They marched through the narrow streets of Lyon’s medieval old town, about three dozen of them, emboldened by the victory of the French far-right in the European elections. Masks covering their faces, they walked past the hidden passageways that provided cover for the resistance during World War II, chanting: “We are the fucking Nazis” and “Islam Outside Europe.”
For some in this French city, last week’s far-right demonstrations, captured on video, was a chilling reminder of how much is at stake early parliamentary elections which could see France’s far-right government in charge.
“The consequences would be catastrophic,” said Kamel Kabtane, head of the French Institute of Muslim Civilization, founded in 2017 to promote intercultural dialogue in Lyon. “For Francefor all citizens of this country and in particular for the Muslim community.
Polls point to far-right, anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) is on course to win the election but will not get a majority. “We are confronting those who object to our very presence in this country,” Kabtane said in his office at the institute, located on the tree-lined outskirts of the city. “And they’re going to do everything they can to make our lives difficult.”
France is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe, with appreciated 6 million people who profess Islam or have a Muslim background. The community also ranks among the most established in Europe with families who have spent The more as five generations building a life that combines French and Muslim traditions.
Kabtane was among those who started sounding the alarm, rallying Muslims to vote in the snap election after the European Parliament vote saw the RN take more than 30% of the vote in France. “[RN’s] the discourse is built on foreigners, immigrants and on the practice of Islam in France,” he said.
It is clear that the RN sees France where motto “liberté, égalité, fraternité” seems to apply only to some, he said. “Will we have the freedom to practice our religion tomorrow? Will we be equal? And shall the principle of brotherhood continue, or shall we be removed, as some wish?’
In front of a shopping center in Lyon, which ranks among the largest in Europe, Seyda Demer criticized politicians for being short on ideas but very discriminatory. “You watch their interviews and they don’t say anything about the environment or basic rights,” said the 14-year-old girl. “They only talk about Muslims and the rights they want to take away from them.
Her assessment came as Jordan Bardella, president of the RN, pledged the party would work towards an eventual ban on headscarves in public and called on France to give him a majority so he can drastically reduce immigration.
Formed in the early 1970s as the National Front, among the founders of the RN was Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was convicted three times for challenging crimes against humanity, in the third instance, after dismissing the Holocaust as a “detail” of history.
Riddled with anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist views, the party has long been seen as a danger to democracy. While Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie’s daughter, has spent much of the past decade working for soften the party’s image, the RN’s fury against immigrants and Muslims in particular, remains the party’s calling card.
The group had before called for a ban on ritual slaughter – which would effectively ban halal and kosher meat – while in 2015 Marine Le Pen was judged and cleared of inciting religious hatred after comparing Muslims praying in the street in 2010 to the Nazi occupation.
Bardella continued the party’s tirade against “political Islam”, descriptive more recently as a threat seeking to “conquer” France and “impose its own bans” on the French.
It’s the kind of rhetoric that is terribly out of step with everyday reality in France, said Hissam Khalfi, 23. “They are harming my France. They are trying to divide us,” he said. “I’m French; I feel French. Growing up here, there were people of all colors and backgrounds in my neighborhood; we never had any problems.”
He was confident voters would turn out in droves – surpassing the 51% who voted in the European elections – to support his version of France. “I’m not worried,” he said. “Some people are trying to divide us, but France will remain united.
The sentiment was echoed by Najat Khalef, 41, who pointed to the white headscarf she was wearing. “I go to work in my hijab and, I promise you, nobody says a word to me,” said Khalef, who was born in France. “Nobody ever even gave me a weird look.”
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However, it’s a different story when she gets involved in the media, where there seems to be a constant buzz around her choice of clothing. “Only journalists and those who want power talk about it,” she said.
Following the results of the European Parliament elections, the rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, Chems-Edin Hafez, railed against the failure of the country’s traditional political parties to tackle problems such as persistent unemployment, stagnant wages and rising living costs. By not doing so, they had “abandoned the field to those who sow division and hatred,” he wrote in his weekly post.
He added that the RN had taken advantage of this opening, casting Muslims and North Africans as “scapegoats, the symbols of everything perceived as threatening, as foreign, as incompatible with the supposed homogenous national identity”.
Mainstream politicians had done more than simply give way to the far right, Fatima Bent said, citing the many ways they had normalized far-right discourse, targeting Muslim women’s rights.
As a member of the feminist, anti-racist group Lallab, Bent is among those working to protect the rights and amplify the voices of Muslim women, offering a powerful counterpoint to measures such as burkini bans introduced by several French cities and last year’s school ban on abaya – the style of long, flowing dresses worn by some Muslim women.
There was no doubt for Bent that the results of the European Parliament elections and the specter of a far-right victory in the coming weeks opened another, potentially more dangerous front.
“For us Muslim women who have already experienced very difficult things under Hollande, under Macron, under Sarkozy, if the far-right intervenes, our experiences will be more pronounced, more violent,” she said. “This is a fascist change that could cost us, as Muslim women, our rights, our mental health and our lives.”
With polls suggesting Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Revival party will lose to blocs on the left and far right, it’s anyone’s guess what lies ahead for France, Sylvie Nedgar said as she waited with her 19-year-old daughter to catch a tram in the center of Lyon. “But it has already split the country in two,” she said, pointing to far-right protests hundreds of thousands people across France in recent days.
In a debate in 2022, Macron suggested to Le Pen that the idea of banning the hijab in public could spark a “civil war”. Two years later, Nedgar, who grew up in a family whose roots stretch from Algeria to France and where Christian and Muslim traditions mix easily, said tensions had swelled to a point where the threat was impossible to ignore.
“We risk taking a huge step backwards,” she said. “Covid was really nothing compared to that. The real challenge is this moment, right now.”
