The murder and beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in France last week was appalling. It must not be used to deepen Islamophobia and racism.
Paty had shown his school class an image produced by the Charlie Hebdo magazine of a naked caricature of Mohammed. He had told Muslim children to turn their backs or leave the room
It was rightly seen as an insult. Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Anzonov then killed Paty.
Now official French society, drenched in Islamophobia, has seen a chance to step up its institutional racism.
A wave of hypocrisy about “free speech” has followed. Macron—the brutaliser and blinder of Yellow Vest protesters and the initiator of imperialist wars in Africa—says he is for freedom.
He adds that the killing proves the need for his new law on Islamic “separatism”. This includes a host of measures where Muslims are treated differently to others.
The right, except for the fascists, backed Macron. Marine Le Pen’s fascists want to go much further. Disgracefully most of the left—from the Socialist Party to Jean-Luc Melenchon of France Unbowed—have also swallowed “national unity” with a racist, anti working class state.
Melenchon attacked the whole Chechen community.
This horrific murder must not be seized upon to deepen the Islamophobia and state repression that are the context in which it happened.
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