By Evi Tsakali,
Blasphemy does not exist in French law; in France, you can insult a religion, but not a person because of their religious beliefs. After the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks and Samuel Paty’s decapitation in November 2020, the question of blasphemy is once again instigated in France. And the object of this instigation is a teenage girl called Mila. However, is her story comparable and similar to the aforementioned?
Who is Mila?
Mila is a now 17-year-old girl from Isère, France. Having a very active presence on social media, she shared a variety of topics with her followers on social media, such as her dream of becoming a singer, or her sexuality. One day, on the 18th of January 2020, after going live on Instagram, Mila received a rather aggressive flirting of a male fan. When she rejected him, he responded with homophobic and racist comments like “filthy lesbian” or “French whore”. He then shifted the discussion to religion, when he called Mila a racist towards Muslim people, to which she responded that she rejects all religions and so she is not racist, because you cannot be racist towards a religion. It was after that heated discussion with the fan that she proceeded to post the Instagram story that would become viral, divide the French public opinion, and have severe political and judicial consequences; it would mark the beginning of the “Affaire Mila”.
The video
In the Instagram story that followed, Mila stated, among others, about Islam: “I hate the religion, the Quran is a religion of hate […] I have said what I believe, and you will not make me regret it. There are people who are going to be furious about it, but I clearly do not give a […], your religion is shitty, and as for your God… I am sticking my finger in his […], thank you and goodbye”. It did not take long for her to be bombarded with threats for her life, threats to torture or rape her. As she described in her testimony for the extreme-right blog Bellica, “I would receive 200 messages of pure hate per minute”. Mila would have to change many high schools only to realize that there was no school in French territory that could guarantee her safety. Today, she is homeschooled with police protection. She can go nowhere due to fears for her life and at least three people have been convicted for threatening to kill her. She became known in the international media as the teenage girl who is hiding because she insulted Islam. Her situation moved or infuriated many and unleased two currents (of support and opposition respectively) on social media; #JeSuisMila and #JeSuisPasMila.
Je suis or Je suis pas Mila?
Mila’s case is nothing but the mirror of modern French society; a multicultural society, supposedly diverse, which is struggling not to submit to Islam while not being (or at least seeming) islamophobic. The French president Emmanuel Macron highlighted the matter that judging a religion is permitted in France and that we should not forget that Mila is a minor, however many politicians from the Left as well as many LGBTQIA+ organizations have chosen to keep their distance.
As far as I am concerned, I was very confused when I first heard about the affair; I had read the newspaper Figaro affirming that the fact that a girl cannot leave her home because she said her opinion (which she can do freely), is contradictory to the secular nature of the French state (the notion of laïcité, to which I have dedicated a previous article). I had read Mila’s statement before the court that “it is time for fear to change sides”, which -if we distinguish it from the context- is so true. But I have also read the statements of Marine Le Pen, who strongly supports Mila against ‘terrorist Muslims’ and compares the case of Mila to that of Charlie Hebdo, claiming that the girl’s words in the video are the oral description of Charlie Hebdo’s infamous comic strips; which -in my opinion at least- is definitely not true. Because my legal studies in Paris have taught me that there may be no notion of blasphemy in French law, but there is another one that is called the “call to racist hate”… Nobody deserves to fear for their life on a daily basis, Mila has already paid a great toll for what I think is basically foolishness and immaturity (and overestimation of social media). But besides all that, it is no less than hate speech. And (though I may be biased as a fond reader of Charlie Hebdo), I find the comparison between a satiric newspaper and hate speech on social media rather unfortunate, if not ignorant.
P.S. 1: Je suis or je ne suis pas Mila? Well, neither.
P.S. 2: Another story I write about that is all about the hate we give…
References
- Battaglia, M. & Herzog, C., L’affaire Mila expliquée : insultes contre l’islam, menaces contre une lycéenne et réaction politique “maladroite”. Le Monde, Available here
- Simon, C., “Je suis Mila” : le cas d’une ado menacée de mort relance le débat sur le blasphème. Le Parisien, Available here
