Rue Myhra in La Goutte d'Or.
Paris's Préfecture de la Police has forbidden an apéro géant (giant cocktail party) entitled "Saucisson Pinard" (Sausage and Wine) to take place tomorrow in La Goutte d'Or, a neighborhood in the 18th arrondissement, not far from the Basilica of Sacré Coeur.
Why would the police department forbid such a fun, innocent event?
Let's start with the location of the carefully titled party: la rue Myrha, site of the Khalid Ibn Walid mosque*, a mosque that is too small to accommodate all of the people who want to pray there. There are only two mosques in le quartier, which has a very high concentration of Muslims, so for years the faithful have taken to the streets — literally — in order to pray.
It is quite a sight, if you ever happen to walk by Rue Myrha during prayers. Hundreds of men kneeling on carpets, right in the middle of the street. Friday, of course, is the makeshift mosque's busiest day, and sundown is its busiest hour. At this time, the street is blocked by the bodies men bowed in prayer as traffic crawls slowly by.
The organizers of "Saucisson Pinard" chose this exact hour for their event: Friday, 7 p.m. And what snack did they urge participants to bring? Saucisson, of course, because it is made from pork.
Who would try to organize such an inevitable culture clash?
Sylvie François, a woman with a very French-sounding name . . . who does not actually exist. According to today's Le Parisien, "Madame François" is a front for the right-wing extremist group Bloc Identitaire (which organized the event with the support of a left-wing extremist group, Riposte Laïque, that is so far left it's . . . extreme right). Lest anyone be confused by Bloc Identitaire's intentions, its Facebook page explains that it organized the event "in the face of peril from the islamification of France" and "because the Rue Myrha and other arteries of the neighborhood are occupied, particularly on Fridays, by some resolute adversaries of our wine and our charcuterie."**
You might now understand why Paris's police department has forbidden the event to take place. "Pour risques de troubles graves à l'ordre public" (Due to the risk of serious troubles for public order), was their official response.
The story has been making headlines in France all week. One of the most clever reports came from the news site Rue89, which was quick to point out that, contrary to Riposte Laïque's claims, one can buy both wine and charcuterie in la Goutte d'Or. Riposte Laïque and Block Identitaire, though, are not taking points from anyone. Instead they are busy organizing a second in-your-face apéro, in a Muslim neighborhood in Lyon.
* A new Institute of Islamic Cultures has been commissioned to accommodate the neighborhood's faithful. The Institute is supposed to open its doors in 2012.
** Muslims aren't the only "adversaries" of Bloc Identitaire. Americans are, too. The organization is holding a conference on "How we are Americanized" on June 25 in Aix-en-Provence. They promise to discuss how "since 1945, the European cultural environment has been fabricated by the United States thanks to weapons that are even more fearsome than all of the B52s produced en masse by the American military: le chewing gum, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Desperate Housewives, MTV, Michael Jordan . . . "
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