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Sat, Dec 3, 2011 | Edited by Crethi Plethi

French minister of Arab origin: “There is no such thing as moderate Islam”

A French junior minister said in an interview published Saturday there was no such thing as moderate Islam, calling recent election successes by Islamist parties in Egypt [Muslim Brotherhood], Morocco [Justice and Development Party] and Tunisia [Ennahda party] “worrying”.

Jeannette Bougrab, Secretary of State responsible for Youth, made the remarks during an interview with “LeParisian” — a French daily newspaper — adding that the Islamists have stolen the recent revolutions in the Arab World.

As a daughter of a harki — Algerian Muslims who served as auxiliaries in the French army during the Algerian War from 1954 to 1962 — she has learned to appreciate Western attitudes and values and French metropolitan lifestyle. Not surprisingly she is opposing the rise of Islamism in the Middle East after the recent Arab Upheavals.

“It is very worrying,” she said. “I do not know of moderate Islamism. We should not believe those who present themselves — or want to be qualified as — ‘moderate’?”

For Bougrab equality is not a concept, but a necessity.

The rule of law is measured…on the degree or respect for the rights of women and I don’t accept the idea that we can base a constitution on Sharia law, because such a religious system is fundamentally unequal. Democracy is not a supermarket where we can take only what we like….there are no half measures with sharia…I am a lawyer and you can make all the theological, literal or fundamental interpretations of it that you like but law based on sharia is inevitably a restriction on freedom, including freedom of conscience, because apostasy is prohibited. It is not possible to convert. Mixed marriages are not recognized. A Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim. In the eyes of some, it may not be of importance if the women must now be veiled or if tomorrow they no longer have the same rights. Not for me. I do not compromise on this issue of legal equality.”

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe recently called for dialogue with ‘Islamist’ parties as long as they respect certain democratic criteria, including the rule of law and women’s rights. Asked what she thinks of the French Middle East diplomacy, she answers

“I am not the minister of foreign affairs. I am responding as a private citizen, as a French woman of Arab origin. I know the price the Algerian people paid — who remained on the other side of the Mediterranean — particularly at the time of Islamic terrorism [by Islamist terror groups like the FIS and GIA] that has left more than 200,000 dead in Algeria.”

Jeannette Bougrab was born on August 26, 1973, and is of French and Algerian origin. She is trained as a jurist and she was in charge of the Halde, the high authority for the fight against discrimination and racial inequality.

Bougrab agrees that ousted Tunisian president Ben Ali and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak used the Islamist “threat” to win the backing from Western democracies, but she added, “We shouldn’t fall into the opposite extreme.”

“In Egypt, we have seen the use of violence against the Coptic Christians. Today, on the Tahrir Square, women are assaulted because they are women….Me, I shall never support an Islamist party. Never. On behalf of the women who have died, of all those who were killed, including in Algeria or Iran, for example, because they did not wear the veil….Now they are having elections, but the choice should not be between the dictators and the Islamists, between the plague and cholera…. and sometimes dictatorship is coming from the polls.”

Bougrab also hit out at the 30 percent of Tunisians living in France who had voted for Ennahda in last month’s polls.

“Yes and this shows a true failure. While the young people in Tunisia have risked their lives for freedom, the conservative ‘Islamist’ forces in France stole their revolution too. I am shocked that those who have rights and freedoms here gave their votes to an Islamist religious party. I think of those who, in their country, have been arrested, tortured and defended their beliefs,” she said.