teacher.” There is no other word. In Islam, a fatwa is legal information to clarify a religious or legal problem. The term made negative headlines around the world when Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death threat against British writer Salman Rushdie for blasphemy in 1989.
According to the media, French counterterrorism investigators detained eleven people to obtain more information about the suspect. Investigators also want to know if the killer may have had sponsors.
The death of the pedagogue Paty affects all of France, which has been rocked by Islamist terrorism for years. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets on Sunday under the slogan “Je suis Samuel” or “Je suis Prof” (“I am a teacher”) to defend freedom of expression. More than 250 people have died in Islamist terrorist attacks in recent years.
A defense council chaired by Macrons decided on Sunday night to improve security in the school area. As Elysian circles reported, online platforms also need to be monitored more intensively in order to be able to intervene more quickly in case of calls for violence. The attack sparked a wide political debate. Macron’s archenemy, the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen, said that “the extermination of Islamism on French soil” was a must.
Macron had already announced in a speech earlier in the month that he would take stronger action against “radical Islamism.” Try to establish a parallel society with different values in the country. Macron announced at the time that it would be easier for the authorities to dissolve clubs in the future. Interior Minister Darmanin says he wants to dissolve the CCIF (Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France) and the associations of the city of Baraka. CCIF resisted even before the announcement via Twitter that there was a hate campaign against the organization. (sda / dpa)
