Lawsuits In France Over “Study” On Islam

The study on the Islamic religion, conducted by the French polling institute “IFOP” on November 18, caused a sharp division within French society due to its findings, which were considered by a wide segment of politicians and media professionals in France to serve the interests of the far-right, obsessed with immigration and the Muslim community.

In a stance of rejection and suspicion regarding the intentions of those who commissioned and conducted this study, the regional councils of the Islamic religion in France for “Loire”, “Aube”, “Bouches-du-Rhône”, and “Seine-et-Marne” decided to file a lawsuit against an unknown party with the judicial court in Paris, following the publication of the IFOP poll on November 18 titled “The State of the Relationship with Islam and Islamism for Muslims in France”.

Lawyers Raphaël Kempf and Romain Ruiz, in a press statement reported by “Le Monde” newspaper, accused this poll of “violating the principle of objectivity stipulated in the law of July 19, 1977, concerning the publication and distribution of opinion polls”, and that it “is based on leading questions”, and “focuses on minority results that were highlighted for polemical purposes”. The lawyers estimated that the poll spreads “the poison of hatred in the public sphere”.

The study, in the view of its critics, turned into a scandal, which forced François Croc, the director of the political affairs department at the institute, to respond to this complaint, saying that it “only aims to question the reliability of our poll based on false assumptions”, and he doubted its success at the level of justice, according to Agence France-Presse (France-Presse), and affirmed that the poll was conducted “without bias, with strict adherence to standard methodological tools and constraints”.

As an extension of this scandal, Paul Vannier, a deputy from the La France Insoumise party, described the controversial poll as fake, and wrote in a tweet on his “X” platform account that this fake “investigation” conducted by the “IFOP” organization, which aims to serve the anti-Islam agenda adopted by the far-right, was commissioned by a press body that includes experts and consultants, including the new darling of “Libération” newspaper, Nora Boussinet.

Meanwhile, another deputy from the same party, Bastien Lachaud, wrote: “Once again, we are witnessing the emergence of a ‘poll’ specifically designed to manufacture doubts, stigma, and division.” These two tweets were the reason why the administration of the accused polling institute filed a lawsuit against them for insulting the institute, while Paul Vannier likened the complaint to “an improvised counter-attack aimed at censoring parliamentarians.”

The study had concluded with results that tended to frighten the French about the Islamic religion and Muslims, and sought to promote a narrative that Muslim youth under 25 years old eagerly embrace the teachings of the Islamic religion, while rebelling against the laws of the French Republic, which many Muslim actors in France denied.

Accompanying this controversy, the weekly “Le Point” published a lengthy article, in which it accused a number of French newspapers of not dealing positively with this study (they completely ignored it), and “Le Point” attacked the “Le Monde” group, which includes, in addition to the aforementioned newspaper, “L’Obs”, and “HuffPost”, which are platforms located on the other side opposite to the right-wing platforms controlled by the far-right businessman, Vincent Bolloré.

Edwy Plenel, the founder of the major French investigative newspaper “Mediapart”, which was behind the discovery of corruption scandals involving former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, received his share of criticism from the weekly “Le Point” for criticizing the controversial polling process, while strongly defending the credibility of the “IFOP” institute, stating that it employed sufficient scientific measures to reach accurate results.

“Le Point” claimed that the questions of the latest study were formulated, approved, and published by the leftist press itself, meaning the newspapers that criticized the “IFOP” institute’s study, and indicated that nearly half of them (six) were taken from previous studies conducted by editorial teams of media outlets within the “Le Monde” group (Le Monde, L’Obs, Le Monde des Religions…).