Photo Credits: Daily Mail
After she did a live broadcast on her Instagram speaking about her sexuality, the 16-year-old French girl was insulted by a Muslim commenter. He called the girl a “dirty lesbian” and invoked Allah to condemn her about two weeks ago. After that, this French girl named Mila posted her comments about Islam and other religions online. She said she hated religion, that the Qur’an was full of hate, that Islam is “shit” and that it was all okay to say because “You cannot be racist towards a religion.”
As the BBC reports, police initially opened two investigations: the first into whether Mila was guilty of hate speech, and the second into her online attackers. They have since dropped the hate speech case as Mila was expressing a personal opinion on religion and not targeting individuals.
No matter how ‘vulgar’ or serious her comments about Islam were, they cannot be the reason for death threats she experienced. On Tuesday, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told the National Assembly that Mila and her family were under police protection.
Mila came out from hiding on February 3rd to be interviewed by the French show Quotidien. The show host Yann Barhes said: “That you don’t regret the right to blaspheme?”
Mila replies: “Yes, that’s right. The right to blaspheme. And I don’t have to hide for this reason. I don’t have to stop living for this. But I would still like to say that in some way I am a little bit sorry towards the people who I might have hurt who practice their religion in peace, and I never wanted to target human beings. I simply wanted to… blaspheme… I wanted to talk about a religion, and say what I thought about it, and that’s all.”
Mila also told the show host: “There are two things I regret in this story. The first is that I said it on social media, because I had not taken into account how big it could get and [I also regret] having said it in such a vulgar way, because I could have argued my point better.”
When asked by Yann Barthes: “Could you have said these words about another religion?” Mila replies: “Yes, of course.”
Richard Malka, Mila’s lawyer, told The Times: “It is the left that traditionally defends secularism in this country. It saddens me that it has not done so in this case,” adding that her situation had been ignored by feminist and left-wing groups; which are usually quick to defend female victims of verbal and physical violence.
While Mila insulted religion, a Muslim commenter insulted her directly and there is a bigger discussion about Mila’s comments about religion and less people care about her online attacker.
