The controversy began with his intervention in September 2016 on the broadcast “C à vous”. Éric Zemmour was then immediately sued at the 17th Criminal Court of the Paris Court. He must respond to the alleged offense of “incitement to discrimination and hatred against people of Muslim faith”. The lawsuit is promoted by the EuroPalestine Association.
Zemmour is in trouble for a few sentences, such as the ones describing Muslims as those who “have to choose between Islam and France”, saying that “jihad is a religious duty”, that “Muslims consider jihadists as good Muslims” and that “moderate Islam does not exist”. Ideas. Ideas are debatable in a European pluralist democracy proud of the free circulation of ideas, as well as goods and people. But these ideas are becoming forbidden in France.
Thus, Zemmour was sentenced of incitement to hatred and a fine of 5,000 euros. 8,000 spectators lodged a complaint at the State Council for Audiovisual. It is not the first conviction that Zemmour suffers for his ideas about France and Islam. In 2014, in an interview with the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera, he said that France’s estimated five million Muslims should be “deported” to avoid “chaos and civil war”.
In 2007, Charlie Hebdo ended up in court. The French journalists were cleared of any charge, but the jihadists were ready to silence them forever (in three years, not a single cartoon on Mohammed and Islam has been published). In 2013, the magazine Valeurs Actuelles was sentenced for “discrimination” against Muslims for publishing the national symbol Marianne with a Muslim veil (two thousand euros fine). The following year was the turn of Renaud Camus, condemned to pay five thousand euros for “hate instigation” for his theory of “Great Substitution”.
Zemmour was dragged many times to court. A year ago, it was when he gave an interview at Causeur magazine: “I respect the people willing to die for what they believe”, Zemmour said of the Islamic terrorists.
When Zemmour was dragged for the first time to court by the anti-racist and Islamic organizations in 2011, thirty MPs formed the “Freedom of expression collective": “With the excuse of racism, a journalist is forced to silence when he wants to give an opinion”, said the 28 signatories, who condemned “the tyrants of the doctrine of anti-racism. Voltaire is buried”. Zemmour is only the best known of French journalists and intellectuals dragged into court to respond to the new intellectual offense: “Islamophobia”. There is a list of impressive names, from Georges Bensoussan to Pascal Bruckner.
France, the country where the debate on Islam and integration has been more intensive, is the first target of the Islamic enemies of freedom. If France is now silent, the debate on Islam will be “resolved” all across Europe.
