The publication sparked numerous reactions. Geopolitical researcher Pascal Boniface drew strong criticism on Sunday by describing the socialist mayor of Saint-Ouen, Karim Bouamrane, as a “Muslim in appearance”.
Emerging figure of the PS and member of the wing of the party opposed to the alliance with France Insoumise (LFI), Karim Bouamrane was outraged at being defined as an “apparent” Muslim. “After 30 years of commitment to the left, elected to the Republic in 1995, this is how a researcher qualifies me and definitively disqualifies himself. The fight against essentialization continues! Long live the Republic! Long live France! », wrote in X the mayor of Saint-Ouen, of Moroccan origin and whose name had circulated for Matignon after the legislative elections of 7 July.
In the France 2 program “Quelle époque”, Karim Bouamrane deplored the importation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into France “for electoral purposes”, repeating the criticisms leveled at the LFI, particularly during the campaign for the European elections on 9 June.
“Honestly, I wonder about this man I don’t know personally. Is this an example of meritocracy? So well done! Or exploited as an apparent Muslim who does not criticize Netanyahu and therefore benefits from great media promotion”, wrote Pascal Boniface on modesty on the wars in the Middle East.
“Identity assignment”
Many leaders, most of them socialists or Macronists, reacted to this publication by Pascal Boniface. “No one should be assigned to a presumed religious or cultural identity. No one should prejudge what a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian or an atheist might think. Even less to judge that a position can create one Muslim in appearance », the first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, protested against X. The Macronist Minister of European Affairs Benjamin Haddad, for his part, judged that “the assignment of identity is the opposite of our republican pact”.
Pascal Boniface is the founder and director of the Institute for International and Strategic Research (Iris), one of the main French centers of reflection on geopolitics. A former member of the Socialist Party, he left it after a controversy linked to the publication of one of his notes in 2001 dedicated to the party’s positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On Sunday Pascal Boniface also called another socialist MP elected in Paris, Lamia el Aaraje, to ask her what she thinks “of the continuation of the bombing of Gaza”. “Would he have done it if my name had been Colette Durand? “, he wondered.
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