Far-right activist Patrick Garden has sparked outrage in France after his recently published statements calling for the “extermination” of Muslims during a television broadcast on a French channel.
On Saturday, October 1, 2022, an account on behalf of “Kamil Abderrahman” tweeted a video clip of a far-right activist and attached it to the phrase: “He has a real problem with Islam as a religion and the Quran as a book of heaven.” The video shows Gardin downplaying the killing of dozens of Muslims in a 2019 attack on two mosques in New Zealand that killed 49 Muslim worshipers. Garden compared the victims of the two attacks on mosques to the victims of the so-called Paris attacks in 2015, in which 137 people were injured in attacks on the Bataclan theater, the Stade de France neighborhood and the suburb of Saint-Denis.
Donc ya un mec qui a clairement fait l’apologie du touriste et un appel au meurte des musulmans en direct sur #TPMP et t’as geraldine maillet qui dit: “faut le comprendre, il a perdu sa fille…”. Leur islamophobie de comptoir n’est plus is acceptable!!! @Cyrilhanoua rice.twitter.com/x0xBEs7Amh
— Kamil Abderrahman (@kamilabderrahmn) September 30, 2022
Through this comparison, the far right tried to support the New Zealand terrorist on the basis that “we should not do to others what we ourselves reject, in a message to Muslims who rejected the terrorist attack on two mosques.” “Here in the Bataclan, 137 people were killed, and there 49 people,” He then shook His head, downplaying the Muslim victims.
He is also “thank God” because there is still a Jewish community in France and it has not been completely Islamized, “despite the efforts of some to do so,” he said.
The far-right activist’s statements sparked outrage among Muslims in France and Europe in general due to angry backlash on social media, while some questioned whether the statements were made by a Muslim against Christians or people of other religions.
According to media reports, Garden’s statements coincide with the closure of a new mosque by the French authorities just a few days ago, on September 29, after accusing the imam of extremism. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanian tweeted that we have closed 23 mosques over the past two years on suspicion of “separatist activity.”
On January 24, a special commission in the French National Assembly (Parliament) approved the controversial draft “Principles for Strengthening Respect for the Values of the Republic”, which was first defined as “the fight against separatist Islam.” While the bill is facing criticism for, for example, targeting Muslims in France, almost putting restrictions on every aspect of their lives and seeking to show some things that rarely happen as if they were a chronic problem. It provides for the establishment of control over mosques and associations responsible for their management, and control over the financing of Muslim public organizations, as well as the restriction of the freedom of families to educate their children at home, in countries where the wearing of the veil is prohibited in pre-university educational institutions.
