The list of candidates submitted by the Union of French Muslim Democrats (UFMD) party for the European elections was approved on May 9.
The party failed to submit all required
documents on May 3, the deadline set out by the State Council in France for
parties that want to field candidates in the European elections. Thirty-four
lists had already been submitted on May 12. The list of the UFMD contains 79
candidates. This is the first time such a small party participates in the
European elections. It participated in the municipal elections in the past
only.
In the 2015 municipal elections, the UFMD
fielded candidates in the north-central constituency of Île-de-France. It won 12,528 votes. In
Mantes-la-Jolie region, the party won 5.9% of all votes.
The party has already announced its lists for the 2020 municipal
elections in Vaulx-en-Velin and Joué-lès-Tours, two cities were the practice of
Islam becomes more Salafist-oriented.
To understand the ideological nature of this party, one has to
listen to the televised speeches of its head Nagib Azergui. One
also has to read Azergui's posts on social media.
Azergui is a continual guest on the Saudi channel Iqraa. He
opposed the 2004 law which barred women from wearing the Islamic headgear,
known as hijab, especially at public schools. He described the law as one that
violates freedoms.
In one of his interviews on the same channel, Azergui said there
was no relation between Islamism and wearing the hijab.
"Claiming that Islam lives behind the
headgear worn by these women is a dangerous mix of issues," Azergui said.
"We should not fall silent while this humiliation is being committed.
The freedom to wear the headgear anytime and anywhere is one of
the causes adopted by the members of the UFMD. The party welcomed a decision by the
Human Rights Committee of the United Nations to verbally denounce France for
committing what it described as "racial discrimination" against a
female nursery worker. The committee is widely known to be controlled by
Islamic states.
The UFMD posts the
statements of the Muslims of France organization to its Twitter account. The
organization is known to have close links with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Azergui congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
the main benefactor of the Muslim Brotherhood, after his election on June 24,
2018.
The party recently defended a veiled
singer who shares the posts of Muslim Brotherhood scholars and clerics.
However, the UFMD shocked everybody by including an
archenemy of the Muslim Brotherhood Bassam Tahhan in its list for the European
elections.
When Azergui congratulated the French national football team, he
did this only to invite attention to team Muslim players. This is why some
people are asking about whether the head of the UFMD party would have supported
the French national football team if this team had not included any Muslim
players?
Azergui lashes out at those who say France is becoming an Islamic
state. He criticized journalists at the French daily Le Monde and accused them
of misleading journalism students after they wrote a book about Islam in
France.
The discourse of the party is full of criticism for France and the
European civilization. It publishes a huge number of misleading articles about
the incidents of May 1945 in Algeria. They only aim to sow the seeds of
tension.
The French commercial radio network RTL ran a chronicle of the
violence. The Europeans were the main victims of this violence. Around 23
Europeans were killed in it and 80 others injured, before the French army
intervened to keep the independence militias at bay.
These articles make readers believe that the French army had
intervened for no reason.
Another article titled, "Occupation, a major sexual
safari", was published on September 22, 2018. The site of the party was
used in propagating most of these ideas.
This throws light on the nature of the UFMD. It is a party whose
thinking goes hand in hand with the Muslim Brotherhood. It makes the hijab its
central cause. In this, it is backed by the Saudi channel Iqraa. The channel
always mocks French police and what it describes as the "colonial
history" of France.
