A French reporter has been given police protection after fronting a documentary about the impact of radical Islam on an impoverished town in the north of the country.
Ophélie Meunier, 34, has received death threats in the wake of the documentary Zone Interdite, or ‘Restricted Zone – that aired in France on January 23 looking at the influence of hardline Islamic beliefs in the town of Roubaix, on the Belgian border.
Meunier discovered a restaurant where women were given cubicles to eat away from men, and a toy shop selling faceless dolls to comply with strict interpretations of Islam that prohibit showing facial features.
She also spoke to Amine Elbahi, 26, a Muslim lawyer from Roubaix who helped uncover the educational institution that received £53,000 of public money to teach poor children but was accused of spreading Islamic teachings instead.
Amine Elbahi spoke out against the influence of radical Islam in the film, and has now been branded an infidel and threatened with beheading. He’s also under police guard.
News that the pair have been threatened has provoked an outcry in France, where many feel the secularism on which the modern-day republic was founded is under threat from religious doctrines brought in by overseas migrants.
Emmanuel Macron, a middle-of-the-roader who’s gearing up to fight a presidential election in April where he’s likely to face off against a right-wing rival, has been accused of being too soft on immigration and of failing to protect French values.
Eric Zemmour, a far-right commentator and Emmanuel Macron rival who’s twice been convicted of hate crimes for statements about Islam, was quick to align himself with Meunier after it emerged she’d been threatened.
He tweeted, as the documentary started garnering awareness that Ophélie Meunier was in mortal danger, and that this was what happens when you show the French the Islamisation of the nation and that millions of patriots thanked her for her bravery.
In a clip shared on Zone Iterdite’s official Twitter page, an expert in radical Islam Professor Bernard Rougier holds the faceless dolls and teddy bears as he demonstrated that this was a way to show that from childhood you would be a better Muslim than others, and implies, others weren’t good or true Muslims.
And he said that it was the introduction of an ideological principle into the world of childhood and that it was particularly worrying.
This is an extremely courageous lady, but the situation is, a lot of people are too frightened to face and talk about radical Islam and how it’s being brought into our daily lives because people don’t want to be tarred with the racist tag or be cancelled, or even have to deal with the very real threat of forfeiting their lives by speaking about it.
And just to put things into perspective. Roubaix is just under 70 miles from Dover, and 154 miles from London. This is alarming.
Faceless dolls? How very morbid, but then I don’t suppose it’s any different from having faceless politicians, although some people might say that politicians aren’t faceless and that in fact, they generally have an extra one.
It’s bonkers that Muslim women aren’t permitted to show their faces, and this seems so outdated. Let’s face it, this is the 21st century, not the 14th century.
There’s no need to take any messages from any religion because religion doesn’t make you a better person. Just being a nice, polite, considerate and caring person is all that’s required.
And I actually don’t understand why people seek a better life in another country and then endeavour to transform their new country into the place they were fleeing from, it just doesn’t make any sense.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 