The French interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, told the National Assembly April 27 that the government would have to curb some legal rights in order to effectively fight “terrorism,” the International Herald Tribune reported. He cited the March 11 bombing of a commuter train in Spain and the recent action of a French court in overturning the expulsion of a Muslim cleric as cause for curtailing democratic rights.

De Villepin argued that the bombing in Spain, in which nearly 200 people were killed, underlined the need for tighter security throughout Europe. He added that if the courts stood in the way of deporting immigrants who threatened “public order,” then France would have to change its laws. De Villepin told the French legislature that “a new balance must be found between respect for the law and the imperatives of security.”

On April 21 the French government ordered the expulsion to Algeria of Muslim cleric Abdelkader Bouziane, claiming he has links to terrorist groups. A court ruled two days later that evidence presented by the government had not proven its case and that Bouziane is free to return to France.

Bouziane is an imam at the largest mosque in Vénissieux, a working-class suburb east of Lyon, the country’s second-largest urban center. In January French cops arrested six men from Vénissieux alleging they had links to al Qaeda and had planned a chemical weapons attack in Paris in 2002. Two other men from the town were taken prisoner in Afghanistan two years ago and are now being held by the U.S. government at its naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

French cops began investigating Bouziane last year after he issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for jihad against U.S. businesses and government buildings in France, reported the April 30 New York Times.

The interior ministry issued the expulsion order in February, but hesitated to act on it while prosecutors sought a legal pretext. The government then seized upon an interview published in early April in Lyon Mag in which Bouziane made reactionary statements citing the Koran as justification for the stoning of women accused of adultery and their beating by their husbands. Bouziane was expelled within days of publication of the interview.

De Villepin, who until March 31 served French imperialist interests as the foreign minister, and President Jacques Chirac said the government was motivated by concern for women’s rights. “If we have to change our law to avoid repeating this kind of case, which is unacceptable for us, we will change the law so we can expel people who say such things,” Chirac said at an April 28 news conference. “The government cannot tolerate the public statement of views that are contrary to human rights, attack the dignity of women and call for hate or violence,” de Villepin told the country’s legislators after the court overturned his order to expel the Muslim cleric.

Bouziane was the fifth Muslim cleric to be expelled from France this year on charges of “spreading a dangerously divisive brand of radical Islam,” the Times reported. Dozens have been expelled from the country since 2001.

Dalil Boubakeur, the official spokesperson for the French Council of the Muslim Faith, condemned the expulsion of Bouziane and accused Paris of treating imams as a “horde of foreign mercenaries without the slightest regard for the rule of law,” according to an April 28 Al Jazeera dispatch. Boubakeur said the attacks on mosques and anti-Muslim graffiti and comments had become increasingly common following the government’s decision to ban young women from wearing Muslim veils at school. The law will go into effect in September. He also charged that the French media had portrayed young Muslims as being primarily responsible for the rising number of anti-Semitic incidents in France.

France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, estimated at 5 million, many from French imperialism’s former colonies in North Africa. There are 1,500 imams. The interior ministry says most Muslim clerics in France are not French citizens and do not speak French. De Villepin has said that the government must help train “moderate” imams and encourage the emergence of what he called a tolerant “French Islam,” the Times reported.

France’s Muslim community has long been a favorite target in the French rulers’ drive to beef up the powers of the police and chip away at democratic rights. In 1995 a hysterical campaign against “Islamic terrorism” by French government officials and the bourgeois media was the backdrop for the launching of the Vigipirate “anti-terrorist” plan. Under the plan, heavily armed police and French soldiers were deployed in the streets, at train stations, and airports to randomly stop and search non-white immigrant workers as part of an “anti-terror” witch-hunt.  
 
 
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