Rabat - Muslims in France are guilty of everything until proven otherwise. At least that’s what the facts on the ground are suggesting nowadays. Since the attacks on the Paris offices of satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo last month, the Muslim community in France has endured persecution, judgment and discrimination, and sometimes for the silliest of reasons.
An Al Jazeera network correspondent was apparently right when he said that tough times are awaiting Muslims in France in the wake of the attacks that claimed the lives of twelve people and left many others wounded.
After a small flag bearing the Islamic declaration of faith landed a French-Moroccan in prison in the French city of Lille, here is another case that proves that France has gone into a collective state of hysteria and Islamophobia since the terrorist attacks.
Sami, a 20-year-old Muslim man, has been sentenced to 3 years in prison after a fight with another man. He was a Jewish man.
In the French Val-d’Oise region, Sami had an argument with the Jewish man that quickly escalated into a fight. The man decided to press charges against Sami. Sami was later accused of carrying out an anti-Semitic attack, but he insisted that it was only a fight, nothing else.
According to his family, when Sami appeared before the court, the judge mentioned the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the hostage situation at a Jewish store. The judge reportedly said that he wished to ‘strike hard’ to condemn anti-Semitism and the incitement of hatred.
Sami’s family continues to deny the anti-Semitism accusations. According to media reports, many Jewish friends of young Sami were willing to testify on his behalf to prove the falsehood of the accusation, but none of them had the right to speak.
The family also launched a petition “Free imprisoned Sami, victim of Islamophobia.” They want to plead his case to the European Court of Human Rights.
“Thousands of fights take place every day in neighborhoods between young people and yet very few of them are rarely convicted,” they said in the petition. They added, “What difference is there between this case and the others, so fast and so “unjustly” fixed?”
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