https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ice-protection-documentary-radical-Islam.html
A French journalist has been given police protection after fronting a documentary about the impact of radical Islam on a poor town in the north of the country.
Ophélie Meunier, 34, has received death threats in the wake of documentary Zone Interdite – or ‘Restricted Zone – that aired in France on January 23 looking at the influence of hardline Islamic views in the town of Roubaix, on the Belgian border.
Meunier found a restaurant where women are given cubicles to eat away from men, and a toy shop selling faceless dolls to comply with strict interpretations of Islam that forbid depicting facial features.
She also spoke to Amine Elbahi, 26, a Muslim lawyer from Roubaix who helped expose the educational institution that received £53,000 of public money to teach poor children, but was accused of spreading Islamic teachings instead.
Elbahi spoke out against the influence of radical Islam in the film, and has now been branded an ‘infidel’ and threatened with beheading. He is also under police guard.
News that the pair have been threatened has caused outcry in France, where many feel the secularism on which the modern-day republic was founded is under threat from religious ideologies brought in by overseas migrants.
Emmanuel Macron, a centrist who is gearing up to fight a presidential election in April where he is likely to face off against a right-wing challenger, has been accused of being soft on immigration and of failing to defend French values.
Eric Zemmour, a far-right commentator and Macron rival who has twice been convicted of hate crimes for statements about Islam, was quick to align himself with Meunier after it emerged she had been threatened.
‘Ophélie Meunier is in mortal danger,’ he tweeted on Saturday, as the documentary began garnering attention.
‘This is what happens when you show the French the Islamization of our country. Millions of patriots thank her for her courage.’
In a clip shared on Zone Interdite’s official Twitter page, specialist in radical Islam Professor Bernard Rougier holds the faceless dolls and teddy-bears as he explains: ‘It’s a way to show that from childhood, you will be a better muslim than others, and implies, others are not good or true Muslims.
‘And so it is the introduction of an ideological principle into the world of childhood… in that sense it is quite worrying, yes.’
The hidden-camera footage shows the undercover reporter going into the shops selling the dolls, which also offer books with the same imagery.
A Muslim lawyer from Roubaix, Amine Elbahi, who spoke out about radical Islam in the programme, has also been placed under police protection after saying he was threatened with decapitation.
Mr Elbahi, 26, appears in several sequences of Zone Interdite – translating to Restricted Zone – which aired on the private French TV channel M6.
He has told French news channel BMFTV that his phone number circulated on social media, and ‘several murder calls were broadcast’.
‘I am threatened with beheading, slitting, attacking me because I held a speech of truth with my face uncovered, and in particular on the inaction of the mayor of my commune’, he said….
