A Paris-based restaurant has been accused of discriminating against diners with Arabic names. Tajmaât Information Centre (TIC), a social network for North Africans, announced that requests for reservations at La Plage Parisienne using “Maghrebi-sounding names are systematically refused for ‘high attendance’ # strangecoincidence”.

TIC attached screenshots of four reservations for April 30 at 8:45 p.m. Two of the reservations that were under Mohammed and Mehdi were rejected, while reservations under Ellie and Christophe were confirmed for the same time slot. Other social media users participated in the test and shared their results, which confirmed the suspicion of discrimination.

https://twitter.com/Tajmaat_Service/status/1521519315471765504?s=20&t=kyYDWDJi-Y25EwL9JpY5kA

TIC urged diners of North African heritage to patronize local businesses owned by members of their community.

In response to the incident, Cannes-based lawyer Sophiane El Baroudi announced on May 2 that he had filed a complaint against the restaurant owned by Beaumarly Group “for proven acts of discrimination” in violation of the French penal code. The complaint stated that the “restaurant systematically refuses reservations from people whose names sound foreign, particularly Maghrebi, on the pretext of high attendance for this purpose.”

This case is not the first incident of restaurant discrimination in the French capital. At L’Avenue, a trendy Parisian restaurant popular with celebrities, the managers have also been singled out for their discrimination against hijab-wearing and Arab women. There have also been reports of veiled women being turned away from the Matignon restaurant on the Champs-Élysées.

An anti-racism group filed complaints against 37 companies for posting discriminatory job offers that excluded non-French or non-European citizens from critical national security jobs, and even those that included painters and cleaners in defence, telecommunication, environmental, and energy companies.

For decades, the debate over rising anti-Islamic rhetoric has been at the heart of the French political scene, particularly during election campaigning.

This election was no exception, with Macron, Le Pen, and Zemmour all making headlines for controversial statements about “Islamist separatism” and Islam’s supposed incompatibility with France’s “republican values.”