French hospitals face increasing violence from Muslims

Persistent violence and threatening behavior in French hospitals caused by tensions between the French and Muslim concepts of hospital procedures have led to calls for clearer guidlines on how to reconcile them.

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French hospitals work on the principal of equal treatment for all, as they are government-run. All public institutions in France are “Laïque”, which means that no distinction is made between those using them according to religious and other criteria. This is French-style secularism.

The changing demographics of the country have led to this apparently simple rule being increasingly challenged for religious reasons. Patients ask for specific treatment based on their religious beliefs, which the state refuses to accord. The largest religious group of non-Western origin being Muslim, it is only natural that it is the increase in contestation based on tenets of the Muslim faith which have been causing the most concern.

The group “Islam and Laicite” is an umbrella group associating many religions in Frace in the context of finding solutions for the integration of religious practices into public life where possible and practical.

This group was supported the creation of a Charter, introduced in 2007, which was designed to set out the philosophy of the French healhcare system as a response to violence in public hospitals. The group also collated examples of violence in hospitals directly imputable to Muslim beliefs as a means of supporting the Charter. Other supporters included hospital staff and doctors.

Many cases involve pregnant women. Well-publicised examples of this kind of violence include:

Doctor JF Oury from a hospital in Paris was threatened and slapped by Fouad Ben Moussa, the Muslim husband of a Maghrebin woman who had had difficulties giving birth. He said that Islam forbade the touching of a Muslim man’s wife.

Near Grenoble, A doctor was attacked by a Muslim man under pretext that Islam forbade the use of forceps.

In lyon, Doctor Raudrant was threatened with a knife by a Muslim who objected to his wife being examined by a man.

Doctor Nisand, in Strasbourg, witnessed the attack by two Muslim men on a Social Assistant. They slapped him and banged his head against a table before shouting “That will teach you to touch our women.” Finally they ripped open his t-shirt and wrote the word “Mohamed” on his chest. They left him in a coma.

Worse still, there have been instances of Muslim men quite simply refusing that their wives be examined, having caeserians or even treated at all, thereby risking the patient’s life. Hospital staff call the police in that case, which leads to violence being redirected onto them.

All this led to the CNGOF, the national representative college and body of gyneacologists and obstetricians to issue a statement expressing their worries about being able to “defend women against Muslim Integrism.”

Although efforts have been made by moderate Muslim representative bodies to get Muslims to accept the rules, medical staff are not seeing an appreciable difference.

Doctor Nisand said at the time the charter came out, “We are formally saying that we shall continue to run a service where male and female doctors treat patients irrespective of gender. We defend the rights of women to decide about contraception, abortion and sterilisation without their husbands’ point of view. (…) Thirty years ago, Muslim women came to our hospitals with no worries about being treated by mainly male doctors, and we didn’t have all this violence. What is the reason for this regression?”