Rhône-Alpes: Investigation into extremism leads to uproar

This story has been sitting on my pile for a few days, but I've yet to get to it. Instead of translating verbatim from the news, I'll try to give a quick summary.

A police officer working for the police intelligence service sent an email to the HR department of the Rhône-Alpes regional council asking if there are any non-Christian employees in the council and whether they had asked for special consideration for prayers during work hours. The story broke, the local Muslims said the request was against the secular values of the Republic and demanded a meeting with the President and the Interior Minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, ordered an investigation. Everybody apologized, the police claimed it was a private initiative and the police officer who sent the email was reprimanded and transferred to another position. The officer's police union claims that it wasn't a private initiative and is demanding an investigation.

Apparently the regional commissioner requested a report about religious proselytizm and quoted a concern of politicians about supposed increasing Muslim communitarianism. The email said it was a request from the Association of French Mayors. The mayor association denies that it made such a request. The Rhône-Alpes regional council claims other regional councils have also received similar questions.

For more info, see a summary of the story on Brussels Journal.

The email was sent as part of an investigation into extremist Muslim networks. The uproar was over the supposedly implicit "Muslims = terrorists" equation and the stigmatization of all Muslims.

Michèle Alliot-Marie is very much aware of the dangers of extremist Islam. She recently bragged about her part in developing a handbook for identifying extremist conduct among Muslim prisoners:

Then it draws up a list of 23 indicators to identify deviant conduct: besides ostentatious display of logos referencing al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb or a picture of Bin Laden on the cell walls, it includes reading certain religious works, refusing to walk with other prisoners, starting to eat together or wanting to ensure that their hours of prayers are scrupulously observed.

The email might have not been phrased in the most delicate way but it seems to have followed the minister's handbook.

Source: Le Monde, LCI (French)

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