French Muslims trapped in vortex of hatred, hostility

Battered by Islamophobia, extremism in wake of Paris killings

THE CITY of Vincennes’s first Muslim doctor doesn’t look Muslim. Or, at least, he doesn’t look or act how people expect a Muslim should. Fair-skinned and cleanshaven, he goes about his rounds listening to classical music; a copy of Voltaire’s

is nestled on his desk. Sometimes his patients forget who he is. “I’m disgusted by Muslim people,” a patient of 10 years recently confided. “They shouldn’t be here.” France, another casually mentioned, is only for “the true French people”.

“You can’t see in my face that I’m Muslim,” said Karim Bessalem, who has been living in this country for half his life, having escaped the strife of his native Algeria 25 years ago. “People don’t have any problems saying such things in front of me.”

That’s especially true now, more than two months after men acting in the name of Islam gunned down 17 people in attacks that traumatised the nation. For many of France’s 5 million Muslims – the largest Islamic population in Western Europe – the killings have left them feeling trapped in a vortex, battered both by rising Islamophobia and growing radicalism in their own communities.

The twin forces feed on each other, building in tandem. Together they represent a lingering and potentially devastating counterpoint to the millions who marched in cities across France on the Sunday after the attacks in a solemn and powerful defence of the nation’s core ideals – liberty, equality and fraternity.

Neither anti-Muslim bias nor Islamist extremism is obvious here in Vincennes. Although four of the victims from January’s killings died just a short walk from Bessalem’s office in an assault on a popular kosher grocery store, this leafy and affluent city on Paris’s eastern fringe has long been considered a model of peaceful coexistence. In the aftermath of the attack, city residents say, the bonds among Muslims, Jews and Christians have grown ever tighter.

And yet, as Bessalem has learnt, the sentiment behind a recent dramatic spike in Islamophobic acts across France has a quiet home here, too. Meanwhile, the virus of Islamist extremism lurks just beyond the city line, finding recruits in a bleak housing development where impressionable and isolated young men have succumbed to the call of holy war.

“There was always racism toward immigrants. But now the extremists on all sides are using the atmosphere after these attacks to build permanent conflict between communities,” said Abdallah Zakri, head of France’s National Observatory Against Islamophobia.

In January, the month of the attacks, Zakri’s group recorded 214 separate acts of anti-Muslim behaviour – more than it documented in all of last year. The offences included physical assaults, threats to eradicate Muslims from France and pigs’ heads dropped on mosque doorsteps.

Attacks such as the one on the kosher market have prompted some French Jews to plan their departures. Record numbers are leaving for Israel amid fears that even the deployment of troops to guard synagogues and schools will not be enough to protect the community from an anti-Semitic onslaught.

The sense of alienation French Muslims feel from their country is undeniable, with widespread complaints of discrimination in the workplace, profiling by police and scapegoating by the media and politicians.

“There’s more and more racism every

THE SENSE OF ALIENATION IS WIDESPREAD: DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORKPLACE, PROFILING BY POLICE AND SCAPEGOATING BY POLITICIANS

day in France,” said Najim Hakem, a 25-yearold son of Algerian immigrants. “You turn on the TV and all you see is bad publicity about Muslims.”

Hakem is surrounded by empty expanses of concrete and crowds of young men who, like him, struggle to find work in a sluggish economy. Being Muslim, he said, doesn’t make it any easier. “If you go out and say that you don’t drink alcohol or eat pork, people are going to say: ‘I don’t like this guy’,” said Hakem. In the absence of other options, young people from the area turn to crime. “If you don’t deal,” said Hakem, “you don’t eat.”

Lately, criminality has become a gateway to something more ominous. In both the Paris attacks and in last month’s killings in Copenhagen – all ostensibly motivated by religion – the assailants were notable less for their piety than for their previous run-ins with the law on drug, weapons and assault charges. Those who have fallen under the spell of radical Islam in Hakem’s neighbourhood fit a similar profile.

At least three have gone to Syria to fight, he said, part of an estimated total of 1 200 across France – the highest of any country in Europe. “They’re people who were into drugs and alcohol. They didn’t know anything about the Qur’an,” Hakem said. “One of them went because he was dumped by his girlfriend. He was depressed and didn’t know what to do with his life. So he went to war.”

At a nearby mosque, the rector said he