Islamophobic death threats against French sports shops workers

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

A sporty headscarf for jogging Muslim women will not yet come to the shops in France. The plan has been canceled by sports retailer Decathlon because of serious threats.

“All women have the right to exercise, regardless of their culture”, said the store chain earlier. In the meantime, Decathlon has reversed that decision because of threats received by (shop) workers. “We suspend the project to guarantee the safety of our employees”, a statement says.

On Twitter, the store chain showed examples of what threats it got. “You are contributing to the invasion by Muslim extremists and should all die in the ovens in Poland“, someone wrote.

Meaning that this Islamophobe advocated mass murder of shop workers like happened in World War II to Jews in concentration camps like Auschwitz and Sobibor.

Previously, most French politicians had reacted disapprovingly to the intention to include a sporty hijab in the collection. …

The socialist opposition publicly wondered whether Decathlon should not be boycotted. …

The PS, the French Socialist Party, collapsed in recent elections because of their policies while in government of austerity and adapting to extreme right xenophobia. A major role in that played Blairite right-wing Prime Minister Valls, with his hatred of Roma and Islamophobic persecution of another sporting garment, the so-called ‘burkini‘. The PS supporters rejected Valls as their presidential candidate. He then tried, and failed, to join the new president Macron‘s party. He then moved to Spain, where he marched jointly with the Vox neonazi party against the social democrat government; joining a right-wing party that wants a coalition with the Vox fascists after the coming elections.

Unfortunately, it seems that the PS has not learned the lesson of their catastrophic election defeat, and that even though Valls is gone, some of his Islamophobic miasma remains.

That idea even got support from the right-wing radical Nicolas Dupont-Aignan: “I do not want my two daughters to grow up in a country where the place of the woman will soon be the same as in Saudi Arabia.”

Well, Mr far-rightist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, if you don’t like the regime in Saudi Arabia, then you should ask President Macron to stop selling French weapons to the Saudi absolute monarchy for waging genocidal war on the people of Yemen. And you should criticize the right-wing ‘republican’ authorities for closing down a Riviera public beach to the public, reserving it for the Saudi royal family. You should not take it out in women on France who have nothing to do with the Saudi royals; who just happen to like clothes which you dislike. Maybe they dislike your clothes as well; but that should not give them the power to ban your favourite garments.

Not politicians or neonazis threatening shop workers with mass murder in Auschwitz should decide what clothes women wear. Only the women themselves should decide that. Whether it is about women wearing headscarves, ‘burkinis‘, bikinis, miniskirts, maxishirts, trousers, shorts; for short hair or for long hair; etc. etc.

The ruling party LREM of President Macron said they no longer have confidence in the sports retail chain. …

The sports headscarf is not new anymore. Sports brand Nike produced it already in 2017, that is for sale in France.

But now that a French brand wanted to sell the garment in a large sports chain and the sports headscarf would become more visible to the French public, many politicians considered it a step too far.