On the night of June 2nd, Lionel M., aged 27, stole a Quran and burned it in front of the Errahma mosque in Villeurbanne, in the suburbs of Lyon. He has now been sentenced to twelve months in prison and banned from entering the municipality of Villeurbanne for two years, to the satisfaction of the local Muslim community.
Back in June, Lionel M. was quickly identified thanks to surveillance cameras installed near the mosque. He was charged with “simple theft” and “damage to property committed on the grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality or religion.”
Suffering from paranoid schizophrenia since the age of 18, Lionel M. attempted to justify his actions by claiming that he had been the victim of an antisemitic attack while wearing a kippah. “I didn’t want to harm Muslims, I wanted to attack a book,” he explained. He wanted “to make it clear that he had been hurt” and said he was convinced that “all religions must be respected.” A psychiatric evaluation concluded that his judgment was impaired but not completely absent.
On social media, many expressed astonishment at at the severity of the sentence, which contrasts with the suspended sentences handed down in cases of vandalism targeting churches or Catholic religious objects.
The wording of the charges indicates that the suspect was not prosecuted for blasphemy—a type of crime that does not exist in French law. The sentence, strictly speaking, was not handed down to ‘protect’ the Quran. Nevertheless, the case sets a dangerous precedent, and the reaction of the local Muslim community clearly reflects this.
The Muslim community is happy to have been heard,
said the rector of the Grand Mosque of Lyon upon hearing the ruling. “The community needs to be shown that they are not second-class citizens,” explained the organiser of an interfaith march held after the incident, echoing the discourse relayed by the Left denouncing prevailing Islamophobia and criticising the stigmatisation of Muslims in public spaces.
