Nagib Azergui used to be hopeful that the racism he experienced growing up in a Paris suburb was on its way out. In Emmanuel Macron, the country was getting a president who would heal divisions, an “anti-Trump leader.”
The head of France’s only Muslim political party now says he was wrong. Macron has called Islam a religion in crisis and has moved to shut down mosques accused of spreading hatred. Last week, his government introduced a draft law to fight “separatism,” a term he’s coined for groups that don’t integrate and are susceptible to extremism.
“Muslims are tired of being used by politicians as scapegoats to deflect attention away from real problems,” said Azergui, 41, an engineer of Moroccan descent from Nanterre.
Azergui can’t claim to represent the country’s Muslims—his group still only has about 1,000 members and in last year’s European elections it gained just 0.13% of the vote. But Macron’s policies have reinvigorated his goal of fighting Islamophobia and encouraging citizens of his religion to stop being “invisible.”
France’s president has cultivated an image abroad as a defender of liberalism since coming to power in 2017 in contrast to leaderships in the U.S., Britain and eastern Europe. Yet at home he’s been courting conservatives after a series of horrific attacks by Islamic radicals and that risks alienating a Muslim population that may be heterogeneous but also represents France’s second biggest religious group after Catholicism.
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Nagib Azergui is concerned the crackdown will backfire and drive more youngsters to extremism.
Photographer: Jacques Demarthon/AFP/Getty Images
As campaigning for the 2022 presidential election unofficially gets underway, there’s a growing sense of betrayal within France’s 5.6 million-strong Muslim community, the overwhelming majority of whom are integrated and reject terrorism.
Macron hasn’t said whether he’ll run again, but he’s clearly positioning himself as the law-and-order candidate in an election that’s likely to pit him against far-right leader Marine le Pen.
Attacks by extremists have left about 250 people dead since 2015, including a teacher beheaded in October for opening a classroom debate on freedom of speech and cartoons of Prophet Muhammed.
Part of the French president’s plan entails creating an “Islam of Enlightenment” and while he has repeatedly insisted that Muslims shouldn’t be stigmatized, his assertion that the religion is in crisis upset many Muslims in France.
As did his appointment of Gerald Darmanin, a hardliner, as interior minister in a recent cabinet shuffle. His prime minister, Jean Castex, meanwhile has dismissed the idea of making amends for France’s colonization of regions including in North Africa and the Sahel, from where many of its Muslims can trace their roots.
France’s Muslim community is broad and opinions are hard to pin down because of restrictions on collecting ethnic and religious statistics.
The country’s aspiration for universalism and integration makes it harder for those who identify with any religion from entering public life, said Hakim El Karoui, a fellow at Paris-based think tank Institut Montaigne. Polls commissioned by Journal du Dimanche, a French weekly newspaper, and Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine targeted in a 2015 terrorist attack, last year showed that 60% of French deem Islam incompatible with the values of the Republic, with almost half of French Muslims under 25 sharing that view.
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Hakim El Karoui is himself a poster child of success in France.
Photographer: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images
“Society puts Muslims in a double bind,” said El Karoui. “Speak up, but also, don’t show your religion in public.”
El Karoui is himself a poster child of success in France, and said Islam represents a link to his family’s roots. His mother is Protestant, his father a Muslim of Tunisian origin. He’s an ex-banker whose time at Rothschild coincided with Macron’s. Two of his uncles were ministers in Tunisia before the uprising that sparked the Arab Spring. El Karoui served as an adviser to former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
In his elegant office in Paris’s business district, El Karoui thinks France’s integration system ultimately works well, citing as an example a high rate of mixed marriages. He advocates the creation of a body that would raise funds to encourage Muslims to fund research and train imams.
“After every terrorist attack, discrimination against Muslims jumps,” he said. “What I’m telling them is: It’s not your fault, but now it’s in your interest to get organized.”
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Friday prayers at the Grand Mosque of Paris. President Macron’s assertion that the religion is in crisis upset many Muslims in France.
Photographer: Zakaria Abdelkafi/AFP/Getty Images
The trouble is that when they try to do that, they can run into problems. Fatima Bent is the president of the feminist, anti-racist group Lallab. It describes itself as “pro-choice” on issues from abortion to the veil, but has been accused of being close to the Muslim Brotherhood. When it was set up in 2016, a bank even rejected its application to open an account.
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Fatima Bent’s organizing to help Muslim women share their stories.
Source: Fatima Bent
Bent said she worries most about police violence, which quietly affected Muslims in the suburbs, or “banlieues,” for a long time before entering the public eye more recently. She’s critical of a law provision once pushed by Macron that would have made it harder to share videos of police abuse.
Muslim voters are disappointed by the parties on the political left, which they have tended to support, Bent said. That’s when they don’t abstain.
While Azergui tries to get people behind his Union of French Muslim Democrats, which he founded eight years ago after former President Nicolas Sarkozy began a debate on national identity and immigration, Bent is betting on local initiatives. She’s organizing to help Muslim women share their stories.
“I can’t believe we’re still asked whether Islam is compatible with secularism when we have millions of French Muslims at peace with these two identities, and living peacefully,” Bent said. “The government’s rhetoric is dangerous, it’s widening the rift of ‘them’ against us.”
According to the draft law on “separatism” published on Dec. 9, there will be stricter punishments for those who promote hatred online and threaten civil servants, including teachers. It neither explicitly mentioned Islam nor Muslims.
Doctors who provide “virginity certificates” will also be targeted and scrutiny of the funding of religious associations increased. Home-schooling for kids older than three, meanwhile, will be restricted in a bid to prevent clandestine religious schools. Macron also wants to end the ghettoization of city suburbs and support their residents, though he has yet to unveil firm proposals to do so.
Azergui is concerned the crackdown will backfire and drive more youngsters to extremism. He defends an interpretation of France’s secularism, known as “laicite,” whereby all faiths are respected but kept private, though he’d like women to be allowed to wear veils wherever they want.
Since 2004, the wearing of religious signs has been prohibited in French schools, a ban backed by 44% of Muslims, according to a recent Ifop poll. While the veil may be worn elsewhere, women who do so and take on public responsibilities are often criticized as promoting a sexist symbol, including by government members.
“When Macron speaks about separatism, he deliberately focuses on Islamism rather than on Corsican separatists, or wealthy people building a life on the margins,” said Azergui. “We’re an easy target.”
The New Brunswick Liberal Party has won a majority government, and Susan Holt will become the first woman to lead the province.
Here’s the latest from election night. All times are ADT.
10:15 p.m.
The results of the New Brunswick election are in, and with virtually all of the ballots counted, the Liberals won 31 seats out of 49.
The Progressive Conservatives won 16 seats.
The Green Party won two.
Voter turnout was about 66 per cent.
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10 p.m.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has congratulated New Brunswick Liberal Leader Susan Holt for her party’s victory in the provincial election.
Trudeau says on the X platform he’s looking forward to working with Holt to build more homes, protect the country’s two official languages, and improve health care.
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9:48 p.m.
During her victory speech tonight in Fredericton, New Brunswick premier-designate Susan Holt thanked all the women who came before her.
Holt will become the first woman to lead the province after her party won a majority government in the New Brunswick election.
The Liberals are elected or leading in 31 of 49 ridings.
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9:30 p.m.
Blaine Higgs says he will begin a transition to replace him as leader of the Progressive Conservatives.
After being in power for six years, the Tories lost the election to the Liberals.
Higgs, who lost his seat of Quispamsis, says, “My leadership days are over.”
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9:17 p.m.
The Canadian Press is projecting that Blaine Higgs, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick since 2016, has lost in the riding of Quispamsis.
Higgs, 70, has been premier of New Brunswick since 2018, and was first elected to the legislature in 2010.
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8:45 p.m.
When asked about the election results, Progressive Conservative chief of staff Paul D’Astous says that over the last 18 months the party has had to contend with a number of caucus members who disagreed with its policy.
D’Astous says the Tories have also had to own what happened over the last six years, since they came to power in 2018, adding that the voters have spoken.
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8:39 p.m.
The Canadian Press is projecting that David Coon, leader of the New Brunswick Green Party, has won the riding of Fredericton Lincoln.
Coon, 67, has been leader of the party since 2014, the year he was first elected to the legislature.
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8:36 p.m.
The Canadian Press is projecting that the New Brunswick Liberal Party has won a majority government in the provincial election.
Party leader Susan Holt will become the first woman premier in the province’s history.
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8:20 p.m.
Early returns show a number of close races across the province, with the Liberals off to an early lead.
Liberal campaign manager Katie Davey says the results will show whether party leader Susan Holt, a relative newcomer, was able to capture the attention and trust of the people of New Brunswick.
Davey says she believes voters have welcomed Holt and her message, which focused on pocketbook issues, especially health care.
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8 p.m.
Polls have closed.
Eyes will be on a number of key ridings including Fredericton South-Silverwood, where Liberal Leader Susan Holt is vying for a seat; Saint John Harbour, which has been competitive between the Tories and Liberals in recent elections; and Moncton East, a redrawn Tory-held riding that the Liberals have targeted.
At dissolution, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Greens had three, there was one Independent and there were four vacancies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
FREDERICTON – A look at Susan Holt, premier-designate and leader of the New Brunswick Liberal party.
Born: April 22, 1977.
Early years: Raised in Fredericton, she attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and then spent a year in Toronto before moving abroad for three years, spending time in Australia and India.
Education: Earned a bachelor of arts in economics and a bachelor of science in chemistry from Queen’s University.
Family: Lives in Fredericton with her husband, Jon Holt, and three young daughters.
Hobbies: Running, visiting the farmers market in Fredericton with her family every Saturday.
Before politics: CEO of the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce, CEO of the New Brunswick Business Council, civil servant, business lobbyist, advocate, consultant and executive with an IT service company that trains and employs Indigenous people.
Politics: Worked as an adviser to former Liberal premier Brian Gallant. Won the leadership of the provincial Liberal party in August 2022 and was elected to the legislature in an April 2023 byelection.
Quote: “We don’t take it lightly that you have put your trust in myself and my team, and you have hope for a brighter future. But that hope I know is short-lived and it will be on us to deliver authentically, on the ground, and openly and transparently.” — Susan Holt, in her speech to supporters in Fredericton after the Liberals won a majority government on Oct. 21, 2024.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick voters have elected a Liberal majority government, tossing out the incumbent Progressive Conservatives after six years in power and handing the reins to the first woman ever to lead the province.
Liberal Leader Susan Holt is a relative newcomer to the province’s political scene, having won a byelection last year, eight months after she became the first woman to win the leadership of the party.
The Liberals appeared poised to take 31 of 49 seats to the Conservatives’ 16 and the Greens two.
Holt, 47, led the Liberals to victory after a 33-day campaign, thwarting Blaine Higgs’s bid to secure a third term as Tory premier.
The Liberal win marks a strong repudiation of Higgs’s pronounced shift to more socially conservative policies.
Higgs, meanwhile, lost in his riding of Quispamsis. In a speech to supporters in the riding, he confirmed that he would begin a leadership transition process.
As the Liberals secured their majority, Green Party Leader David Coon thanked his supporters and pledged to continue building the party, but he then turned his sights on the premier. “One thing is for sure,” he told a crowd gathered at Dolan’s Pub in Fredericton, “we know that Blaine Higgs is no longer the premier of this province.”
The election race was largely focused on health care and affordability but was notable for the remarkably dissimilar campaign styles of Holt and Higgs. Holt repeatedly promised to bring a balanced approach to governing, pledging a sharp contrast to Higgs’s “one-man show taking New Brunswick to the far right.”
“We need a government that acts as a partner and not as a dictator from one office in Fredericton,” she said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.
Higgs focused on the high cost of living, promising to lower the provincial harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent — a pledge that will cost the province about $450 million annually.
Holt spent much of the campaign rolling out proposed fixes for a health-care system racked by a doctor shortage, overcrowded emergency rooms and long wait-times. A former business advocate and public servant, she promised to open 30 community health clinics across the province by 2028; remove the provincial sales tax from electricity bills; overhaul mental health services; and impose a three per cent cap on rent increases by 2025.
The 70-year-old Tory leader, a mechanical engineer and former Irving Oil executive, led a low-key campaign, during which he didn’t have any scheduled public events on at least 10 days — and was absent from the second leaders debate on Oct. 9.
Holt missed only two days of campaigning and submitted a 30-page platform with 100 promises, a far heftier document than the Tories’ two-page platform that includes 11 pledges.
When the election was called on Sept. 19, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Green Party had three, there was one Independent and four vacancies. At least 25 seats are needed for a majority.
Higgs was hoping to become the first New Brunswick premier to win three consecutive elections since Liberal Frank McKenna won his third straight majority in 1995. But it was clear from the start that Higgs would have to overcome some big obstacles.
On the first day of the campaign, a national survey showed he had the lowest approval rating of any premier in the country. That same morning, Higgs openly mused about how he was perceived by the public, suggesting people had the wrong idea about who he really is.
“I really wish that people could know me outside of politics,” he said, adding that a sunnier disposition might increase his popularity. “I don’t know whether I’ve got to do comedy hour or I’ve got to smile more.”
Still, Higgs had plenty to boast about, including six consecutive balanced budgets, a significant reduction in the province’s debt, income tax cuts and a booming population.
Higgs’s party was elected to govern in 2018, when the Tories formed the province’s first minority government in almost 100 years. In 2020, he called a snap election — marking the first province to go to the polls during the COVID-19 pandemic — and won a slim majority.
Since then, 14 Tory caucus members have stepped down after clashing with the premier, some of them citing what they described as an authoritarian leadership style and a focus on conservative policies that represented a hard shift to the right.
A caucus revolt erupted last year after Higgs announced changes to the gender identity policy in schools. When several Tory lawmakers voted for an external review of the change, Higgs dropped dissenters from cabinet. A bid by some party members to trigger a leadership review went nowhere.
Higgs has also said a Tory government would reject all new applications for supervised drug-consumption sites, renew a legal challenge against the federal carbon pricing scheme and force people into drug treatment if authorities deem they “pose a threat to themselves or others.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
