A mass shooting took place on Thursday, March 16th, at a high school in Grasse, southern France. Four individuals sustained gunshot wounds, including the school’s headmaster. A 16-year-old student was quickly arrested, having been found in possession of firearms.

In the hours following the incident, false information about the shooter’s identity circulated on the Internet.

One tweet that was quickly shared was from the account @Actu17, which covers news about “police, security and terrorism”. The tweet presented the assailant as an individual on the French government’s watch list and as the father of a child named “Djihad” (jihad, i.e. a holy war undertaken as a sacred duty by Muslims).

(Translation: ‘S Card, he indicates that he will “kill everyone with a Kalachnikov” and names his son “jihad”.’)

But this tweet dates back to March 11th and refers to a different news story in Grasse. It concerns a 30-year-old Afghan who had issued death threats against magistrates and had been sentenced to a year in prison. The tweet – taken out of context – added to confusion about the Grasse shooter. A police source contacted by news outlet L’Express underlined that “the student arrested is not known to counter-terrorism services and has no known links to jihadist movements.”

The shooter was also quickly alleged to be Muslim in numerous tweets.
  

(Translation 1: ‘Grasse, the young Muslim arrested is a student of Tocqueville (17 years old), he was armed (2 pistols, 1 rifle). At least 3 people lightly injured.’  Translation 2: ‘#Shooting in #Grasse. The perpetrator is a 17-year-old student. What the media don’t say is that it’s a Muslim. Will they say it?’)

All these assertions were unfounded given that the assailant’s identity had not yet been made public when the tweets were posted.

Meanwhile, a ‘Sam Hyde’ also appeared multiple times as the alleged main suspect, often accompanied with the tag “white supremacist”.

(Translation: ‘#Grasse the suspect is Sam Hyde, known to secret services.’)

But ‘Sam Hyde’ is a notorious meme shared around mass shootings, a trap into which social media users easily fall. Hyde, a 31-year-old comedian, is cast as a shooting suspect and variously described each time – e.g. as a neo-Nazi or an Islamist. Notably he was also miscast as the main suspect in the Paris attacks in November 2015.

According to certain news websites, the French state is considering replacing two holidays devoted to Catholic public holidays with Muslim and Jewish ones. This is false. This idea exists – it was put forward in a report by the think tank Terra Nova on 22 February 2017 – but has no legislative action attached to it. In the document entitled: “The Emancipation of Islam in France“, the think tank, which defines itself as “progressive”, makes recommendations for the organisation of Islam in the country.

One of these recommendations concerns the holidays associated with religious festivals. Currently, in France, the only public holidays associated with a religion are Christian ones – including two Mondays (Easter and Pentecost). For “religions to be treated more equally”, Terra Nova advocates “integrating at least two new important dates, Yom Kippur and Eid al-Adha, as public holidays, by removing the two Mondays which do not correspond to any particular solemnity”. 

Terra Nova’s recommendations are not binding for policy-makers. The foundation is close to the Socialist Party, but the government has never announced that it wants to put in place such a measure. Additionally, the Muslim and Jewish religious associations have never demanded the inclusion of new public holidays, with the exception of the UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France).

The idea of ​​introducing more equity in the confessional distribution of holidays has already been mentioned by some politicians such as Eva Joly during the 2012 presidential campaign or Bernard Stasi in his report on secularism handed over to President Jacques Chirac at the end of 2003.

This article answers a question submitted to CrossCheck by a web user.