'Afghanistan in France?' Inside the town at the centre of a political controversy

Roubaix was long notorious for being France’s poorest town.

Now it is facing the unflattering accolade of “Afghanistan two hours from Paris” after a TV documentary depicted the town and its Right-wing mayor as falling under the growing sway of radical Islam.

 “Why Roubaix? Why hit a town when it’s down?” said Thierry Lefevbre, 58, a wine merchant whose well-stocked cellar includes not just reds and whites from around France but an impressive array of Scotch whisky and a map to help locate the bottles.

Mr Lefevbre said he had lived and worked in the town, near Lille in northern France, all his life “and when I see that, it makes my blood boil”. 

His shop sits in the middle of rue de Lannoy, a street at the heart of the controversial report.

Here, journalists from the Zone Interdite documentary, which aired on private channel M6, secretly filmed inside a shop selling faceless dolls for Muslims who believe that facial features on toys are anti-Islamic.

Another shop offered a book on advice for Muslim newlyweds that told women to obey their husbands. A third sold a book with fatwas for women, including one apparently condoning punishment by stoning.

Throngs of veiled women, which the film insisted were a rare sight five years ago, were shown walking past a string of halal butchers and kebab shops.

The film highlighted an association granted almost €65,000 (£54,000) by the local council to help teach poorer pupils but which prosecutors later said was used to pay for Islamic education instead. Under French secular law, public bodies are banned from subsidising religious charities.

It also featured a restaurant that has cubicles for women to eat without being seen by men.

Amine Elbahi, 26, a Muslim lawyer in Roubaix who features in the programme, insisted that rue de Lannoy summed up a perilous slide towards fundamentalism.

 “Five years ago, people mingled. This change, this turning point in society is imminent. In other words, if we don’t do anything, it will be lost,” he warned.

Since the report, both he and the presenter Ophelie Meunier have received death threats and are under police protection.

With presidential elections a little over two months away and the explosive issues of Islam and immigration high on the agenda, candidates seized on the controversy.

Eric Zemmour, the hard-Right runner who claims France is in the throes of a “great replacement” of its indigenous population, claimed the documentary showed that parts of the country were becoming as “totalitarian” as Taliban-held Afghanistan.

 “Funny how they forgot to mention a wine cellar serving alcohol and pork,” sighed Mr Lefebvre who has run his wine cellar since 1986. “But that would have knocked it on the head,” he said.

Nobody denies the street has seen better days.

Once Roubaix’s busiest shopping thoroughfare, its fortunes have waned with those of Roubaix itself.

Among France’s wealthiest towns at the turn of the last century thanks to its flourishing textile empire, Roubaix floundered in the 1970s due to cheaper offshore factories and was officially crowned “France’s poorest town” in a 2014 survey.

Some 44 per cent of the population live below the poverty line and as few as 20 per cent turn up to vote in elections.

But a host of businesses have also sprung up, including OVH, a global IT infrastructure company that has turned the city’s former textile factories into data centres.

Roubaix has long been a melting pot, housing waves of Polish, Portuguese and Italian immigrants, before a new wave of North African workers. Today, around 40 per cent of the population is thought to be Muslim.

That has led to mosques, restaurants and shops to cater for the burgeoning population.

Among these is the Tijara Shop singled out in the film.

Owner Samir Mezine, 32, played The Telegraph a threatening voice message he just received on his phone.

 “Good evening, I’m a normal Frenchman. We’re coming. We’ll take you away. We won’t let you screw us over. Good night. I think my number will appear on your phone but I’m not worried.”

The owner said: “I shut my shop for a few days because I’m frankly scared.”

“Nobody should be threatened - neither journalists, lawyers nor shopkeepers. Violence resolves nothing. I love a laugh and a joke but now I’m being depicted as a dangerous radical. I respect French laws and don’t believe in imposing Sharia.

 “The main problems here are left out rubbish, drug dealers and parking - not Islamism!”

Pascal Delmas, 40, who runs an antiques shop with his 32-year-old Chinese wife, Shaoping, said he could vouch for the shopkeepers singled out in the film, calling them friends who were active members of his group to promote commerce in the street.

 “I have seen no proof of radicalisation here,” he said. “But we do have many other problems.”

A few yards down the street, Dominique Houte, who runs the La 357 Roubaisienne gun club, took aim at a firing range target with a semi-automatic revolver. Many of his 400-odd members are local police officers.

 “The real gangrene here is drug dealing, incivilities and poverty,” he said.

 “This is not Afghanistan or Molenbeek. It’s more about incivilities from youths who perhaps don’t feel in their place, Muslim without being Muslim, French without being French and a visceral hatred of the police.”

But not all of his members agreed.

One off-duty local policeman who complained that his men had busted local youths with drugs only for them to be let off, made no bones about linking Islamism and delinquency, or where his political preferences lay.

 “Everything in this report is true,” he said. “Islamism exists here but not just in Roubaix - in southern Lille, in Parisian suburbs and many big cities.”

He said he was supportive of the UK’s English Defence League and made it clear he was a supporter of far-Right Mr Zemmour, who is due to stage a mass rally in neighbouring Lille on Saturday.

Mr Delmas dismissed such talk as extremist rubbish.

 “We live very well together in Roubaix. There is a huge amount of diversity - around 100 nationalities - many churches, temples and mosques, and it works.”