ELISABETH LEVY - TROLL OF THE MONTH

The Troll of the Month is an incident we choose every month to expose racist and anti-religious haters and to show positive outcomes in the fight against intolerance in Europe.

On the channel CNEWS, Elisabeth Levy, Editor-in-Chief of the French conservative magazine Causeur, said that Muslim women should have taken their headscarf off for a week in honour of Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded for having shown caricatures of the prophet Muhammad during a lesson on free expression.  

“I am surprised none of them have today [removed their veil] in honour, or tact, of Samuel Paty, because the veil is also the uniform of the enemies of France,” Levy said.

While there is no justification for the gruesome murder of the teacher, Levy is fostering harmful divisions, pitting Muslims against the rest of French society. By explicitly calling Muslims “enemies” wearing a “uniform”, she is equating all Muslims to terrorists, encouraging suspicion and hatred. Levy’s suggestion that Muslim women should have removed the headscarf in honour of the teacher is unreasonable and disrespectful. It puts the blame of the attack on Muslim women, as if wearing the headscarf was a sign of allegiance to terrorism. Far from being an isolated case, after the killing, journalists and public figures have expressed hostile anti-Muslim rhetoric, leaving Muslims in France fearing further stigmatisation.