French leader causes uproar with Arabic jibe

A leading French politician has claimed that teaching Arabic in the country’s schools leads to extremism and terrorism, setting alight the country’s fraught debate on the public place for the language.

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the leader of Debout la France, used a television interview to reopen the dispute, sparked by the publication of a thinktank report that made the case for offering Arabic lessons in public schools.

“When a country has an integration issue, when a country has generations who speak Arabic at home and who speak bad French, I say the priority in those quarters is to teach French,” Mr Dupont-Aignan said.

Asked whether teaching Arabic would lead to Islamism or terrorism, he said: “This is the danger. I believe so.”

Mr Dupont-Aignan worked in several ministerial offices and founded his own party in 2008 after a row with former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party.

The exchange drew a wave of criticism from political figures, including Nathalie Goulet, a member of the country’s senate, who mocked Mr Dupont-Aignan. “Eating couscous [leads to terrorism] too… it is pathetic #racism, cretinism, illiteracy... we must stop this, we are scraping the bottom of the barrel,” she said.

There was support on the far-right, which seeks to capitalise on the issue. Plaza Pascal, a local representative of nationalist and Eurosceptic political party The Patriotes, tweeted Mr Dupont-Aignan’s words followed by the question: “The far-right family grows bigger?”

Karim Achoui, a Franco-Algerian lawyer and founder of the League for the Legal Defence of Muslims said that “the media offensive against [the Muslim community] is daily and extremely violent” and “this is no longer freedom of speech, but hate speech”.

The debate was sparked by a report by Institut Montaigne senior fellow Hakim El Karoui, who proposed a wholesale overhaul of the role of the French state in its relations with Islam.

A nephew of former Tunisian prime minister Hamad El Karoui, the author believes teaching Arabic in schools can promote understanding of the Arabic language, culture and history, as well as to unite against Islamism.

French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer last month said he was open to implementing the initiative proposed by Mr El Karoui.