On Friday night a church in the village of Chassieu in France was vandalised with graffiti reading "Islam is growing in power" and "M. Merah". The town council quickly arranged for the graffiti to be erased. While it is normal for mosque desecrations in France to make national and even international headlines, so far there appear to have been no significant reporting of this event. No politicians have denounced it, declared that it runs contrary to the values of the Republic, promised a massive police operation to catch the perpetrators or harsh punishment for them when found.
The whole thing might have been erased from history had it not been for the initiative of a local nationalist group in taking a photograph of the graffiti and publishing a report about it on its website.
Without reference to this specific incident (which had not occurred then), Marine Le Pen mentioned this curious disparity in treatment in the interview she gave to Le Monde a few days ago:
I'm glad the crime of blasphemy no longer exists. What I find astonishing is the variable geometry of the political class. We are in a country where 95% of the desecrations concern Catholic places of worship or graves and not a single line appears, not one statement from a minister. And as soon as there is a desecration of a mosque or square, immediately, a press statement has to be issued.
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