Far right's drums beat out hate against Islam

By CATHERINE FIELD

PARIS - Far-right groups in Europe are seizing on the September 11 attacks in America to beat the xenophobic drum and governments, sensing that the sound is reverberating among the public, are moving to tighten immigration and asylum rules.

The radical right's message, either direct or implicit, is that the Muslim minority in western Europe is somehow alien to the host culture and harbours terrorists or criminals.

French far-right leader Bruno Megret this week chose the city of Poitiers - where the Frankish, Christian king Charles Martel defeated Arab, Muslim invaders in 732 - to warn of an "Islamic fifth column" inside France. He claimed there was a direct link between the suicide assaults on New York and Washington, and the crime-ridden French city suburbs, which has a large number of North African immigrants.

"Today, the danger comes not just from Kabul but from Mantes-la-Jolie," he said, referring to a town northwest of Paris.

"Our council estates have become powder kegs like in Palestine. The attacks on the Pentagon are of the same nature as those taking place in our suburbs every day, on policemen, firemen and all the representatives of the state."

Megret's group, the Republican National Movement, is not a votewinner - it has no MPs and won only 3 per cent of the ballots cast in the 1999 European Parliament elections - but it has significant mischief value.

It has launched a poster campaign under the slogan "Islamists Out of France - Order with Megret" and vowed to place "the tide of immigration" at the centre of next April's presidential election campaign.

In Germany, liberal opinion has been shocked by the rise of a maverick rightwing judge, Ronald Schill, who won 18 per cent of the vote in elections to the city-state of Hamburg last month in his first tilt at the ballot box.

Schill made a name for himself by calling for the constitutional right to political asylum to be scrapped in order to avoid its abuse by economic migrants and saying black drug dealers were to blame for the city's high crime rate.

Initially dismissed as shallow and demagogic by his opponents, his Party for a Law and Order Offensive made a breakthrough with voters after investigators into the US atrocities said at least three of the attackers lived and trained in Hamburg.

Opinions such as these have been loudly condemned by European mainstream parties, the press and religious leaders.

But, fearing that the xenophobic drumbeat is echoing among the public, many countries have struck a tougher verbal posture on migration and some have already announced detailed plans to tighten up immigration procedures and asylum rules.

The Austrian Government announced this week that all asylum-seekers would have to give their fingerprints, and all immigrants must learn German as part of an "integration contract" with the host nation.

In Britain, the Labour Government said it would pass tougher laws on the processing of asylum cases.

Incitement to religious hatred will be made a crime, creating a law that could be used against violent xenophobes but also presumably against Islamic fundamentalists using the mosque and internet as platforms for terrorists.

The far right British National Party has launched an anti-Islamic fundamentalist leaflet campaign, and its website, like Megret's, features an image of a mosque's minaret crossed out with a red line, as on a road sign.

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