Faced with the danger of radical Islam, the responses of the State. This is the title of the report by Restricted zone broadcast on Sunday January 23, 2022 on M6 and which caused a stir. Ophélie Meunier, the host of the program, was threatened and placed under police protection. Lilia Bouziane, a law student and a veiled Muslim who appears in her images, had thus declared that she had been deceived since she was presented with a completely different issue theme, namely secularism among young people. A survey ofFreeze frames sheds light on the not always loyal approach techniques of Michaëlle Gagnet, director of this issue.
The channel’s cameras followed Lilia Bouziane for 48 hours. Finally, the young woman appears six minutes on the air. Selected passages, such as those where the director asks him from “very leading questions“. “She said to me: ‘In England, communitarianism is an asset, it’s beautiful… You don’t agree with me?’“, remembers the student from Lyon. Then, facing Lilia Bouziane and other friends, Michaëlle Gagnet questions the case of Mila, a young girl threatened with death after shocking remarks on Islam. “What do you think of Mila? Do you condemn the threats against her? Are you for freedom of expression?“, she asked them.”Still happy that I condemn the fact of threatening someone! gets angry Lilia Bouziane, who intends to file a complaint. I felt like they were trying to get me to say things I didn’t mean at all.“
Before the filming of this issue of Forbidden Zone, other French Muslim figures were approached such as Fateh Kimouche, founder of the Al-Kanz site, Brahim Z. of the blog on mosque news Domes and minarets or Vincent Souleymane, an influential convert. “Salam Aleykum” (misspelled), “en France, we are clearly delirious about Islam, Salafism and rigorous people“, “give a voice to Muslims in France on living together, secularism, the place of religion but also discrimination“… The polite formulas and other reassuring phrases are the same in those emails thatFreeze frames reveals. But the three men smelled the scam and preferred to decline the invitation. “We were presented with a dummy subject“, regrets Fateh Kimouche.
For her part, she explained herself on CNews on February 1, 2022. The director “assumes perfectly“his report and says himself”convinced that the investigation is relentless and that it was necessary“.
This is not the first time that Michaëlle Gagnet’s methods have challenged. In 2015, still for Forbidden Zone, she directed the reporter on “the new ghettos“. There already, some protagonists felt fooled. Street89a fixer had indicated that she had “lied about his intentions“.