The French Government announced the dissolution of its largest anti-Islamophobia NGO, ordered raids on dozens of mosques, declared a ban on all homeschooling and shut its only Muslim school – all in the space of a fortnight. The draconian measures are in line with a new bill presented by President Emmanuel Macron last month in a pledge to fight “Islamist separatism” in the wake of a spate of terror attacks this fall which claimed four lives, including that of schoolteacher Samuel Paty.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, announced the closure of mosques whose “discourse runs counter to our values. He also vowed to ban homeschooling to save children “who are outside the scope of the republic” and the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), an “enemy of the Republic.”

The move to shut CCIF came after a meeting of the Council of Ministers. Under French law, the council can dissolve any organization by decree, without requiring prior judicial scrutiny. “Whatever its intention, this measure risks further stigmatizing Muslims in France,” said Human Rights Watch’s Western Europe researcher, Kartik Raj.

The CCIF leadership says it has been baselessly implicated in the killing of the schoolteacher and slandered by the French establishment. In a statement, CCIF said, “No anti-racist association has ever received such treatment in France.

The accusation against us is, unfortunately, an extreme illustration of what many Muslims suffer in France: the suspicion of solidarity with terrorists when they are silent and the accusation of hypocritical concealment (taqiyya) when speaking.

Contine reading at: The Muslim News