A halal supermarket in the Parisian suburb of Colombes has been told by local officials to start selling pork and alcohol or face closure, Le Parisien reports.
The Good Price mini-market opened its doors in April 2015, but has been accused of being too “communitarian” by local authorities. “One cannot find either pork or alcohol there […] but will find 95% halal meat and plenty of prayers mats,” the head of Colombes housing authority has said. This breaches the terms of the supermarket’s lease, which stipulates it must serve as a general store (alimentation génerale), not a specialty store.
The halal mini-market took the place of another supermarket in the same neighborhood last year. After noticing they were no longer able to buy the full range of products, some older residents complained to local authorities.
“We want a social mix. We don’t want any area that is only Muslim or any area where there are no Muslims,” the mayor ‘s chief of staff, Jerome Besnard, told the Telegraph.
The reaction would have been the same, he said, if the shop had been a kosher supermarket.
Local authorities argue that the shortage of meat and alcohol products puts older residents—who might not be able to walk all the way to a different store—at a disadvantage, and also goes against French secularist principles by favoring one group over another.
But Good Price’s manager, Soulemane Yalcin, swears he is only “doing business.”
“I look around me and I target what I see,” he told le Parisien. “All the stores that sell alcohol face security problems.” But what about ham or bacon? “That’s because we’ve experienced considerable losses in the deli department.”
The Colombes housing authority is taking legal action to revoke the shop’s lease, which would normally extend until 2019. The case will go to court in October.
