Murder inside a French mosque: not an outlier, the inevitable result of Islamophobia

On 25 April, Aboubakar Cisse was executed in cold blood inside a mosque in southern  France. In the days after, following political pressure, French MPs held a minute of silence for Aboubakar.

However, this assassination continues to be portrayed as an isolated act of hatred and derangement. This is missing the point.

To treat Cisse's killing as no more than the act of a disturbed individual is to ignore the political order and long historic shadow of racism that has criminalised and dehumanised racialised communities, and licensed violence in the name of the French Republic and across the West.  

But it also ignores a more recent shift toward a more permissive environment for open,  unashamed racism — in traditional and social media, in politics, and from the state. 

On both 24 April and April 25, the very same day Cissé was assassinated, I and my employer, the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) were the target of a  vitriolic campaign by two French newspapers, Le Figaro and Le Journal du Dimanche accusing me and ENAR of links to the Muslim Brotherhood, of being a security threat, and "obsessed with race."  

These are not just baseless accusations – they are dangerous.

Familiar tactic

This is also not the first time that ENAR employees and members are targeted and it demonstrates a familiar tactic of securitising racialised voices and defaming civil society organisations that do racial justice work under the guise of protecting 'Republican or European values.' 

On a personal level, these attacks are not just an attempt at character assassination, but also expose me to real-life risks — including harassment, threats, physical attacks, and political blacklisting — by portraying me as a security threat.

As someone who has already experienced racial profiling and violence, these articles further compound my personal security by using  Islamophobic and racialised tropes to delegitimise my activism and expose me to intensified scrutiny and harm. 

This project of criminalisation and dehumanisation is a familiar tactic of the far-right and part of a broader, deliberate shrinking of civic space.

In both France and Europe, institutions have become increasingly intolerant of racialised voices that challenge the status quo. Civil society organisations working on racial justice, especially those confronting Islamophobia, are branded as extremist or dangerous, with conspiracy theories actively fuelled by political actors, the media, and institutions. 

Within this context, Cisse's assassination is not an outlier.

It is the result of policies and discourses that have actively furthered the dangerous securitisation of racialised people and in this particular instance Muslim and Black communities. His assassination was made possible by a society that saw his life as disposable. He was killed in the same way that so many others have been killed before him — through policies, through discourse, through dehumanisation, and through racism.

Cisse was not killed outside the state — he was killed within its ideological architecture. To frame this as the work of a lone extremist is to deny this reality.  

While France officially promotes a colourblind model, denying the significance of race as a social construct, it obscures the racism and racial hierarchisation that persist in the structure of French society. The invisibility of race in French public discourse and policies has allowed whiteness to remain the unexamined norm.

Racialised minorities, particularly those of  African, Maghrebi, and Muslim descent, face entrenched social, economic, and political exclusion even when born and raised in France.

However, this goes beyond mere exclusion to the active weaponisation of political, economic, social, and institutional violence against these communities, resulting in violence, discriminatory laws, smear campaigns, and the erosion of civil liberties.

The contradiction between France’s self-proclaimed colorblind ideals and the lived experiences of racialised populations is self-evident. 

'Laïcité' instrumentalised

Nowhere is this clearer than in the relentless instrumentalisation of laïcité [state secularism]. What began as a principle to separate religion from the state has morphed into a tool of repression – selectively applied to regulate and punish Muslim visibility.

From the 2004 ban on religious symbols in public schools to the 2021 “Anti-Separatism Law,” France has systematically framed Islam and Muslims as a threat to French identity and values. Veils, prayer, beards, mosques – all are cast as signs of deviance, extremism, or disloyalty to the Republic. These laws do not encourage unity; they institutionalise paranoia. 

But this is not simply about exclusion. It is about remaking Muslims – and those perceived to be Muslim or allies – into internal enemies, creating a climate where surveillance is normalised, racial profiling is routine, and violence is predictable. It is in this environment that someone could feel justified, even righteous, in walking into a place of worship and livestreaming the murder of a Muslim man. 

For Black Muslims in particular, this violence is layered. Their lives sit at the intersection of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia — two structural forces deeply rooted in France’s history of slavery, colonialism, and imperial rule.

In this environment, Islamophobia has become politically expedient; racism, electorally profitable

The erasure, suspicion, and criminalisation they face is compounded, and their lives are routinely dehumanised. This production of racialised violence in France is not new; what is new is the boldness with which it now asserts itself, fed by decades of institutional impunity and media and political complicity. 

These attacks on racialised bodies and civil society organisations are not limited to France. 

They are part of a broader authoritarian turn across much of the Global North, in which human rights activists are increasingly surveilled, smeared, and criminalised.

Across the Atlantic, the Trump administration is systematically targeting human rights and aid institutions with funding cuts and political delegitimisation. Borders have hardened, police powers have expanded, and dissent has been criminalised through the arrests of pro-Palestinian activists, revoking of visas and deportation of international students, AI-driven surveillance to monitor dissent, and pressure on universities to silence campus protests.

In this environment, Islamophobia has become politically expedient; racism, electorally profitable. What was once covert is now declared policy.  

To call this environment hostile would be an understatement. It is an ecosystem of racial violence – fostered by laws, propagated by politicians, legitimised by media, and reinforced by silence.  

To understand Cissé's death, we must be clear: he was not simply a victim of hate. He was the target of a long-standing political project that casts racialised people as permanent outsiders, whose faith, names, colour of their skin, origins, migration status, and neighbourhoods are coded as problems to be managed. His assassination was not a rupture – it was a continuation. 

To honour Cissé is to refuse the narratives of exception. It is to see his death as a mirror held up to France, Europe and the Global North, and to say loudly, this is white supremacy. 

Simply condemning Cissé's assassination is not enough. We must call on the  French state to publicly acknowledge its responsibility in enabling an environment where anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, and racism flourish, and commit to dismantling systemic racism. 

At the same time, the European Commission and member states should integrate measures against islamophobia into EU and national anti-racism frameworks (including in the upcoming EU anti-racism strategy and the National Action Plans against Racism) to address its systemic and institutional dimensions that are leading to such hate crimes.

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.