Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Anti-Semitism Rife at French Islamic Conference

A major conference on Islam in Paris featured anti-Semitic speeches, according to a sociologist who listened to the lectures.

The speeches were given “a place of honor” at Wednesday’s 31st congress of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France, or UOIF, sociologist Michele Tribalat wrote in the Le Figaro daily Thursday. He singled out a speech by Hasni Ramadan, a prominent Muslim leader from Geneva who spoke before thousands of congress participants.

According to the news site www.europe-israel.org, Ramadan said during his address: “All the evil in the world originates from the Jews and the Zionist barbarism.”

The UOIF congress is one of France’s largest and most prominent Islamic events.

Ramadan also condemned French Prime Minister Manuel Vals for “publicly wearing a kippah” while supporting a ban on the wearing of veils by Muslim women in some public areas.

Hani Ramadan is a brother of Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss professor who is banned from entering the United States because of donations he made to Palestinian groups designated as terrorist by the U.S. government.

“Against these international schemes of Zionist power, there is only one rampart: Islam,” Hani Ramadan reportedly said.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.