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PARIS: The pressure increases with every gruesome attack. After three weeks out of five, Muslims in France feel pressured.
A hotbed of suspicion focused on them again even before the latest acts of extremist violence, including two beheadings. President Emmanuel Macron has pushed ahead with his effort to rid France of Islam from extremists, part of a project he calls “separatism,” a term that makes Muslims shudder.
Amid increasingly intense rhetoric and fresh attacks from outsiders, including the murder of three people on Thursday (October 29) at a Catholic church in Nice, Muslims in France have kept their heads down and their chins up. But deep down, some squirm, feeling they are being held responsible.
“It is concerning for Muslims,” said Hicham Benaissa, a sociologist who specializes in Islam in the workplace. Within his network, he said, some “talk about leaving France. The situation is tense. There is fear “.
Islam is the second religion in France, which has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe. But the country’s roughly 5 million Muslims have walked a delicate line in search of full acceptance in what is for many their nation of birth. Discrimination casts a shadow over some and is an absolute barrier to the daily life of others.
READ: Attack on the church in Nice: what we know so far
The precious value of France’s secularism, which is intended to guarantee religious freedom, has been used in recent years by the state to reign in the customs practiced by some Muslims. The law proposed by the president may mean more tweaks with the secularism law of 1905 born out of a conflict with the powerful Roman Catholic clergy.
Macron has sparked angry protests and called for a boycott of French products last week from South Asia to the Middle East. He is accused of spreading anti-Muslim sentiment, particularly while praising the teacher who was beheaded near Paris, defending the French right to caricature the prophet Muhammad of Islam.
Samuel Paty was attacked outside his school on October 16 by a teenage refugee of Chechen origin for showing the cartoons in a civics class. A young Tunisian killed three people Thursday inside the basilica in the southern city of Nice, beheading a woman. The series of bloodshed began on September 25 when a young Pakistani refugee injured two people outside the former office. office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. In January 2015, the attackers massacred 12 people there after the newspaper published cartoons of the prophet. That trial is underway.
READ: Three arrested in France after the Nice attack
The words of solidarity from the Muslim leaders of France have been infallible. The attack “touched brothers and sisters who prayed to their lord. Today I am deeply Christian, ”said the Imam of the Ar-Rahma Mosque in Nice, Otman Aissaoui.
But, “once again we are stigmatized, and people move so fast to put things together,” Aissaoui said as well, reflecting the deepening discomfort of Muslims in France, most of the former French colonies in northern France. Africa.
Muslims “are neither guilty nor responsible … We shouldn’t have to justify ourselves,” said Abdallah Zekri, an official with the French Council for the Muslim Faith.
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The attacks and Macron’s “separatism” plan, which includes a partial overhaul of the way Islam is organized in France, from the formation of imams to the management of Muslim associations, have pierced the gap. They have also drawn attention to the precious value of secularism – “laicite” in French – which is enshrined in the French Constitution but is not yet clearly defined.
“The presence of Islam was not something anticipated by French society,” said Tareq Oubrou, a prominent imam in Bordeaux.
Tensions have risen in the past, particularly with changes to the secularism law, with a 2004 law banning veils in classrooms and another in 2010 banning face covering.
“Secularism has always been a smokescreen … a hidden way of dealing with the question of Islam,” Benaissa said.
Rim-Sarah Alouane, a PhD candidate at Toulouse Capitole University, researching religious freedom and civil liberties, is more difficult. “Since the 1990s, the laicite has become a weapon and has been misused as a political tool to limit the visibility of religious signs, especially Muslims,” he said.
“The state must ensure that it fully respects and accepts its diversity and does not consider it a threat,” he said.
The rise of Islam in public view was gradual and mostly went unnoticed until the far right seized on it as a threat to French identity. Over the years, mosques have multiplied, along with Muslim schools.
Muslim men initially came to France to take menial jobs after World War II. In the 1970s, Muslim immigrants working in auto factories, construction and other sectors were “absolutely essential to French industry,” Benaissa said. Renault, for example, installed prayer rooms.
“Today, when a veiled woman comes to a company, there is … a riot. What happened? “He asked.
Many Muslims, unlike their parents or grandparents, are receiving an education, better jobs and are erasing the “myth of return,” he said.
Olivier Roy, one of the leading experts, told a parliamentary committee that most Muslims have worked to integrate into French culture. They “present themselves as the French Republic and complain that they do not receive a reward in return, they do not have the benefit of recognition,” he said.
Macron admitted in a speech that France bears full responsibility for the “ghettoization” of Muslims in housing projects, but insists that the planned law is not about stigmatizing Muslims.
READ: Macron from France to Muslims: I hear their anger, but I do not accept violence
Yet stigmatism is a part of life in France for many, from being singled out by the police for identity checks to discrimination when seeking employment.
“The Muslim is reduced to his religion,” said Oubrou, the imam of Bordeaux. “Not everything is Christian in the life of a Christian.”
Religion without a single leader has multiple strains in France, ranging from moderate to Salafists with a rigorous interpretation of religion to radical upstarts.
In his project, Macron foresees measures such as the formation of magnets in France instead of bringing them from Turkey, Morocco or Algeria.
Benaissa does not underestimate the “ideological offensive” of political Islam, but says a fierce public debate is reducing Islam to a single fear.
“Islam is not Islam, a Muslim is not an Islamist. An Islamist is not necessarily a jihadist, ”he said. “What I fear is that identities will be radicalized, on the one hand those who claim the Muslim identity and on the other those who claim the identity of France.”
