BATTLE FOR BELONGING IN A SOCIETY RIDDLED WITH RACISM
▶ In this final instalment on Islam in France, Colin Randall explains the deep divisions and suspicions that President Macron faces
Few areas of the world are immune from extremism but France feels its impact more than any other European country, which has led to President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to streamline the organisation of Islam.
As a source of extremist fighters enlisting with ISIS and similar groups in Middle East conflicts, and in terms of death and injury caused by terrorist attacks, France has suffered disproportionate levels of social turmoil.
The challenges faced by the president, and community leaders go beyond countering radicalisation.
Academics and Muslim figures recognise a glaring need to make young French adherents feel a sense of belonging in a society riddled with racism and mutual suspicion.
But it is the hard statistical evidence of extremism that preoccupies the dominant centre and right of French politics, widening an intellectual divide over causes and effects.
More than 250 people have been killed on French soil and almost 1,000 wounded, in terrorist atrocities that began in 2012 when Mohamed Merah, switching from petty crime to extremism, killed three French soldiers and four Jews, three of them children, in south-western France.
The attacks have ranged from mass murder, as in the Paris and Nice outrages that took 216 lives in 2015 and 2016, to single acts of what some experts call “low-cost terrorism”.
Recent examples include a knife murder in Paris, the deaths of four people in the southern towns of Carcassonne and Trebes, and the killing of two young women outside the railway station in Marseilles.
A new study from a think tank in Paris, the French Institute of International Relations, says no western country has been more affected than France by extremists.
About 1,300 French citizens have become involved in the Syrian and Iraqi wars, hundreds more have been arrested while trying to get there and, by February, 323 had returned, including 68 minors.
The report’s author, Marc Hecker, identifies several common points including poor education, unemployment, a history of crime and strong ties to the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa among 137 studied cases of people prosecuted for such offences.
But one in four was a convert to Islam rather than born into a Muslim family.
Other researchers point out that while the number of French “foreign fighters” is the West’s highest, Belgium has by far the greatest per capita figure, with 46 for every million people compared with 18 from France. Belgium has a population of 11.3 million, six times fewer than in France.
Three powerful open letters, all published since Mr Macron began a consultation process ahead of a major initiative on Islam in France expected this month, highlight the good intentions of Muslim leaders and the divisions, complexities and misunderstandings that make truly harmonious inter-communal relations so difficult to achieve.
In late April, an open letter signed by 30 imams and appearing in the left
Le Monde, bitterly attacked the “confiscation of our religion by criminals” and said “ignorant, disturbed and idle” young people had become easy prey for dangerous ideologues.
Their initiative followed a few days after another daily newspaper, Le
Parisien, ran a statement signed by more than 250 people including former president Nicolas Sarkozy, three past prime ministers and a range of parliamentarians and intellectuals, deploring a “new anti-Semitism”.
They were motivated by an increased number of anti-Semitic incidents in France, including the murders of Jews in circumstances where their faith was seen as a factor. The authors say 11 Jews have been murdered “in recent history” by extremists because they were Jewish.
“This terror is spreading,” the letter said. “Anti-Semitism is not the business of the Jews, it is everyone’s business.
“When a prime minister declares in parliament to the applause of the country that France without the Jews is no longer France, it is not a beautiful, consoling phrase but a solemn warning. Our European history, and particularly French history for geographical, religious, philosophical and legal reasons, is deeply linked to various cultures among which Jewish thought is decisive.”
The signatories claim there is evidence of “low-level ethnic cleansing” that has driven thousands of Jews out of areas of the Paris region.
Some of their arguments echo criticism of left-wing elements in neighbouring countries such as Britain, when the opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of failing to rid his party of those crossing from disapproval of Israeli policy to anti-Semitism.
The letter in Le Parisien accuses “French elites” of minimising or ignoring what was previously a farright phenomenon because they see radicalisation as a social revolt.
The signatories also demanded that verses of the Quran be declared obsolete by Islamic theological authorities, causing anger to many Muslims.
In their own open letter, the 30 imams said this showed “gross ignorance” and implied that Muslims could be peaceful only if they distanced themselves from their faith.
The imams stressed their compassion for “all our fellow citizens who have been directly or indirectly affected by terrorism and by the anti-Semitic crimes that have blindly struck our country”.
“Indignant, we are as French citizens affected by the despicable terrorism that threatens us all,” they wrote. “We are also Muslims, like the rest of our co-religionists peaceful Muslims, who suffer from the confiscation of their religion by criminals.”
Denouncing the “deadly temptation” and misguided sense of martyrdom offered by extremists bent on radicalising the young, they urged the young to “heed the Prophet’s warning that a Muslim who harms the life of an innocent person living in peace with Muslims will not smell the perfume of Paradise”.
The first of the three open letters to have been published appeared in the conservative Le Figaro in March under the headline, “No to Islamist separatism” and was signed by 100 figures from politics, academia, law and the arts. They deplored “a new Islamist totalitarianism that seeks to gain ground by any means and presents itself as a victim of intolerance”.
But a study of attitudes in high schools in areas of high Muslim population revealed startling statistics.
About 45 per cent of Muslim pupils did not unreservedly condemn the murders of 12 people at the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie
Hebdo, and 20 per cent supported taking up arms “in certain circumstances” to defend their faith.
The question on many lips as Mr Macron’s much-anticipated speech approaches is perhaps as tough as any to answer – how can any state-sponsored reform of Islam shift such deeply entrenched positions?
Indignant, we are as French citizens affected by the despicable terrorism that threatens us all LETTER FROM 30 IMAMS Open letter published by Le Monde newspaper