LE BREAKDOWN With Yasser Louati

As UN experts are warning about genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza and despite israel's long track record of bombing palestinian civilians, this episode will cover France's support to the ongoing massacre. Who is behind it? What are France's interests in this position? How about Europe, is this new?

After WWII, the mantra was "never again". France which deported its own Jews to the Nazi death camps and which was home to the collaborationist Vichy regime, could have been the leading country to perpetuate this mantra in the face of the atrocities in Gaza. Yet it chose not to. Why not? What are the power dynamics that have motivated Macron and his party to stand with Israel and its bombings against civilians. Worse still, the French government had even banned all pro Palestinian protests and to prosecute organizers.

At the European level, Ursula von Der Leyen went on to bypass the union's diplomatic corp and show total support to Benyanmin Netanyahu, again in the name of "Israel's right to self defense". However, rebellion is brewing within EU diplomacy as many have called her out for overstepping her job description. How long will this support last as the number of civilian deaths has reached 4000 and clearlyn Isreal has no strategy on what will come next.

This episode will attempt to answer these questions and to decipher the official position of France and that of the European commission.

This episode is my personal appreciation of Hip Hop and how it played a fundamental role in my political upbringing. Though I traced back the lessons I learned from Public Enemy, KRS One among others, I could not resist the temptation of sharing with my audience a brief history of French Hip Hop in Paris, Marseille and the area I am from, the Southside Banlieue (94).

You will hear about IAM, NTM, Mafia K1Fry, Secteur A, Doc Gyneco, Arsenik, 113, Kery James, Ideal J... We will also cover the movie "La Haine" and what it meant for the Arab and Black.

I am grateful to all the artists that have influenced me throughout the years. Hip Hop forever.

The recent raid against French journalist Ariane Lavrilleux for exposing the SIRLI operation has made headlines about the repression of a free press in France. The SIRLI operation is a long running collaboration between the French military and the Egyptian dictatorship. In the name of fighting terrorism, highly trained French military personnel was used to carry extra judicial killings on the Lybian border leading to the death of hundreds of civilians.

In this podcast we will see how this raid is not an exception. The journalists working for DISCLOSE that made these revelations actually had been interrogated by intelligence services at least five times since 2018. How dangerous is it to be a journalist in France and was Macron serious when he said "he will always be on the side of those who struggle to inform us, who fight for the truth?"

On August 31st, the newly apointed Minister of Education Gabriel Attal started his mandate by launching a campaign against abayas, or long dresses, supposedly worn by radicalised Muslim students.

Where is this prohibition coming from? What are its political aims and what does it say about France, its war against French Muslims and the future of French society?

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Reviewing the presidential campaign, the election, the debates, the state of the Left and what the 2022 elections say about France.

Read the full analysis on The New Arab: https://english.alaraby.co.uk/opinion/macrons-victory-paved-oppression 

'The levels of respectability that the National Rally has garnered was  all too visible during the presidential debate between Macron and Le  Pen. Not once did the sitting president critique the political views  that Marine Le Pen espouses. The words ‘far right’ ‘racism’ or ‘fascism’  were never uttered by him.''

Guest: Jean Beaman, Author of "Citizen Outsider"  and researcher on race and racism in France and the US.

Many have called out the blatant double standards on refugees by western powers. While refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia were violently rejected by countries like the US, France or the UK, those coming from the Ukraine were immediately welcomed and offered asykum, proper housing and means to integrate. But after calling this out, where do we take the conversation from here? How has whiteness been constructed to allow white skinned ukrainians in, but not white skinned Syrians? How will this sudden change in policy towards Ukrainian refugees affect hos countries that are already facing tremendous challenges in terms of structural racism and tension with marginalized minorities?

Following our previous episode "Muslim Clerics and the Arab Revolutions", my guest Dr Usaama Al Azami, Lecturer in Contemporary Islamic Civilisation at the University of Oxford and author of "Islam and the Arab Revolutions" came back to carry the conversation towards the notions of "legitimate authority" and its limits, obedience and dissobedience, armed rebellion, the notion of social contract as conceptualised through Islamic lenses. We further debunked the prevalent modern day narrative promoted by school of thoughts that have been promoting, thanks to the backing of Arab regimes in Africa and the Middle east.

Applied at the local level, how does the discourse on obedience apply? How does the narrative on listening and obeying affect communities and keep them from thriving wherever they are? furthermore, what the direct responsibility of clerics, scholars and religious leaders generally speaking in not opposing state sponsored narratives on blind obedience and trust?

As the Arab Revolutions were unfolding, various Muslim clerics took a public position to either support or condemn them, if not out right call for their repression in blood. Dr Usaama Al Azami, Lecturer in Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford and author of "Islam and the Arab Revolutions" joined me to discuss the rationale followed by each camp but also how Islam was both  the legitimizer of autocracy, democracy, the status-quo, revolution and counter revolution.

From Dr Yusuf Al Qaradawi to Ali Gomaa, Hamza Yusuf and Abdallah Bin Bayyah, we dwelve into the role played by religion during the uprisings even though, be it in Tunisia or Egypt, revolutionary leaders did not arise from religious institutions. The discussion was further extended to sepration of religion and state, secularism as a new religion (especially in the case of France) and whether Islam teaches strict obedience to whomever is in power and hence, is de facto the religion of power.

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