The Union of French Muslim Democrats (French: Union des démocrates musulmans français; UDMF) is a French political party founded in 2012. The party has faced criticism for purportedly being against the secular values of the French republic, while it states that it is a non-religious party similar to existing Christian democratic parties.[1][2][3]
In the 2014 French municipal elections, the party ran lists in several towns, including BobignyinSeine-Saint-Denis where the candidate for mayor was Kamal Moumni.[4] The list was invalidated as Moumni was not a registered voter, and its members were absorbed into the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) list of incumbent mayor Stéphane de Paoli. Hocine Hebbali, a 31-year-old unemployed university graduate, became the first UDMF member to be voted to office; he was put in charge of local history and proposed a museum of French colonisation.[5]
In the 2017 French presidential election, Kamel Messaoudi, a radiologist from the Muslim-majority overseas department of Mayotte, sought to run for UDMF. His candidacy did not make it on to the ballot, as he received only three signatures from office-holders while the regulations required at least 500.[7] In the legislative elections just after, the party ran 10 candidates, of which the most successful was Messaoudi taking 5.1% of the vote in Mayotte's 1st constituency.[7]
Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a former government minister, said in 2015 that the UDMF was sectarian and ran contrary to French republican values, while deputy Nicolas Dupont-Aignan said that such a party could lead to France fracturing like Lebanon.[3]Malek Boutih, then a deputy of the Socialist Party, defended the rights of the UDMF to promote their views in a democracy, while also adding that the party would have a negligible impact on French politics.[2]
Nizzar Bourchada, a councillor in Brie-Comte-Robert who was formerly of the UDI, joined the UDMF but left three months later, citing a lack of effective structuring in the party. He said that the party created headlines and then faded away. Bourchada said that in local elections, it was divisive to have a party with a religion in its name.[11] M'hammed Henniche, secretary of the Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-Saint-Denis, said that the party would make the French believe that Muslims are sectarian, and therefore fuel Islamophobia.[11]