Hollande: Mainstream Muslims Victimized by Fundamentalism, Intolerance
January 15, 2015 12:00 PM
French President Francois Hollande delivers a speech as he visits the Arab Institute building in Paris Jan. 15, 2015.
French President Francois Hollande said mainstream Muslims are the primary victims of radical Islamism as the nation deals with the fallout of last week's attacks by Islamist extremists.
Hollande spoke at the Arab World Institute, which seeks to build closer ties between France and Arab cultures.
He said a crisis like last week's shooting at the Charlie Hebdosatirical magazine can serve to undermine confidence, or awaken people to, in his words, "shout their message all the louder." But he added that the whole country was "united in the face of terrorism."
"Radical Islam fed itself with all the contradictions, influences, poverty, inequalities, conflicts, unresolved for a long time," Hollande said. "And it is the Muslims who are the first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance.
"We must also remember -- and every time I did it everywhere in the Arab world where I went -- that Islam is compatible with democracy, that we must reject lumping things together and confusing them," he said.
"And foremost in France, French people of the Muslim faith have the same rights, the same duties as all citizens," Hollande added.
Twelve people died at the Charlie Hebdo offices and five more over the next two days in a terror spree in and around Paris. Two more funerals were being held Thursday for victims of last week's attacks.
Also Thursday, France's top cyber-defense official, Admiral Arnaud Coustilliere, said Thursday that hackers - including some self-described Islamists - have attacked thousands of French websites in the past week.
The attacks focused largely on small businesses and local public institutions like universities and churches.
Kerry to travel to Paris
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry travels to Paris on Friday to meet with Hollande and other French officials. On Thursday he told reporters in Bulgaria that he wants to give the city of Paris "a big hug" after last week's attacks.
The three days of violence triggered France to deploy thousands of troops to boost security on its streets.
Hollande also announced the country is sending its top aircraft carrier to the Middle East in a public show of increased commitment to the anti-Islamic State air campaign.
The three gunmen in the Paris attacks claimed allegiance to Islamist groups.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula posted a video online Wednesday, featuring a man identified as Nasr al-Ansi, a top leader of the group. He said his group planned and financed the attack on the magazine headquarters.
The U.S. government confirmed the video as authentic.
Man detained in Belgium
On Thursday, Belgian authorities said they had detained a man for arms dealing and are investigating whether he supplied one of the Islamist gunmen in last week's attacks in Paris, prosecutors said.
Belgian media reported that a man had gone to police in the southern city of Charleroi on Tuesday, saying he had been in touch with Amedy Coulibaly, the militant who took hostages in a Jewish supermarket in the French capital and was later killed by security forces.
According to the reports, the man said that he swindled Coulibaly in a car sale, but police later found evidence that the two were negotiating about the sale of ammunition for a 7.62 mm caliber firearm.
“The man is being held by the judge in Charleroi on suspicion of arms dealing,” a spokesman for Belgium's federal prosecution said. “Further investigations will have to show whether there is a link with the events in Paris,” he added.
Suspect in Spain
Elsewhere, Spain's High Court on Thursday ordered an investigation into time Coulibaly spent in the country just days before he launched the supermarket attack.
During his stay in Spain, Coulibaly was accompanied by girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene and a third party, who could have aided the latter's escape to Syria, the High Court said in a statement.
Coulibaly spent Dec. 30-Jan. 2 in Madrid with Boumeddiene, who later went to Syria, traveling through Turkey, state security sources told La Vanguardianewspaper. Coulibaly returned to France on Jan. 2, accompanied by a third party, the paper said.
Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said Spain is cooperating with French officials in the investigation, but he declined to confirm whether Coulibaly had been in Madrid or say whom he could have been in contact with.
Spain's Interior Ministry declined to make further comment.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis spoke Thursday about the Paris attacks while en route to the Philippines.
Francis defended freedom of expression as not only a fundamental human right but a duty to speak one's mind for the sake of the common good, but said there are limits to freedom of expression, especially when it insults or ridicules someone's faith.
Source http://voanews.com/a/hollande-to-address-arab-cultural-group/2599182.html
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