Fréjus, France // As French voters delivered a mid-term humiliation to Francois Hollande’s socialist government, forcing his prime minister’s resignation, elections at the weekend also revealed a remarkable phenomenon: Muslims voting with the far right, anti-immigration Front National (FN).
Marine Le Pen’s party, which took control of 11 town halls across the country, is seen by critics as anti-Islam and even racist.
The party claims to be neither. But it was previously unthinkable that French Muslims with roots in the Maghreb, other than the families of Harkis, who fought with France in the Algerian war of independence, would dream of supporting it.
Equivalents would arguably be African Americans voting for the Ku Klux Klan or British miners supporting Margaret Thatcher.
One triumphant FN mayor, Steeve Briois, who won in the northern town of Hénin-Beaumont with more than half the vote, assured a French television reporter: “We don’t eat children.”
But Ms Le Pen’s determined campaign to “de-demonise” the image of her party has not convinced everyone. Her father, Jean-Marie, the founder of the FN and notorious for Holocaust denial and anti-Islam comments, remains the party’s “president of honour”.
In the Riviera resort of Fréjus, where one of Ms Le Pen’s young supporters was the winner in second-round voting to be become mayor, there was a mixed reaction.
Riot police were on duty as tensions rose when opponents as well as well-wishers gathered after the declaration. A small group of protesters hurled insults outside the FN’s campaign office; its supporters responded by singing the French anthem, La Marseillaise.
Earlier, a group of Muslim council workers watching as media gathered outside the Fréjus town hall had explained the unexpected appeal of the FN to Maghrebins.
“People want change,” said one of them, Karim, 40, born in France but brought up in his parents’ native Algeria.
He said he knew Muslims who had voted FN but would not disclose whether he was among them, saying only: “The main left and right parties have failed them. But for many Muslims, the moves towards legalising gay marriage would be enough by itself to vote for a party like the FN that opposes it too.”
The new mayor, David Rachline, 26, insisted his party would run the town in a way that treated all 52,000 inhabitants equally “irrespective of their origins, religion, politics or social status”. He had earlier told The National he knew “quite a number” of Muslims who, sharing the FN’s concerns about France’s political and economic malaise, had promised him their votes.
In the north-eastern town of Forbach, where the FN fell short of another dramatic victory, a former miner identified as Ahmed, 53, described his attraction to Ms Le Pen’s politics.
“It might seem bizarre for an Algerian’s son,” he told the daily newspaper Aujourd’hui en France.
“But my vote is a sanction. We give far too many handouts [to foreigners] in France and not enough to the French. I wanted to see at least once what the FN would make of being in power.”
The appeal of the FN to some Muslims has previously been charted by the France 24 television network.
Farid Smahi, whose father fought with the French army in World War II but later against them as Algeria battled for freedom, told the channel a million people of Arab background voted for Ms Le Pen in the 2012 presidential elections.
Mr Smahi, a former FN official who has also worked among disadvantaged people in immigrant-dominated Parisian suburbs, believes such support comes mainly from educated or skilled Maghrebins who have arrived in France relatively recently rather than those born here. His estimates of voting patterns would be difficult if not impossible to verify.
There is more recent evidence, including blogs and YouTube clips, that confirm the surprising electoral choice made by some French Muslims. A Facebook page entitled “We are Muslims and proud to vote Marine Le Pen” has attracted nearly 1,600 “likes” in 11 months, though anti-Muslim comments have also been left by some visitors.
The appeal of the FN to Muslims should not be overstated. Many more will have been among the 36 per cent who cast no votes at all in the municipal elections, a record abstention rate.
But that is of little comfort to Mr Hollande, who yesterday reshuffled his government in recognition that the vote was, as one newspaper headline put it, a “mighty slap”.
Mr Hollande confirmed last night that his outgoing prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, would be replaced by the interior minister, Manuel Valls, whose hardline views on immigration and security appeal more to conservative voters.
Unemployment, dwindling spending power and concerns about crime and immigration have made Mr Hollande the most unpopular president in modern times. Some 170 towns of more than 9,000 inhabitants passed from left to right in Sunday’s voting, with the mainstream Gaullist opposition party, the Union for a Popular Movement, the chief beneficiary.
Anne Hidalgo, a rare success for the socialists, successfully defending left-wing control of Paris to become the capital’s first female mayor, said Mr Hollande had no choice but to act. “We need really strong changes to the entire [government] team,” she said on French radio. “What I heard during the campaign was a demand for greater efficiency.”
The advances made by the FN in several of the towns it had targeted prompted Ms Le Pen to herald the end of a simple left-right divide in France.
Her party is expected to make further progress in forthcoming European parliamentary elections, and Ms Le Pen’s eyes are increasingly fixed on a serious presidential challenge in 2017.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
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Your rights as an employee
The government has taken an increasingly tough line against companies that fail to pay employees on time. Three years ago, the Cabinet passed a decree allowing the government to halt the granting of work permits to companies with wage backlogs.
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Despite those measures, late payments remain an issue, particularly in the construction sector. Smaller contractors, such as electrical, plumbing and fit-out businesses, often blame the bigger companies that hire them for wages being late.
The authorities have urged employees to report their companies at the labour ministry or Tawafuq service centres — there are 15 in Abu Dhabi.
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Nepotism is the name of the game
Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
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The White Lotus: Season three
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