An AFP article, appearing in Le Point.fr, reports on interviews with both Muslim and non-Muslim Parisians, revealing a stunned community, struggling with anger and a sense of powerlessness. Article source: "Charlie Hebdo : les musulmans de Paris ont peur", AFP, Le Point.fr, 09/01/2015.
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On Boulevard de Belleville in the North East of Paris, not far from the little Abu Bakr mosque, and a stone’s throw from the Charlie Hebdo offices where 12 people were gunned down in cold blood by two men shouting “Allahu Akbar”, discussions are well under way.
Kamel, a painter, who prefers not to reveal his surname, is “dismayed”. He arrived from Algeria in 1992, fleeing the Islamist violence he had experienced in his home country. It feels to him as though history is repeating itself, a painful sentiment made all the more bitter by a sense that he is under suspicion. “I can see it in the eyes of the people I pass in the street. I get the impression I’m being accused,” as a Muslim, he says.
Adil, a 19-year-old cook with a child-like face but a penetrating gaze, admits to being “scared”. “This isn’t what Islam is about. I’m shocked, really shocked,” he says. “I’m going to demonstrate this Sunday but my parents don’t want me to go out at night,” he adds, citing the attacks on mosques and the anti-Muslim violence spreading in France since the terrorist attacks.
The tension is palpable outside the Omar Mosque at the bottom of the rue de Belleville. When a journalist turns up, people look away, frowning, “No, we don’t want to talk to you, journalists always change what people say,” a man remarks.
#JesuisAhmed
Speaking on the phone, Chabbar Taheij, the president of the association Foi & Pratique (Faith and Practice), which runs the Omar Mosque, doesn’t hesitate to “totally and utterly condemn” this attack. “The people who did this are not representative of Islam,” he insists. But that has not belayed the suspicions of everybody interviewed.
“At the takeaway I work in near Saint-Michel, I overheard some of my colleagues - most of them from the Comoros Islands (a French overseas territory near Madagascar, ed.) – saying how pleased they were when they learned about the attacks. They were coming out with things like, “they got what they deserved, they insulted the Prophet,” reveals Claudine (who certainly does not want her surname to be known), a woman interviewed by AFP in the Place de la République on the night of the attack.
Amine Guellil, a 47 year-old estate agent, does what he can to dispel the preconceptions that affect a large proportion of the community, lumping ordinary Muslims in with Islamist extremists. “A good Muslim doesn’t shoot at anybody. The people who did that can’t be Muslims,” he says.
Here he touches on a crucial detail that has stunned several of the people AFP have spoken to: one of the victims was a Muslim. Ahmed Merabet, a 42 year-old policeman, was casually slaughtered by the terrorists. On Twitter, #jesuisAhmed has been trending alongside #jesuisCharlie, and the young policeman is set to become as much of a hero as the murdered cartoonists.
This is the main reason why Amine, who claims himself to have been a police officer in Algeria, prefers to believe in some kind of “plot” carried out by “trained military professionals,” rather than an act committed by a “Muslim”. “I’m not buying it for a second. Have you seen how he was holding his weapon? It was the work of a professional. There’s no way that was just some Muslim,” he insists. “You don’t kill Ahmed to avenge Muhammad.”
Translation by Justine Minard, Manon Divet and Magalie Langue
Editing by Sam Trainor