“I am not an Islamophobe. Women have the right to wear headscarves, but I do not understand why we are embracing this religion [Islam] and those manners that are incompatible with the freedoms that are ours in the West.” — Pierre Bergé, French fashion mogul.
French security officials rejected an Israeli company’s offer of terrorist-tracking software that could have helped them identify the jihadist cell that carried out the attacks. “French authorities liked it, but the official came back and said there was a higher-level instruction not to buy Israeli technology,” a well-placed Israeli counter-terrorism analyst revealed.
Jacques Hamel, the priest who had his throat slit by two Muslims in Normandy, had donated land adjacent to his church to local Muslims to build a mosque, and they had been given use of the parish hall and other facilities during Ramadan.
At least five of the jihadists who carried out the attacks in Paris and Brussels financed themselves with social welfare payments: they received more than €50,000 ($53,000).
Muslim employees at Air France have repeatedly attempted to sabotage aircraft, according to Le Canard Enchaîné. “Concerning Air France, we have seen several anomalies before the departure of commercial flights,” an intelligence official said.
“There will be no integration until we get rid of this atavistic anti-Semitism that is kept secret. It so happens that an Algerian sociologist, Smain Laacher, with great courage said that ‘it is a disgrace to maintain this taboo, namely that in Arab families in France and elsewhere everyone knows that anti-Semitism is spread with the mother’s milk.'” — Georges Bensoussan, sued for alleged hate speech against Muslims for having made that statement.
The Mayor of Beziers, Robert Menard, was charged with incitement to hatred for tweeting his regret at witnessing “the great replacement” to describe France’s white, Christian population being overtaken by foreign-born Muslims. “I just described the situation in my town,” he said. “It is not a value judgement, it is a fact. It is what I can see.”
The Muslim population of France was approximately 6.5 million in 2016, or around 10% of the overall population of 66 million. In real terms, France has the largest Muslim population in the European Union, just above Germany.
Although French law prohibits the collection of official statistics about the race or religion of its citizens, Gatestone Institute’s estimate of France’s Muslim population is based on several studies that attempted to calculate the number of people in France whose origins are from Muslim-majority countries.
What follows is a chronological review of some of the main stories about the rise of Islam in France during 2016: