‘Islam Teaches You to Fight Back’: 1000+ Muslims Protest Macron in NYC

protest
Islamic Leadership Council of NY/Facebook
Gabrielle Reyes

A coalition of New York metropolitan area mosques organized a protest against French President Emmanuel Macron’s “vilification of Islam” on November 1 outside the French Consulate General in New York City.

The Islamic Leadership Council of New York, Majlis Ash-Shura of New York, published a press release on Monday stating that Sunday’s rally was attended by “over a thousand Muslims from all across New York and New Jersey” despite the rainy conditions. The council’s social media accounts shared photos and videos of the rally showing protesters gathered across the street from the consulate chanting slogans such as “Macron shame on you!”

Many people held signs communicating various messages in Arabic and English. In one eyewitness video of the rally shared on Twitter, the person behind the camera pans to the French Consulate building and its French flag, calling the institution “garbage.”

The council’s Executive Director, Raja Abdulhaq, made an impassioned speech at the event in which he asserted Muslims have a duty to their faith to “fight back” against perceived insensitivity to Islam.

“They want us to submit to capitalism,” he warned. “They want us to submit to racism. They want us to be slaves to them.”

“Islam teaches us to not be a wolf, but to not be a sheep either. That’s what they’re afraid of. Islam doesn’t teach you to take a smack on one cheek and … turn on the other cheek. Islam teaches you to fight back!” Abdulhaq affirmed.

“When he [Allah] sent our prophet Muhammad, he sent him for what reason?” Abdulhaq asked the crowd rhetorically.

“Establishing justice on Earth!” he answered.

“He [Muhammad] was not sent for us to only pray and fast. Prayers and fasting is the pillars of Islam, but they’re not the reason, they’re not the ultimate … objective of Islam [sic],” Abdulhaq explained.

“Do we live to pray and fast? Or do we pray and fast so we can reach justice?” He asked. “We pray and fast so to become ready to fight for dignity and justice! We don’t pray and fast to stay home and stay in the mosque. That’s not what Islam is about.”

Abdulhaq concluded his address to the crowd of protesters by stating solemnly, “Our prophet is a red line.”

Majlis Ash-Shura describes itself on its website as “an umbrella of over 90 mosques and organizations” in the Metropolitan New York area that “serves as the official representative of its members with the media, organizations, advocacy groups, political candidates, and government institutions.”

“The French President is directly provoking the Muslim world in his support of offensive and vulgar depictions of the beloved Prophet Muhammad,” the council claimed in a press release on October 28 announcing Sunday’s protest; the council referred to Macron’s recent comments denouncing Islamists’ use of violence in response to cartoons of Muhammad.

“Moreover, he continues to directly terrorize the French Muslim community by raiding private homes and mosques over baseless accusations in the aftermath of the attack against a French teacher. Prior to this incident, President Macron was already on a crusade against Muslim communities and basic religious practices, in the name of secularization and assimilation,” the council further claimed.

“The Muslim world will not tolerate such blatant disrespect of the Prophet Muhammad … and stands in solidarity with their French Muslim brothers and sisters,” Majlis Ash-Shura stated, adding that the November 1 rally would also demand a boycott of French goods.

“The protest was organized by a coalition of Muslim organizations and leaders, including the Islamic Leadership Council of New York (ILCNY), Turkish American National Steering Committee (TASC), Muslim American Society of New York (MAS-NY), United Ulama Council of USA, Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA, Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Arab Muslim American Federation (AMAF), Egyptian Americans for Democracy and Human Rights, and many more local groups,” Majlis Ash-Shura said in Monday’s press release.

Macron condemned the beheading of a French schoolteacher on October 16 in a Paris suburb as a “blatant Islamist terrorist attack.” An 18-year-old Islamist terrorist stabbed and decapitated Samuel Paty, 47, outside of the middle school where Paty taught history. In a recent class on freedom of expression, Paty had shown his students cartoons of Muhammad published by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Paty’s assailant was shot dead by police shortly after the killing; he was later identified as Abdullakh Anzorov, a Moscow-born Chechen migrant.

“One of our fellow citizens … was murdered today for teaching, for teaching students freedom of speech, freedom to believe and not to believe,” Macron said on October 16. “It is no coincidence that this evening it is a teacher that this terrorist killed because he wanted to bring down the Republic in its values.”

The French president later honored Paty, posthumously awarding him with the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian honor, in a ceremony at the Sorbonne university in Paris on October 21.

“Paty was slain by ‘cowards’ for representing the secular, democratic values of the French Republic,” Macron said at the ceremony, according to France 24.

“He was the victim of stupidity, of lies, of confusion, of a hatred of what, in our deepest essence, we are … On Friday, he became the face of the Republic,” he said.

“He was killed because Islamists want our future,” the French president said, adding, “They will never have it.”

“We will not give up cartoons,” Macron declared.

Muslims across the world have called for a boycott of French products in response to Macron’s comments, and several anti-French protests have been staged globally. Qatari and Kuwaiti supermarkets have pulled French goods from their shelves in protest, while Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, Jordan, Morocco, and Turkey — including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — have called for a similar boycott of French products.

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