In a mind boggling tweetMathilde Panot, the president of the group La France insoumise at the National Assembly, attacks the newspaper The Parisian which devotes this Wednesday, June 7 its front page to the wearing of the abaya, a loose dress supposed to hide the body of women, at school. “We are going through an unprecedented social crisis, a massive attack on freedoms under Macron, an ultra-early drought and a food war is looming, writes the elected LFI. But the Parisian makes its front page on the dress of Muslim women. For this newspaper like many others: Islamophobia sells. Especially when it attacks women.”
The philosopher Raphaël Enthoven points the finger at the “irresponsibility” of Mathilde Panot and recalls that “until further notice, the accusation of ‘Islamophobia’ only threatens and kills those who are accused of it”. Salutary.
L’Express: What do you think of the fact that a politician targets a newspaper, Le Parisien, in this way, calling it Islamophobic?
Raphael Enthoven: It’s despicable and it’s irresponsible. But before coming to his irresponsibility, we must speak of the method. As a little politician, Mathilde Panot practices what is called “dodging by altitude”. That is to say, to avoid broaching the subject of religious clothing at school, she invokes more serious things (and subjects that suit her like the “social crisis” or the “drought”) . This is a common modality of the language of wood, which deserves to be described: to challenge a question by brandishing other more important problems, as if one could oppose the two, as if talking about one excluded mention the other. Such an approach has the double advantage of avoiding the problem that bothers you (in this case, the circumvention of the 2004 law on the wearing of religious symbols at school, under the influence of Islamist influencers, where Mathilde Panot will be quickly put in difficulty) in favor of those which suit you more (hunger in the world or social anger), all while making you look indignant. To lecture a newspaper while dodging the problem it poses. That’s wonderful.
If Mathilde Panot did only that, we could smile. The problem, the real problem, is that it accuses of Islamophobia a newspaper, an editorial staff, whose only crime is to highlight the essential question of the wearing of religious symbols at school. However, it must be repeated tirelessly: until further notice, the accusation of “Islamophobia” threatens and kills only those who are accused of it. When one thinks that an entire editorial staff was decimated on this pretext, one can measure the extent to which Madame Panot is playing with fire with impunity. What exactly does she want? Let a simpleton take up arms and disembark on the premises of the Parisian to avenge the prophet?
The abaya becomes “the outfit of Muslim women” under the pen of Mathilde Panot. What does this shortcut say about how a certain left perceives Islam?
“THE outfit of Muslim women”! The expression says it all at once: it reduces Muslim women to their clothing, it reduces their clothing to religious clothing… while speaking in place of those it claims to defend. Assignment and paternalism. Identitarianism and condescension. Nothing distinguishes, here, the left to which Mathilde Panot claims, from the self-flagellating American left whose portrait Romain Gary drew without appeal in white dog, and whose matrons forced black children to tell them they hated them. When the left has no idea, it looks for a martyr. After having abandoned the proletariat (which no longer votes for it), it has turned to the figure of the “Muslim” whom it has elected as the universal scapegoat and whom it forbids to have a sense of humor, to make the difference between racism and blasphemy, even to dress in the West, under penalty of betraying the idea that she has of her beloved victim.
Denouncing the wearing of the abaya at school would amount, according to her, to “attacking women”. What do you answer him?
Mathilde Panot wants to tick all the boxes, her tweet is just a combo: indignation, feminism, Islamophobia… This is the reason for this ultimate reference. If his tweet deserves to be detailed and analyzed for its contradictions, we must not lose sight of the fact that the indignation and excesses of its author are solely dictated by the calculation of interest.
Still, they have to be taken seriously. When Mathilde Panot denounces the criticism of wearing the abaya at school as an exercise in Islamophobia, she puts a target in the backs of journalists. When, to flatter intersectional feminists, she makes it an “attack on women”, she plays with the freedom of high school girls. It flatters the feeling that the 2004 law is an Islamophobic law and that Islamophobia begins with secularism. Mathilde Panot may not think badly by making this interested tweet, but she does not measure the ravages of her words, repeated many times.
Mathilde Panot’s tweet, François Ruffin’s apologies after his sentence on a possible law to facilitate the change of civil status for transgender people… Is the left doomed to become an identity left?
Panot’s left, certainly. Especially since she has things to be forgiven for since she worked to reinstate Adrien Quatennens. When defending the reinstatement of a slapper deputy, you have to push “feminism” to the point of defending the wearing of the abaya to be forgiven by your electorate. We’ll see if it works. Ruffin’s left is another story. To ringardiser Mélenchon (which is not difficult), Ruffin must overtake him on this left, he must “societalize” his speech and inject a dose of identity gloubi-bulga into his republicanism. Ruffin cannot win if he embodies only the labor left. He must also seduce the left of laziness. He cannot win if he only embodies the yellow vests. It must also appeal to the condescending bourgeois who seek their good conscience in an inverted racism. If he succeeds, if he manages to be Fabien Roussel and Sandrine Rousseau at the same time, he will perhaps be the candidate of a united extreme left.