tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/french-secularism-14420/articlesFrench secularism – The Conversation2023-12-13T16:58:27Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2193582023-12-13T16:58:27Z2023-12-13T16:58:27ZAre French and English secularist traditions that far apart?<p>Those who watched <a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charles-iiis-coronation-oath-is-a-crucial-part-of-the-ceremony-experts-explain-202870">the coronation of King Charles III</a> in May 2023 would be forgiven for thinking that the United Kingdom is the very opposite of a secular country. In Westminster Abbey the new head of state received his mandate from the Archbishop of Canterbury and thus became head of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charles-defender-of-faith-what-the-monarchys-long-relationship-with-religion-may-look-like-under-the-new-sovereign-190766">Church of England</a>. But appearances can be deceptive. </p>
<p>The current situation in the UK is complex, a product of the contradictions and compromises of British history. In reality, England is on its way to becoming a secular society, but without having adopted the French principle of <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/frances-la-cite-why-the-rest-of-the-world-struggles-to-understand-it-149943">laïcité</a></em>.</p>
<p>The American philosopher <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674986916">Charles Taylor</a> is often quoted as distinguishing three major elements in the secularisation of Western societies: the decline of religious belief, the concept of religion as a personal choice of the believer, and the separation of church and state. With regard to the first two elements, France and England are fairly similar.</p>
<h2>Losing their religion</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021">2021 census</a> in England and Wales showed for the first time that less than half the population declared themselves to be Christian: 46%, compared with 59% in 2011. 37% said they had no religion. By comparison, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Europe">the 2019 Eurobarometer</a> pinpoints <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-historique-2022-1-page-171.htm">47% of Christians in France</a>, compared with 40% with no religion. There were 10% of people declaring a religion other than Christianity <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2022/is-religion-dying-in-england-and-wales">in England</a> and 12% in France. <a href="https://www.observationsociete.fr/modes-de-vie/des-croyances-et-pratiques-religieuses-en-declin-en-france/">This decline in religious identity</a> is accompanied by a fall in religious practice in both countries.</p>
<p>There have also been fundamental changes in practices, particularly with regard to what were until recently considered rites of passage. For example, it used to be normal for English men and women to get married in church, but <a href="https://wwww.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/19-may/news/uk/figures-for-2020-show-continued-decline-in-religious-wedding-ceremonies">in 2020 only 15% of couples held a religious wedding ceremony</a>. </p>
<p>The average Anglican church held only four funerals and one wedding in 2020. On the other hand <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24565994">alternative rites abound</a>. It is now possible and accepted to get married, or to formalise a civil union, <a href="https://unconventionalwedding.co.uk/the-best-alternative-wedding-venues/">outside the church or the registry office</a>: in a hotel, but also in a garden, on a boat, on the beach, or anywhere else the couple fancies. </p>
<p>Moreovoer, it is now very common for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_celebrant">humanists</a> to preside over weddings and other rites in place of priests. Instead of offering the sacraments, they mark the high points of human life in collective celebrations. They can be called upon for both weddings and funerals.</p>
<p>The same trends can be seen in other social institutions. In the courts, for example, where people used to swear on the Bible, the accused or the jurors can now swear on a religious book of their choice, such as the Koran, the Torah or the Bhagavad-Gita (a key Hindu text), or they can simply make a solemn declaration. At a trial I attended last year, 10 out of 12 jurors chose to solemnly swear that they would do their duty. The religious choice is therefore a personal option, but does not change anything in the course of justice.</p>
<h2>Religion at school</h2>
<p>As far as educational institutions are concerned, France and the UK have a mixed economy that includes state and public schools. In the UK, 6% of young people are in <a href="https://tutorful.co.uk/blog/private-school-statistics-uk-independent-schools">private education</a> compared with almost 17% <a href="https://www.vie-publique.fr/questions-reponses/290729-la-place-de-lenseignement-prive-en-france-en-cinq-questions">in France</a>. British public schools receive no direct financial subsidy from the state, whereas the vast majority <a href="https://www.vie-publique.fr/rapport/289657-lenseignement-prive-sous-contrat">of French public schools</a> receive substantial public funding.</p>
<p>In the UK, a third of state schools are <a href="https://flashlearners.com/how-many-faith-schools-are-there-in-the-uk/#:%7E:text=The%20number%20of%20faith%20schools%20in%20the%20UK,others%29%2C%20Islam%2C%20Judaism%2C%20Sikhism%2C%20Hinduism%2C%20and%20other%20faiths">so-called “faith” schools</a>, the majority of which are primary schools. In France, on the other hand, religious education takes place mainly in <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enseignement_priv%C3%A9_en_France#cite_note-2">public schools</a>, the vast majority of which (97%) are Catholic schools. </p>
<p>It is in state schools that the differences emerge. The extent to which state schools in France must insist on the exclusion of religious signs and practices is well known. The situation in the UK varies across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as each of the ‘four nations’ oversees the education of its young constituents.</p>
<p>In England, for example, a third of state schools (including secondary schools) have <a href="https://flashlearners.com/how-many-faith-schools-are-there-in-the-uk/">religious status</a> (mostly Anglican and Catholic, but also Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh). This status implies that the school or college is affiliated to a religious organisation, offers religious education courses and maintains a culture informed by the religion in question. The school may accept children of other religions, or of no religion at all, who may manifest their own allegiance while respecting the school’s religious culture. There is a strong resemblance between British state ‘faith’ schools and public schools in France.</p>
<p>It should be noted that since <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/educationact1944/">the 1944 Act</a>, state schools in England other than faith schools, at primary and secondary level, have been obliged to provide instruction in religion once a week, and to hold an “act of Christian worship” every day. In practice, the majority of these schools choose to recognise the diversity of beliefs among pupils, either in religion classes or in collective gatherings. </p>
<h2>Families can choose</h2>
<p>In the UK, parents can choose to <a href="https://theconversation.com/parents-are-pulling-children-from-re-lessons-so-they-dont-learn-about-islam-95235">withdraw their children from religious activities</a>, with trends increasingly leaning in that direction. Pupils themselves can exercise this choice from the age of 16. </p>
<p>Schools interpret these obligations in their own way. For example, the act of worship may take the form of a meeting focusing on school life (academic or sporting successes, discipline and behaviour). And lessons on religion can cover beliefs and practices of all kinds. </p>
<p>Not only do parents have the option of withdrawing their children from these activities, but headteachers can also request that the school be exempted. Ultimately, there is a diversity of situations, between religious enthusiasm and secular practice.</p>
<p>Confrontations are rare and it seems that the system of personal choice by pupils, parents and teachers in terms of religious beliefs and practices contributes to school peace.</p>
<h2>The changing role of religion</h2>
<p>The separation of state and church in the political and legal spheres raises more pressing questions. The Anglican Church receives no state subsidy, but it is “established” like the Church of England <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zwcsp4j/articles/zgkcr2p">since Henry VIII’s Reformation in the 16th century</a>. </p>
<p>Today, the monarch is still the head of the church, although decisions are actually taken by the government, which is responsible, for example, for approving the appointment of bishops. 26 bishops sit ex officio in the House of Lords and make their voices heard there. </p>
<p>The Church’s political position is mainly symbolic, but it does act as a spokesperson for spiritual and ethical values, which gives it a certain influence in public opinion.</p>
<h2>Towards a secular regime?</h2>
<p>Criticism of religion is now widespread, and a growing minority is calling for the privileges of religion to be excluded from community life. In the UK, two major associations represent this perspective: Humanists UK and the National Secular Society.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.librairie-intranquille.fr/ebook/9780349425450/the-little-book-of-humanism-universal-lessons--alice-roberts-andrew-copson-piatkus">Humanists</a> present themselves as non-religious freethinkers who propose a rational and ethical worldview. They draw on a long European and even international tradition, and encourage debate on <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/552033/humanly-possible-by-sarah-bakewell/">philosophical</a> and social issues. While in France humanism can be claimed by many intellectual tendencies, the use of the term in the UK is in practice limited to non-believers.</p>
<p><a href="https://humanists.uk/ceremonies/find-a-celebrant/">Humanists</a> form a support network and provide a large number of celebrants for non-religious rites of passage. They are people trained and accredited to conduct ceremonies such as weddings and funerals, without reference to religion.</p>
<p>They are close to <a href="https://www.secularism.org.uk/campaigns/">the National Secular Society</a>, which campaigns for a “secular democracy where everyone is treated equally, whatever their religion or belief”. Its aims include strengthening the separation of church and state, abolishing religious schools, excluding religion from health institutions and affirming the equality of all before the law, regardless of belief. Its outlook therefore corresponds closely to certain interpretations of the French principle of <em>laïcité</em>. </p>
<h2>Two similar but different histories</h2>
<p>The complexity of the current situation could be developed further. The differences between the four “nations” of the United Kingdom are becoming more pronounced with the rise of nationalism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In addition, the Church of England is part of an international community of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_Communion">46 Anglican churches</a> around the world, especially in former colonies. There are a wide variety of perspectives, particularly in relation to social policy, ranging from the role of women, LGBTQ+ rights to relations with the state and with other religions.</p>
<p>Similar complexities can be found in regions of France that have a different relationship with secularism (<a href="https://www.vie-publique.fr/eclairage/20210-alsace-moselle-outre-mer-les-exceptions-au-droit-des-cultes-loi-1905">Alsace-Moselle, overseas France</a>). This reinforces the idea that England and France face the same challenges. </p>
<p>However, there is still a lot of work to be done to get to the point where both countries can better understand each other’s experience. The historical paths of France and the UK are very different, despite their geographical proximity. These differences run through their institutions, their political, social and intellectual structures and their languages. And while the two countries often face comparable problems, such as the place of religion in modern society, it is clear that each will have to find solutions suited to their own culture and history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Kelly is a member of the Labour Party as well as of the South Hampshire Humanists.</span></em></p>On several counts, England is now on its way to becoming a secularist society. Nevertheless, there remain cultural differences that prevent it from embracing the French principle of “laïcité”.Michael Kelly, Emeritus Professor of French in Modern Languages and Linguistics, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2135432023-09-29T12:23:09Z2023-09-29T12:23:09ZFrench schools’ ban on abayas and headscarves is supposedly about secularism − but it sends a powerful message about who ‘belongs’ in French culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550744/original/file-20230927-25-du7dcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C0%2C3608%2C2392&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Residents watch French air force jets fly over a Paris suburb during the Bastille Day military parade on July 14, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FranceSecularismSchools/bc7bd6cef9b447ab8d9fa8b7303a9f1e/photo?Query=france%20muslim&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=5656&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Youcef Bounab</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>France’s decision to ban public school students from wearing the abaya – <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/29/what-is-the-abaya-the-garment-france-wants-to-ban-from-schools_6113640_8.html">a long dress or robe</a> popular among women in certain Muslim cultures – and the male equivalent, the qamis, has <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/france-abaya-ban-macron-accused-double-standard-uk-royal-visit#:%7E:text=French%20President%20Emmanuel%20Macron%20has,abayas%20worn%20by%20Muslim%20women.">faced criticism</a> since Aug. 27, 2023, when the country’s education minister announced the new rule.</p>
<p>Yet polls suggest that more than 80% of the French population <a href="https://www.ifop.com/publication/la-position-des-francais-sur-linterdiction-du-port-de-labaya-et-du-qamis-a-lecole/">supports the ban</a>, as does the country’s highest court: The Conseil d'État <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/world/europe/france-abaya-muslims-school.html">has upheld</a> <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2023/09/19/interdiction-du-port-de-l-abaya-a-l-ecole-deux-referes-suspension-a-leur-tour-examines-au-conseil-d-etat_6190060_3224.html">the challenged ban</a> twice – most recently <a href="https://tribune.com.pk/story/2437691/frances-top-court-rejects-appeal-against-ban-on-abaya-in-schools">on Sept. 25, 2023</a>.</p>
<p>Education Minister Gabriel Attal cited “laïcité,” or French secularism, as the reason for the ban. Legislation passed in 2004 prohibits “ostentatious religious symbols” from public schools, including large crosses and Jewish head coverings, though its main target <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691147987/the-politics-of-the-veil">has been Muslim headscarves</a>.</p>
<p>Debate over the abaya, however, gets to the heart of <a href="https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/the-weaponization-of-laicite">debates over laïcité</a>. Many critics argue that the abaya <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20230829-cultural-garment-or-religious-symbol-debate-over-france-s-ban-on-abyas-in-school">is a cultural garment</a>, not a religious one, and should be allowed under laïcité. In practice, though, anything associated with Muslim cultures tends to be considered “religious.” Catholic traditions, meanwhile, are often considered “cultural” – and therefore compatible with laïcité.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/carol-ferrara">ethnographic research</a> in French schools, where secularism debates are particularly heated, suggests that the abaya ban and the earlier “headscarf law” aren’t really about defending laïcité. Rather, they protect a particular version of French identity – an identity infused with Catholic culture.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550416/original/file-20230926-15-sl86y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People at a protest stand beneath an awning as they hold signs over their faces." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550416/original/file-20230926-15-sl86y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550416/original/file-20230926-15-sl86y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550416/original/file-20230926-15-sl86y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550416/original/file-20230926-15-sl86y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550416/original/file-20230926-15-sl86y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550416/original/file-20230926-15-sl86y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550416/original/file-20230926-15-sl86y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Staff from a school on the outskirts of Paris protest against the government’s abaya ban on Sept. 6, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rally-was-organized-by-staff-from-the-maurice-utrillo-high-news-photo/1648579667?adppopup=true">Mohamad Salaheldin Abdelg Alsayed/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Catho-laïcité’</h2>
<p>Despite its reputation as a staunchly secular country, France has a deep and tangled relationship with Catholicism. </p>
<p>Recent studies show that only about 1 in 3 French people ages 18-59 <a href="https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/6793308?sommaire=6793391#onglet-3">consider themselves Catholic</a> – whether in a religious or cultural sense – and <a href="https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/6793308?sommaire=6793391#onglet-1">weekly Mass attendance is uncommon</a>. </p>
<p>Yet the faith still has a powerful influence upon French culture. Attending church for holidays, funerals, weddings and baptisms remains commonplace. Crosses, <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/covid-19-les-cloches-des-eglises-de-france-vont-sonner-ce-mercredi-25-mars-a-19h30-20200325">church bells</a> and <a href="https://laportelatine.org/medias/videotheque/paris-video-de-la-procession-de-la-fsspx-du-8-decembre-2021">public church processions</a> are considered ordinary aspects of French culture, despite the official emphasis on <a href="https://editionsdelaube.fr/catalogue_de_livres/etre-francais-les-quatre-piliers-de-la-nationalite/">laïcité as a unifying pillar</a> of national identity. </p>
<p>“I am convinced that the Catholic sap (of France) must still, and forever, contribute to the life of our nation,” President Emmanuel Macron said in <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2018/04/09/discours-du-president-de-la-republique-emmanuel-macron-a-la-conference-des-eveques-de-france-au-college-des-bernardins">a 2018 speech to bishops</a>.</p>
<p>By contrast, headscarves, abayas, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20091203-2009-12-03-0710-french-press-review-minarets-mosques-french-poll-46%25-ifop-thierry-henry-handball-fifa-pompidou-strike">minarets</a>, the <a href="https://www.la-croix.com/France/Politique/Appels-priere-islamique-Le-Pen-RN-denonce-une-nouvelle-escalade-2020-04-04-1301087872">call to prayer</a>, halal food and Islamic <a href="https://www.francesoir.fr/societe-faits-divers/les-prieres-de-rues-de-clichy-la-garenne-jugees-illegales">prayer in public spaces</a> are often perceived as threats to French identity. Moreover, these get flagged as religious symbols, putting them in conflict with laïcité <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo59260270.html">in ways that Catholic symbols avoid</a>.</p>
<p>Catholicism’s intimate relationship with secularism in France is sometimes referred to as “catho-laïcité,” referring to how Catholicism, laïcité and Frenchness become almost interchangeable. Rather than neutral secularism, “laïcité” can represent a particular, Catholic-infused French identity that views religious or cultural “others” with suspicion.</p>
<h2>Santa Claus in class</h2>
<p>These contradictions are especially evident around Catholic holidays. In the lead-up to Christmas, schools often celebrate with decorations, concerts and even visits from Santa Claus – activities defended as cultural rather than religious. My 3-year-old son’s holiday concert in a public preschool just outside Paris included “O Christmas Tree,” “Little Father Christmas” and “Silent Night,” but no songs from other religious traditions despite many of his classmates’ Muslim heritage. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550414/original/file-20230926-23-1bck3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Half a dozen people in red and white fuzzy suits paddleboard beneath a bridge as a crowd watches above." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550414/original/file-20230926-23-1bck3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550414/original/file-20230926-23-1bck3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550414/original/file-20230926-23-1bck3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550414/original/file-20230926-23-1bck3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550414/original/file-20230926-23-1bck3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550414/original/file-20230926-23-1bck3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550414/original/file-20230926-23-1bck3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People dressed as Santa Claus attend a paddleboarding parade on the Ill river in Strasbourg, France, on Dec. 3, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pedestrians-take-pictures-as-paddlers-dressed-as-santa-news-photo/1245331036?adppopup=true">Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Controversies stemming from holiday activities point back to this idea of “catho-laïcité”: Traditions rooted in Christian culture are more likely to be considered cultural and thus compatible with both secularism and “Frenchness.”</p>
<p>In 2018, an elementary school director in southern France <a href="https://www.sudouest.fr/politique/education/laicite-une-ecole-annule-les-animations-autour-de-noel-l-education-nationale-intervient-2954198.php">canceled all Christmas-related activities</a> to adhere to the “rules of laïcité” after a parent expressed disapproval. Community backlash was so fervent that the national ministry of education stepped in to intervene and reinstated the ostensibly cultural activities.</p>
<p>More recently, a mayor in northern France issued an <a href="https://www.tf1info.fr/regions/video-insolite-pas-de-calais-le-pere-noel-autorise-a-marcher-sur-les-toits-par-arrete-municipal-lors-du-reveillon-les-24-et-25-decembre-2242157.html">official authorization for Santa Claus</a> to park on rooftops, publicly declaring that Santa would be “within the law” during his visit that season. Local public elementary school students were later surprised with a video of Santa Claus and his elves depositing gifts at their school.</p>
<h2>Fish, fowl and halal</h2>
<p>Discrepancies between how laïcité applies to different religious traditions do not emerge just at holidays. French school cafeterias often serve fish on Fridays, <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-fagan/fish-on-friday/9780786722334/?lens=basic-books">a Catholic tradition</a>, but debates have raged over offering halal food or other substitutes. </p>
<p>In 2015, a town in central France decided to stop providing substitutes for pork, which is forbidden in Muslim and Jewish tradition, in its school cafeterias. Officials argued that providing exceptions had impinged upon secular neutrality. In 2020, the case <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2020/12/11/proposer-des-menus-sans-porc-a-la-cantine-ne-contrevient-pas-a-la-laicite-juge-le-conseil-d-etat_6063109_3224.html">went to the top court</a>, where judges declared that schools were not obligated under laïcité to provide alternative menu options for religious diets – though they added that doing so would not contradict laïcité.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two women in headscarves hold a cardboard sign written in black marker." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550431/original/file-20230926-17-jzllgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C3%2C1019%2C679&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550431/original/file-20230926-17-jzllgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550431/original/file-20230926-17-jzllgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550431/original/file-20230926-17-jzllgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550431/original/file-20230926-17-jzllgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550431/original/file-20230926-17-jzllgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550431/original/file-20230926-17-jzllgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A placard at a 2019 protest in Toulouse reads, ‘France: it’s you and me.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-with-a-headscarf-holds-a-placard-reading-france-its-news-photo/1178484365?adppopup=true">Alain Pitton/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The following year, a middle school in Bordeaux began providing occasional halal meals, as well as nonhalal alternatives. Nonetheless, the move sparked significant protest from local parent groups that lamented the “<a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/bordeaux/on-bafoue-le-principe-de-laicite-et-c-est-assume-le-menu-halal-d-un-college-bordelais-inquiete-des-parents-d-eleves-20230521">flouting of the principle of laïcité</a>.”</p>
<h2>Other options</h2>
<p>Families seeking alternative education options often turn to France’s state-funded private schools, which are allowed to offer optional religious education but must otherwise follow the national curriculum and accept students of any faith. Yet here, too, the playing field is uneven.</p>
<p>There are more than <a href="https://enseignement-catholique.fr/chiffres-cles-enseignement-catholique/">7,000 Catholic schools</a> to choose from, and at some of them, upward of 70% of the student body <a href="https://www.la-croix.com/Religion/Actualite/L-enseignement-catholique-face-a-ses-eleves-musulmans-_NG_-2010-09-08-578289">is Muslim</a>. Options for state-funded private Muslim schools, on the other hand – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2017.1303768">a focus of my research</a> – are sparse. This is due, in part, to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2022.2131735">challenges that Muslim schools face</a> when applying for permits and funding.</p>
<p>Families can also choose from the approximately <a href="https://www.la-croix.com/Famille/ecoles-hors-contrat-musulmanes-viseur-autorites-2020-12-07-1201128640">100 independent Muslim schools</a>, run without government funding. However, these face <a href="https://www.saphirnews.com/La-loi-Gatel-destinee-a-mieux-encadrer-l-ouverture-des-ecoles-privees-vise-t-elle-les-projets-musulmans_a24965.html">constant scrutiny</a> compared with the roughly 200 <a href="https://www.ecoles-libres.fr/statistiques/">independent Catholic schools</a> – some of which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221151001">do not support laïcité</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550415/original/file-20230926-17-8ya7k9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A handful of women in long dresses, and many with headscarves, stand and chat on the grass." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550415/original/file-20230926-17-8ya7k9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550415/original/file-20230926-17-8ya7k9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550415/original/file-20230926-17-8ya7k9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550415/original/file-20230926-17-8ya7k9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550415/original/file-20230926-17-8ya7k9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550415/original/file-20230926-17-8ya7k9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550415/original/file-20230926-17-8ya7k9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People in front of a school in Trappes, France, protest the abaya ban on Sept. 8, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/muslim-people-protest-against-the-interdiction-of-abaya-in-news-photo/1653667947?adppopup=true">Mohamad Salaheldin Abdelg Alsayed/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Future consequences</h2>
<p>It is not clear how the abaya ban will affect students. On Sept. 4, 2023, only about <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2023/09/07/abaya-le-conseil-d-etat-valide-l-interdiction-a-l-ecole_6188297_3224.html">300 students out of France’s 12 million</a> came to school wearing an abaya, and only 67 refused to remove it, according to the education ministry.</p>
<p>The 2004 headscarf law, however, seems to have harmed Muslim girls’ educational success. According to one key study, the gap in secondary school completion rates between Muslim and non-Muslim women <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055420000106">doubled among those who were teenagers when the ban was passed</a> because of higher dropout rates. Moreover, the study’s authors argue that this disparity increased <a href="https://humsci.stanford.edu/feature/stanford-scholars-report-french-headscarf-ban-adversely-impacts-muslim-girls">the employment gap</a> between Muslim and non-Muslim women.</p>
<p>Taking a closer look at France’s education system, I argue, shows that the abaya ban isn’t really about laïcité. If it were, Santa and Christmas songs would be relegated to the private sphere, and cafeteria menus would equally accommodate common religious diets. Instead, Catholic symbols are often embraced as integral to French culture, while Muslim symbols are scrutinized or barred – sending students a powerful message about what it means to be “French.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213543/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol Ferrara does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Catholicism, ‘Frenchness’ and secularism are often conflated in French culture, a scholar writes, while non-Christian traditions are viewed with suspicion.Carol Ferrara, Anthropologist & Assistant Professor, Department of Marketing Communication, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1726802021-11-30T13:21:54Z2021-11-30T13:21:54ZJosephine Baker: what it means to enter France’s hallowed Panthéon<p>Josephine Baker – performer, Resistance hero, and civil rights activist – <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2021/08/23/pantheonisation-de-josephine-baker">is the first woman of colour to enter the Panthéon in Paris</a>, where her remains will be interred. She is is the latest hero of the French Republic to be “Panthéonised”. But what does it mean to enter into the “temple of the nation”, and how does this process work?</p>
<p>Panthéonisation, as the process is known, has its origins in the French Revolution. In 1791, the revolutionary National Assembly voted to transform the new Church of Saint Genevieve on the Left Bank of Paris into a “temple of the fatherland” where the nation’s great men would be honoured.</p>
<p>Panthéonisation is one of the highest honours the French Republic can bestow on its citizens. Between 1945 and 1981, such ceremonies were relatively rare. It is only in the last four decades, following the election of François Mitterrand as president in 1981 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOcgxowATQg">his inauguration day visit to the monument</a>, that it has become more common for French presidents to select people for the honour. </p>
<h2>Why was it created?</h2>
<p>The idea of creating a French national pantheon predated the revolution. It was inspired both by classical pantheons of the gods, and the model of Westminster Abbey as a space to honour national heroes. Unlike in Britain, however, the revolutionary Parisian Panthéon was to be a secular monument. <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_-_Panth%C3%A9on_(27378584206).jpg">An inscription on the front of the former church</a> stated its new purpose: “To the great men, the grateful fatherland” (in French, “<em>Aux grands hommes, la patrie reconnaissante</em>”). </p>
<p>Throughout the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, the Panthéon retained its function as a temple of great men (and they were all men). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="ThePanthéon flying the french flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434697/original/file-20211130-16-1xw4rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5629%2C3772&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434697/original/file-20211130-16-1xw4rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434697/original/file-20211130-16-1xw4rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434697/original/file-20211130-16-1xw4rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434697/original/file-20211130-16-1xw4rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434697/original/file-20211130-16-1xw4rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434697/original/file-20211130-16-1xw4rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Panthéon is where France’s heroes lie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paris-france-april-17-2020-32th-1712013826">Jerome Labouyrie/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alongside politicians and soldiers, in 1794 the Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau joined Voltaire in the crypt, both honoured as intellectual forebears of the French Revolution. </p>
<p>Over the course of the 19th century, the fate of the Panthéon mirrored the upheavals in French politics. The building was by turns returned to the church and then reclaimed as a secular temple. It was not until 1885, and the death of the writer Victor Hugo, that the monument definitively assumed its status as a temple to the great and the good. Hugo’s funeral marks the first modern Panthéonisation. The remains of “<em>Le grand Victor</em>” were brought to the Panthéon <a href="https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/maison-de-victor-hugo/oeuvres/funerailles-de-victor-hugo-cortege-debouchant-sur-la-place-du-pantheon#infos-principales">through the packed streets of Paris in a spectacular, nine-hour procession</a>.</p>
<h2>What qualifies someone?</h2>
<p>There are no strict rules about what qualifies someone for Panthéonisation, and the final decision is made by the French president. The 1885 legislation <a href="https://www.paris-pantheon.fr/content/download/244181/2762743/version/4/file/doc_pdf_fr_adn_cmn_fiche_pantheon_a4_def_0615.pdf">simply states</a> that “the remains of great men deserving of national honours will be buried there”. </p>
<p>Napoleonic generals and politicians aside, the current occupants of the Panthéon’s crypt show how broadly this criteria can be interpreted. Politicians and activists, such as Jean Jaurès and Jean Moulin, are honoured alongside writers such as Émile Zola and Alexandre Dumas, and scientists, notably Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre. Skłodowska-Curie’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_LSxuDmdXE">inhumation in the Panthéon, in 1996</a>, was the first time a woman had been honoured there in her own right.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Tomb with flowers rested by it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434699/original/file-20211130-17-1r119af.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434699/original/file-20211130-17-1r119af.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434699/original/file-20211130-17-1r119af.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434699/original/file-20211130-17-1r119af.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434699/original/file-20211130-17-1r119af.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434699/original/file-20211130-17-1r119af.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434699/original/file-20211130-17-1r119af.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tomb of Pierre and Marie Curie in Panthéon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tomb_of_Pierre_and_Marie_Curie_in_Panth%C3%A9on,_Paris,_France_-_panoramio_(13).jpg">Luboš Holič/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Panthéonisation is not limited to individuals – in 2007, those deemed “<a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAtJeNBhCVARIsANJUJ2GRWW41aon08GMSQvyEWmcog31zHRC20Y_MK4sd1xzd11d1RwHiEhcaAnP8EALw_wcB">righteous among the nations</a>” for their part in saving Jews during the Holocaust were inducted. And it is not essential for the person’s body to be physically interred there, either - the remains of poet and politician Aimé Césaire, Panthéonised in 2011, are buried in his native Martinique. </p>
<p>Josephine Baker’s selection marks a new departure in more ways than one – not only is she the first woman of colour to enter the Panthéon, but she is also the first performer. However, it is her Resistance and civil rights activism, rather than her popularity as an entertainer, that have secured her entry. During the Second World War, <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/siren-resistance-artistry-and-espionage-josephine-baker">Baker worked in espionage for the French Resistance</a>. Her celebrity status allowed her to move more freely to gather information and to transport documents without the risk of being strip-searched. In the 1950s and 1960s, she used her visits to her native United States to <a href="https://www.nypl.org/blog/2021/04/12/josephine-baker-entertainer-activist">advocate for civil rights and racial equality</a>, culminating in her appearance at the 1963 March on Washington. Dressed in her Free French uniform and proudly wearing her wartime medals, Baker <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1963-josephine-baker-speech-march-washington/">urged young African-Americans to “light that fire in you”</a> as they fought for civil rights.</p>
<p>For the public, the most visible and important part of the Panthéonisation process is the ceremony that accompanies the honoree’s entry into the crypt. In the century and a half since Victor Hugo’s triumphant burial, Panthéonisation ceremonies have become ever more personal, designed to reflect the life of the individual being honoured. </p>
<p>The entry in 1964 of the French Resistance leader Jean Moulin featured a torchlit procession, echoing Moulin’s description of the Resistance as a “people of the night”. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/01/thousands-pay-tribute-as-simone-veil-given-heros-burial-in-paris">The 2018 ceremony for the politician Simone Veil</a> honoured her political achievements and status as a survivor of the Holocaust. Her coffin was brought up the rue Soufflot on a bright blue carpet, symbolising her election as the first president of the European Parliament. An audio recording of the dawn silence at the Birkenau camp site, where Veil and her mother were imprisoned, was played prior to the entry of her remains into the monument. </p>
<p>For Josephine Baker’s ceremony, her son, Brian Bouillon-Baker, <a href="https://www.bfmtv.com/culture/pantheonisation-de-josephine-baker-son-fils-veut-une-ceremonie-musicale-populaire-festive_AN-202108220189.html">called for a “musical, popular, festive” event</a>, capturing his mother’s spirit as well as her achievements. Baker’s entry into the Panthéon comes after several years of a popular campaign and <a href="https://www.change.org/p/monsieur-le-pr%C3%A9sident-de-la-r%C3%A9publique-fran%C3%A7aise-jos%C3%A9phine-baker-au-panth%C3%A9on">public petition</a> and could mark a change in how people are selected for the honour in the future. The induction of a Black woman, born outside France, could herald a new and more diverse era for the Panthéon, ensuring the monument reflects both the history of the French Republic and the diversity of contemporary France.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura O'Brien does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>France’s good and great are interred in this crypt.Laura O'Brien, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1627052021-08-15T16:36:56Z2021-08-15T16:36:56ZFrance’s new ‘separatism’ law stigmatises minorities and could backfire badly<p>France’s constitutional council has approved, with minor amendments, the “law consolidating respect for the principles of the Republic”, a <a href="https://www.vie-publique.fr/loi/277621-loi-respect-des-principes-de-la-republique">bill</a> that aims to counter “separatism” in French society. It is part of President Emmanuel Macron’s program to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/world/europe/france-terrorism-islamist-extremism-laws-passed.html">combat terrorism</a>.</p>
<p>The bill includes measures to oblige neutrality in organisations that collaborate with public services, allow the government exert more control over charities and NGOs, require authorisation for home schooling and outlaw “virginity certificates”.</p>
<p>The law has been the subject of much controversy since it was drafted. Some on the left, including NGOs and university groups, <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2021/01/21/loi-separatisme-une-grave-atteinte-aux-libertes-associatives_1818075/">say it is an attack on civil liberties</a>, while others, including right-wing politicians, consider it <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/politique/loi-separatisme-lr-ressort-ses-ficelles-securitaires-20210202_FOTNIZIA5VD3FDZQZGAZUP7UW4/">too weak</a> in its refusal to use the term “communitarianism” instead of “separatism” or to ban the veil in public spaces for minors.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Lire cet article en Français</em>: <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/lutte-contre-le-separatisme-une-loi-qui-stigmatise-les-minorites-159576">“Lutte contre le séparatisme”, une loi qui stigmatise les minorités?</a></strong></p>
<hr>
<h2>Separatism vs. universalism</h2>
<p>In France, it is not forbidden to form a community – it is even part of the <a href="https://www.vie-publique.fr/fiches/23865-libertes-et-droits-fondamentaux-de-quoi-sagit-il">fundamental freedoms</a> enshrined in the constitution, through the guarantee of freedom of association, worship, trade unionism and politics.</p>
<p><a href="https://journals.openedition.org/cpuc/425#tocto1n1">Sociologically speaking</a>, forming a community means grouping together with others due to a feeling of belonging or shared common interests. It can be a good thing for society. But the term “separatism” in French has a purely negative meaning. Historically, the term “separatist” has been used to stigmatise attempts to organise religious, territorial or racial minorities in France.</p>
<p>This raises questions about the effects of this law on an already marginalised population, who are <a href="https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/15/textes/l15t0641_texte-adopte-seance#">not mentioned in the text</a>, but who are directly targeted by it: French Muslims.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Print from 1793 using a common motif of the First Republic bearing the slogan: ‘Unity, Indivisibility of the Republic, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death’" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415699/original/file-20210811-15-1kyh7m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415699/original/file-20210811-15-1kyh7m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415699/original/file-20210811-15-1kyh7m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415699/original/file-20210811-15-1kyh7m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415699/original/file-20210811-15-1kyh7m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415699/original/file-20210811-15-1kyh7m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415699/original/file-20210811-15-1kyh7m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">France has valued the principle of universalism since the 1789 revolution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalisme_r%C3%A9publicain#/media/Fichier:Unit%C3%A9_Indivisibilit%C3%A9_de_la_R%C3%A9publique.jpg">Bibliothèque en ligne Gallica</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>In France, the notion of separatism resonates because of its counterpart: universalism. The political theory of the French nation is based on <a href="https://www.rosalux.eu/en/article/1812.21st-century-universalism-will-be-anti-racist-or-it-won-t-be-at-all.html">republican universalism</a>, i.e. on a nation understood as one and indivisible, with universal values, which apply to all its components, regardless of their origin, race, gender or social class.</p>
<p>In this context, the term “separatist” refers to communities that are supposedly <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-migrations-societe-2021-1-page-3.htm">hostile to the nation as a whole</a>. The idea that some Muslims in France might place their faith and the norms of their religious community above their national belonging and the laws of the Republic would be characteristic of what is now often referred to as “Islamic separatism”.</p>
<h2>A history of separatism</h2>
<p>Muslims are not the first group of people on French territory to be suspected of separatism. Since the French Revolution, any attempt to promote the recognition of composite identities within the French nation (either religious, political or regional) been met with <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1468-229X.1980.tb01951.x">significant repression</a>.</p>
<p>The term “separatism” was first used in 1939, according to criminal justice expert Vanessa Codaccioni. Back then, it targeted <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/fr/france/20200912-quoi-s%C3%A9paratisme-est-il-le-nom-france-loi-laicite-republique">communists, suspected of promoting the interests of the USSR from within</a>.</p>
<p>The notion has also been used to disqualify <a href="https://www.decitre.fr/livres/justice-d-exception-9782271085986.html">struggles against French colonialism</a>, notably those of the Algerian people, and also autonomist movements within French territory, be they Basque, Guyanese or Martinican. It was above all President Charles De Gaulle who promoted the idea of the “separatist”, using it to <a href="https://www.franceculture.fr/histoire/separatisme-de-lanti-france-chez-les-soviets-a-lislam-en-passant-par-la-negritude">attack his political opponents</a>.</p>
<p>Accusing some Muslims today of being separatists is therefore part of France’s revolutionary and colonial heritage. It implies that a part of the national community behaves like an <a href="https://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/l_ennemi_interieur-9782707169150">enemy within</a> who would like to see territories (mainly the banlieues) and institutions (such as shools and hospitals) governed by the particular laws of a religious group, and not the universal laws of the national community.</p>
<h2>Separatism or disadvantage?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.rfi.fr/fr/france/20180616-etude-ocde-six-generations-necessaires-sortir-pauvrete">According to an OECD study, it takes no less than six generations</a> before an individual from the poorest categories can emerge from poverty in France.</p>
<p>Muslims, being predominantly members of these categories – both for historical reasons linked to colonial and migratory history and for sociological reasons linked to the <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2020/01/08/une-etude-montre-des-discriminations-a-l-embauche-significatives-en-fonction-de-l-origine_6025227_3224.html">discrimination they face</a> – are directly affected by social and educational inequalities.</p>
<p>The law proposes greater scrutiny over families’ decision to home school their children. But initiatives to remove children from school among Muslim families could be attributed not so much to a desire to separate from the Republic for religious purpose, as to a desire to find an alternative to the endemic educational failures in working class neighbourhoods of France, as shown by the repeated conclusions of the <a href="http://www.cnesco.fr/fr/inegalites-sociales/">National Council for the Evaluation of the School System</a>.</p>
<p>Following the example of <a href="https://calmann-levy.fr/livre/la-condition-noire-9782702138076">“ black condition ” described by French historian Pap Ndiaye</a>, Muslim populations in France could be seen as sharing a “Muslim condition”. The concept of condition encompasses that of ethnic, cultural or social belonging without falling into the biological or homogenising aspects of the terms “community” or “race”.</p>
<p>In this case, “the Muslim condition” cannot be reduced to the sole question of religiosity, radical or not, but refers to a common social, economic or even spatial experience of a minority.</p>
<p>In other words, a person with an “Arab-Muslim” sounding name or one who comes from North Africa – thus racialised as “Arab” – will be <a href="https://www.cairn.info/islamophobie-comment-les-elites-francaises--9782707189462-page-25.htm">assigned to the Muslim condition</a>, whether they are religious or not.</p>
<p>Consequently, behaviour stigmatised as “separatist” could be understood not as a sign of religious radicalism, but as a strategy aimed at reducing the social inequalities suffered by people of this “Muslim condition”, the extent of which has only been highlighted by the <a href="https://www.parismatch.com/Actu/Societe/Covid-etat-d-urgence-en-Seine-Saint-Denis-1736915">pandemic</a>.</p>
<h2>How the bill could backfire</h2>
<p>Adopting policies that restrict religious freedoms in this context are inappropriate and could even be counterproductive, by validating the radicalised narrative that France is “the enemy of Islam”.</p>
<p>The measures announced in the bill extending “neutrality” to people who work for private contractors of a public service reinforce existing infringements on <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/questionsdecommunication/12107">the religious freedom of Muslim women who wear headscarves</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/03/france-crackdown-76-mosques-suspected-separatism">closure of mosques</a>, which began in 2020 and will be easier to do under the new law, seem unfounded when we know that very few of the <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/religions/article/2013/05/31/la-radicalisation-dans-les-mosquees-est-devenue-quasiment-impossible_6002478_1653130.html">perpetrators of terrorist acts were radicalised in French mosques</a>.</p>
<p>In targeting Islam in this way, the government risks creating religious deserts for Muslims by closing local places of worship in a religious landscape saturated <a href="https://www.fayard.fr/documents-temoignages/la-question-musulmane-en-france-9782213682488">by demand</a>, thus undermining freedom of worship as guaranteed in Article 1 of the Law of 1905, also known as the principle of “laicité”, or secularism.</p>
<p>The law against separatism could thus weaken the Republican principles it claims to strengthen and further exclude an already marginalised population by denying its members any form of social visibility or the right to mobilise, either individually or as a collective.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162705/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fatima Khemilat ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The term “separatist” has a long history in France. Now it’s being used to target Muslims in a new law.Fatima Khemilat, Chargée de cours, doctorante à Sciences Po Aix, Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne (UPEC)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1585652021-04-15T12:40:29Z2021-04-15T12:40:29ZFrench row over mosque isn’t simply about state financing – it runs deep into Islamophobia and French secularism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395105/original/file-20210414-16-o5lk5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C0%2C5526%2C3709&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The storm over the construction of the grand mosque in Strasbourg has been long brewing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-general-view-taken-on-april-6-shows-the-construction-news-photo/1232144648?adppopup=true">Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/is-the-far-right-weaponizing-frances-charter-for-imams/">anti-Muslim slogans</a> discovered sprayed across an Islamic community center in western France on the morning of April 11, 2021, was a reference to a mosque that hasn’t even finished being built yet.</p>
<p>“EELV = Traitors” <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/entry/des-inscriptions-anti-musulmanes-sur-une-mosquee-de-rennes-darmanin-se-rend-sur-place_fr_6072c8a9c5b6a74b3bdc92d9">read the graffitied message</a>, alongside others including “No to Islamization” and references to the Crusades. It was spray painted on an Islamic center in Rennes, but its target was Strasbourg’s leading Green (EELV) party, members of whom <a href="https://actu.fr/grand-est/strasbourg_67482/financement-d-une-mosquee-a-strasbourg-pourquoi-l-attribution-d-une-subvention-par-la-mairie-fait-polemique_40475337.html">voted on March 22</a> to subsidize the construction of the Eyyub Sultan mosque – also known as the Grand Mosque of Strasbourg – with a grant of 2.5 million euros (US$3 million), or 10% of the total costs.</p>
<p>Construction of what is slated to be the <a href="https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/macron-s-war-on-islamists-comes-up-against-erdogan-s-soft-power">largest mosque in Europe</a> – and especially the state’s role in its financing – has sparked controversy for many reasons. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has condemned Strasbourg’s decision, citing the potential of “<a href="https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210324-row-erupts-in-france-over-plans-to-use-state-funds-to-build-strasbourg-mosque">foreign meddling</a>.” His concerns relate to the future mosque’s leadership – the French branch of the Turkish-based Milli Görüs Islamic Confederation, an Islamic political organization for the Turkish diaspora across Europe.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man prays inside the Avicenna Islamic Cultural centre in Rennes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395107/original/file-20210414-14-thqfvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395107/original/file-20210414-14-thqfvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395107/original/file-20210414-14-thqfvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395107/original/file-20210414-14-thqfvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395107/original/file-20210414-14-thqfvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395107/original/file-20210414-14-thqfvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395107/original/file-20210414-14-thqfvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A man prays inside the Rennes Islamic center, which was subjected to racist graffiti two days ahead of the holy month of Ramadan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/man-prays-inside-the-avicenna-islamic-cultural-centre-in-news-photo/1232251681?adppopup=true">Jean-Francois Monier/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The vote and its backlash also come on the heels of a series of measures imposed in France under the guise of reinforcing secularism and stamping out radicalization – ones that critics say <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/23/why-france-islamist-separatism-bill-controversy-extremism/">unfairly target the country’s Muslim population</a> and contribute to a climate of Islamophobia. This includes the French Republican principles bill that <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20210413-french-senate-approves-toughened-version-of-bill-accused-of-stigmatising-islam-religion-muslims">was passed by the French Senate on April 12, 2021,</a> with stricter regulations on Muslim dress and prayer locations added to the text. </p>
<p>So where does the Strasbourg mosque controversy fit into all this? Is it motivated by geopolitical concerns and fears of an Islamist threat? Does it merely reflect confusion over state funding for religion in France? Or is it simply an extension of broader debates over how Islam fits into French secularism? </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/carol-ferrara">research surrounding the politics of religion, secularism, Islam and pluralism in France</a> over the past 10 years suggests that it is most likely a mix of all of these factors.</p>
<h2>Funding religious buildings</h2>
<p>One contributing factor to the controversy over the Strasbourg mosque is the confusion over French laws restricting the funding of places of worship. </p>
<p>Notably, laws about the separation of church and state, or “laïcité laws,” <a href="https://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/10860?lang=en">do not apply equally</a> to all French territories.</p>
<p>In 1905, when <a href="https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/coming-to-france/france-facts/secularism-and-religious-freedom-in-france-63815/article/secularism-and-religious-freedom-in-france">church and state were officially separated</a>, certain territories were exempted, such as Guyane, where the Catholic Church remains the only recognized religion. At that time, the now-French region of Alsace-Moselle – in which Strasbourg is situated – was part of Germany. When France recovered the territory in 1918, the region negotiated an exception to the 1905 law, instead choosing to remain <a href="https://www.la-croix.com/Religion/Quest-concordat-2018-12-11-1200988851">under the Concordat of 1802</a>, which officially recognizes certain religions – though not Islam – and allows for direct state subsidizing of places of worship.</p>
<p>As such, officials in Strasbourg are well within their <a href="https://actu.fr/societe/une-municipalite-a-t-elle-le-droit-de-financer-la-construction-d-une-mosquee-en-alsace-moselle_40488853.html">rights to finance the mosque or any other house of worship</a>, so long as they adhere to <a href="https://www.associations.gouv.fr/le-droit-local-des-associations-en-alsace-moselle.html">local laws</a> that limit funding to 10% of construction costs.</p>
<p>But just because it’s legal doesn’t mean the move is popular.</p>
<p>In a 2021 <a href="https://www.ifop.com/publication/etude-sur-le-maintien-du-regime-du-concordat-et-le-financement-des-lieux-de-culte-en-alsace-moselle/">poll by the French Institute of Opinion and Marketing Studies (IFOP)</a>, more than two-thirds of respondents said they opposed all public funding of religious buildings or ministries. That number rises to nearly 79% when it comes to Islamic centers. Specifically, 85% of the overall French population said they oppose state funding for the Strasbourg mosque, with 79% of Alsace-Moselle residents against the move.</p>
<h2>Geopolitical fears</h2>
<p>Such opposition hasn’t been formed in a vacuum – the mosque’s controversy comes amid broader political debates over foreign intervention and fostering an “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/islam-france-macron/556604/">Islam of France</a>” that conforms with what is perceived as the national identity.</p>
<p>One of the main arguments against the mosque stems from its leaders’ affiliation with the Turkish-based Milli Görüs.</p>
<p>The French branch of Milli Görüs is one of the few Muslim organizations in France that refused to sign the recent state-imposed <a href="https://www.cfcm-officiel.fr/presentation-de-la-charte-des-principes-pour-lislam-de-france-au-president-de-la-republique/">charter of principles of Islam in France</a>. The authors of the charter, the French Council of the Muslim Religion (CFCM), along with the French government that initiated its formulation, say that it serves as a reminder that <a href="https://www.franceinter.fr/politique/que-contient-la-charte-des-principes-de-l-islam-de-france">Republican principles must come before religious convictions</a>. The charter strictly condemns political Islam and any foreign interference in mosque management. </p>
<p>But French Milli Görüs leaders have accused the state of <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/fr/france/20210407-islam-de-france-les-associations-non-signataires-de-la-charte-d%C3%A9noncent-une-ing%C3%A9rence">“interference with Muslim worship” and political manipulation of Islam</a>. </p>
<p>They complain that they were not consulted at all in the charter’s drafting and that Milli Görüs is being unfairly accused of being “<a href="https://www.rfi.fr/fr/france/20210407-islam-de-france-les-associations-non-signataires-de-la-charte-d%C3%A9noncent-une-ing%C3%A9rence">less Republican</a>” than other Muslim organizations for their abstention from signing.</p>
<p>Those wary of Milli Görüs’ leadership of the mosque also cite ties between the group <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-turkey-extremists/germany-trains-eye-on-turkish-group-in-wake-of-coup-crackdown-sources-idUSKCN1081LF">and Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AKP</a>. It has prompted concerns over the possibilities of <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2021/04/06/financement-public-d-une-mosquee-a-strasbourg-la-prefete-saisit-la-justice_6075772_3224.html">Turkish government meddling</a> in French sociopolitical affairs. </p>
<p>These fears of foreign intervention reflect <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691144214/the-emancipation-of-europes-muslims">a major policy shift</a> in France over the past few decades over how it perceives foreign ties to French Muslim organizations. Before the 1990s, the French state encouraged such relationships in a bid, some have argued, to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/book/integrating-islam/">keep Islam “foreign.”</a> But this changed as the public presence of <a href="https://www.thelocal.fr/20171201/how-frances-muslim-population-will-grow-in-the-future/">Islam in France grew</a> and amid post-9/11 suspicions of foreign manipulation. By 2016, then-Prime Minister Manuel Valls was calling for a <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2016/07/29/comment-est-organise-l-islam-de-france_4976389_4355770.html">ban on foreign funding for mosques</a>. </p>
<p>This ethos has continued with provisions in <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/dossierlegislatif/JORFDOLE000042635616/?detailType=EXPOSE_MOTIFS&detailId=">the recent French Republican principles bill</a> that require strict declarations of any foreign funding for religious organizations and give authorities the ability to ban any donations if there is sufficient evidence of a “serious threat affecting a fundamental interest of society.” </p>
<p>From this standpoint, allocating state funds to subsidize a mosque with foreign ties seems to run counter to efforts to foster an “Islam of France” that’s more integrated into secular French Republican values. </p>
<h2>Mosques, moderation and Islamophobia</h2>
<p>Of course there are those who just don’t want more mosques in France no matter how they are funded, spurred by erroneous conflations between radicalization, Islamist separatism, and places of worship. </p>
<p>But research in the U.S. has shown that mosque attendance is often an <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/rel2040504">indicator of greater “social and political integration”</a> and civic engagement. Mosques are not just places of worship. They are gathering places, cultural centers, educational centers, community outreach hubs, interfaith facilitators, social resource centers and even sometimes places for non-Muslims to learn about Islam. </p>
<p>This is especially true for “grand mosques” such as the <a href="https://www.mosqueedeparis.net/">Grand Mosque of Paris</a> or the <a href="http://mosquee-lyon.org/">Grand Mosque of Lyon</a>, where space is deliberately allocated for public visits, educational programs and community events. Having visited Milli Görüs centers in France and spoken with some of their members, directors and school officials, I believe these mosques seem to fit this same community and civic engagement profile.</p>
<p>Regardless, many French politicians and ordinary citizens believe that the secular principles that undergird French society need to be protected from a growing “Islamist threat.”</p>
<p>Sentiment is riding particularly high in the long lead-up to the 2022 elections, in which President Macron may attempt to <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210213-macron-has-helped-advance-the-far-right-france-s-mainstream-parties-veer-right-to-maintain-power">appeal to anti-immigrant voters</a> to curb the power of the far right.</p>
<p>In such an environment, those looking for Islamist threats seem to find them everywhere. Such fearmongering has seen scholars studying Islam and Islamophobia accused of advancing an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/02/22/france-macron-islamo-leftism/">Islamo-leftist agenda</a>, the dissolution of the nation’s <a href="https://www.islamophobie.net/les-nombreuses-contre-verites-sur-le-ccif/">largest anti-Islamophobia organization</a>, and <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2020/11/18/le-projet-de-loi-contre-l-islam-radical-et-les-separatismes-finalise-et-transmis-aux-deputes-et-senateurs_6060131_823448.html">home-schooling parents</a> blamed for radicalizing Muslim youth.</p>
<p>The controversy surrounding the Strasbourg mosque has obvious geopolitical groundings and clearly fits into dominant political narratives of protecting France’s secular principles. But it also fits into popular Islamophobic rhetoric of an omnipresent Islamist threat – rhetoric that hinders French Muslim citizens from finding community and belonging in France, whether in mosques or elsewhere.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol Ferrara does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Strasbourg officials are within their right to allow public funds to be used to build what may be the largest mosque in Europe. But that hasn’t stopped the backlashCarol Ferrara, Assistant Professor, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1509212020-12-01T17:14:52Z2020-12-01T17:14:52ZTeaching anti-terrorism: how France and England use schools to counter radicalisation<p>The murder of the schoolteacher Samuel Paty, beheaded by 18-year-old Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov in October 2020 after Paty had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a civic education lesson, has understandably caused shock and fear among teachers in France. </p>
<p>Many teachers were already struggling to manage classroom discussions on sensitive topics such as the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s publication of the controversial caricatures. Some now <a href="https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/091120/n-est-pas-des-cow-boys-des-referents-laicite-temoignent-de-leur-action-l-ecole">fear for their personal safety</a>. </p>
<p>My PhD research explores the impact of Islamist terrorism on education policy and practice in England and France. As I come to the end of my study, these events give rise to an unwelcome sense of déjà vu. </p>
<h2>Controversy and criticism</h2>
<p>My interest in the topic began with the terrorist attacks on the offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015 after it published the caricatures. The interviews I have carried out over the past three years show that these cartoons continue to cause upset and anger among some Muslim students. This leads to challenging classroom moments for teachers. </p>
<p>In the first week of school following the murder of Paty, <a href="https://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/religion/religion-laicite/assassinat-de-samuel-paty-il-y-a-eu-environ-400-violations-de-la-minute-de-silence-dans-les-etablissements-scolaires-annonce-jean-michel-blanquer_4170727.html">some 400 students</a> across France were reported to the ministry of education for refusing to take part in the minute’s silence in his honour.</p>
<p>Since Paty’s murder, there has been much talk about France’s “colour-blind” approach to cultural diversity, which emphasises that the same rights apply to all citizens. This is often considered to be in opposition to the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-16256-0_4">multiculturalism</a> of countries such as the UK, which gives greater space to minority cultures and religions.</p>
<p>French president Emmanuel Macron <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/15/business/media/macron-france-terrorism-american-islam.html">has responded</a> to international criticism of his government’s response to the attacks by insisting on the singularity of the French approach, and the inability of Anglo-Saxon commentators to understand it. </p>
<p>However, this overlooks the <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030316419">striking similarities</a> in the way the English and French governments have used the education system as a tool to promote social cohesion and build young people’s resilience to radicalisation. </p>
<h2>Fundamental values</h2>
<p>Governments in both countries have sought to emphasise shared values in the education system. Since 2014, schools in England have been required <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/guidance-on-promoting-british-values-in-schools-published">to promote</a> the “<a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/tea-and-the-queen">fundamental British values</a>” of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance for those of different faiths. </p>
<p>In French schools, there has been a renewed focus on promoting the Republican values of liberté, égalité, fraternité and the secular value of <a href="https://theconversation.com/frances-la-cite-why-the-rest-of-the-world-struggles-to-understand-it-149943">laïcité</a> – which limits the expression of religious beliefs in public institutions such as schools – <a href="https://www.gouvernement.fr/grande-mobilisation-de-l-ecole-pour-les-valeurs-de-la-republique">since the January 2015 attacks</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/quest-ce-que-lenseignement-moral-et-civique-148493">Qu’est-ce que l’enseignement moral et civique ?</a>
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<p>Other policies in both countries target students who may be at risk of radicalisation. Teachers are expected to report concerns about radicalisation to the school leadership or outside agencies. Education professionals are also being trained in spotting the signs of radicalisation, although this approach is more widely employed <a href="http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/32349/">in the UK</a> than it is in France. </p>
<p>The issues raised by atrocities such as the murder of Paty also have implications for how teachers operate in the classroom in England and France. </p>
<h2>Difficult discussions</h2>
<p>In the case of France, the attacks on Charlie Hebdo highlighted the difficulties that some teachers already faced in managing discussions around issues such as laïcité and freedom of speech. </p>
<p>In England, the need to engage students in discussions on contemporary issues as part of the fundamental British values policy – and to help them make sense of ongoing terrorist attacks – has revealed some of the same problems. </p>
<p>Teachers, school leaders and policy officials in both countries frequently state that some teachers lack in-depth knowledge of the issues they are increasingly called on to address in class. What’s more, many are afraid of being unable to manage the emotive student responses that sensitive subjects sometimes generate, and, ultimately, of losing control of the situation. </p>
<p>This was a particular concern for some respondents in France, who felt that a tradition of teacher-centred learning – involving lots of teacher talk and little time for discussion – meant that some of their colleagues were particularly nervous about managing classroom debates.</p>
<p>In England, the declining importance of citizenship education in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2018.1434420">English education system</a> limits opportunities for engagement with civic values and contemporary issues. This has been compounded, as one school leader pointed out, by a lack of in-depth guidance from the government on how to promote fundamental British values. </p>
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<p>My research shows that teachers need to be better prepared for these difficult conversations. This preparation should take place through initial teacher training and continuing professional development. </p>
<p>This training does already exist in some areas of both France and England. In some parts of France, teacher trainers work closely with teams of teachers over extended periods of time on themes such as discussion and debate, students’ religious beliefs, and talking to young people about terrorism.</p>
<p>At a secondary school I visited in London, teachers plan and teach citizenship education days collaboratively. This provides teachers with a degree of support in handling tricky moments. </p>
<p>Participants in my research also underlined the importance of teachers showing respect towards their students in these conversations. There was a feeling among some school leaders and teacher trainers in France that <a href="http://ijse.padovauniversitypress.it/system/files/papers/2018-3-04.pdf">teachers’ own beliefs</a> and how they express them in classroom debates could contribute to some of the heated confrontations that have made the headlines. </p>
<p>It seems that teachers in both countries are not immune to a wider climate of anxiety around Islam and suspicion towards Muslim populations. This may lead teachers to enter into some conversations with a <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-cahiers-de-la-lcd-lutte-contre-les-discriminations-2016-2-page-99.htm">degree of hostility</a>.</p>
<p>This message will need to be delivered carefully. In a context where teachers may be fearing for their safety, it is important that such warnings are not experienced as criticism. At the same time, it would be unfortunate if the horrific murder of Samuel Paty made debate on some of the pressing issues at the heart of these challenges impossible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan James is a member of the UK Labour Party </span></em></p>My PhD research explores the impact of Islamist terrorism on education policy and practice in England and France.Jonathan James, PhD Candidate, Department of Education, Practice and Society, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1498022020-11-24T13:07:23Z2020-11-24T13:07:23ZMuslim schools are allies in France’s fight against radicalization – not the cause<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370874/original/file-20201123-21-1wzotu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6144%2C4083&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Muslim schools can provide a place for girls to study while wearing headscarves.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/muslim-faithful-students-are-pictured-in-their-classroom-at-news-photo/181284466?adppopup=true">Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Following <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/world/europe/nice-attack-france.html">recent terror attacks in France</a>, President Emmanuel Macron appears intent on pushing forward with his plans to combat what he sees as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/macron-france-reform-islam-paty/2020/10/23/f1a0232c-148b-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html">Islamic separatism</a>” – starting with the schools. </p>
<p>A new bill announced on Nov. 18 will eradicate home-schooling options for French parents of children age 3 and above except in very <a href="https://www.rtl.fr/actu/politique/separatismes-l-instruction-a-domicile-strictement-limitee-annonce-macron-7800874263#:%7E:text=L'instruction%20%C3%A0%20domicile%20%22sera,ans%20d%C3%A8s%20la%20rentr%C3%A9e%202021.">limited health-related cases</a>. It will also increase scrutiny of independent schools and <a href="https://www.leparisien.fr/politique/lutte-contre-les-separatismes-ce-que-contient-le-projet-de-loi-18-11-2020-8408960.php">assign national identification numbers to school-aged children </a> to make it easier to track attendance.</p>
<p>Although it is framed around reinforcing <a href="https://www.leparisien.fr/politique/le-mot-separatisme-supprime-dans-l-intitule-du-projet-de-loi-06-10-2020-8397591.php">France’s secular “Republican principles</a>,” the bill is seen by many as a way to push youth into public schools early on to help, in the words of Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, “save” France’s children “<a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2020/11/18/le-projet-de-loi-contre-l-islam-radical-et-les-separatismes-finalise-et-transmis-aux-deputes-et-senateurs_6060131_823448.html">from the clutches of the Islamists</a>.”</p>
<p>The focus on schools in this way is nothing new. In 2018, the French government introduced the “Gatel law,” which changed the age of mandatory education from 6 to 3 years, <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000036798673/">and made opening and operating an independent private school much more difficult </a>. The <a href="https://www.senat.fr/leg/ppl16-589.html">bill</a> also mandated that school directors, along with middle and high school teachers, hold French nationality – a clause that some say <a href="https://www.saphirnews.com/La-loi-Gatel-destinee-a-mieux-encadrer-l-ouverture-des-ecoles-privees-vise-t-elle-les-projets-musulmans_a2%20**because%20of%20XX**4965.html">disproportionately affects Muslim schools</a>.</p>
<p>The reforms appear to assume that France’s highly centralized public school system is the right option for all French youth, and that limiting alternative schooling options – especially <a href="https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/separatisme-ce-que-prepare-jean-michel-blanquer_2134968.html">Muslim schools</a> – will hedge against radicalization, separatism and teachings <a href="https://eduscol.education.fr/980/prevention-et-lutte-contre-les-risques-de-derives-sectaires">contrary to secular French Republican norms</a>. My research, based on <a href="https://www.emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/carol-ferrara">10 years studying French Muslim schools</a> and speaking with school directors, teachers, parents and students, suggests that this might be the wrong approach. The specialized curricula offered in some Muslim schools could actually help guard against both radicalization and one of its root causes – the <a href="https://www.europe1.fr/societe/selon-un-sondage-ifop-pour-le-journal-du-dimanche-78-des-francais-jugent-la-laicite-menacee-3927717">perceived incompatibility</a> between <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/sondage-les-jeunes-musulmans-plus-radicaux-que-leurs-aines-20200908">being Muslim and being French</a>. </p>
<h2>Private French schools</h2>
<p>The vast majority of France’s 9,000-plus private schools are under contract with the state. This means their <a href="https://books.openedition.org/pur/109961?lang=en">operating budgets and teacher salaries are publicly funded</a> after a <a href="https://www.education.gouv.fr/les-etablissements-d-enseignement-scolaire-prives-2942">five-year waiting period</a>. The same curriculum is taught, but unlike public schools <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/jeunes-lecole-et-la-religion/oclc/495258173&referer=brief_results">where religious education is entirely absent</a>, private state-funded schools can offer religious education as an option. </p>
<p>By contrast, the approximately <a href="https://www.fondationpourlecole.org/">1,500 independently funded private schools</a> are allowed significant academic freedom, although they <a href="https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F33876">must still teach core subjects</a> such as math, science, French and history.</p>
<p>About 70% of all independent schools are nonreligious, while 17% are <a href="https://www.la-croix.com/Famille/Education/Les-ecoles-catholiques-hors-contrat-pleine-croissance-2016-06-08-1200767326">Catholic</a>. <a href="https://www.ecoles-libres.fr/statistiques/">About 5%</a> are Muslim. </p>
<h2>One size fits all?</h2>
<p>For most families I spoke with, <a href="https://www.puf.com/content/Choisir_son_%C3%A9cole">school choice</a> reflected personal values and educational priorities. Independent Catholic schools were often described to me as a natural extension of family education, and for some families, a practical alternative to home-schooling. </p>
<p>Parents and school directors explained to me that their preference for independent schools stemmed from a variety of reasons, from a perceived <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/ces-parents-decus-par-le-manque-de-soutien-de-l-ecole-publique-20201023">lack of individual attention</a> paid to <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2018/10/12/are-french-schools-failing-their-brightest-children">exceptional students</a> and those with learning or behavioral challenges to <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2016/12/07/la-france-hermetique-au-choc-pisa_5044853_3232.html">low academic standards</a> and a lack of religious education. Many independent school educators and parents expressed concern for what they perceived as government overreach when it came to control over children’s education. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370895/original/file-20201123-23-16efi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370895/original/file-20201123-23-16efi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370895/original/file-20201123-23-16efi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370895/original/file-20201123-23-16efi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370895/original/file-20201123-23-16efi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370895/original/file-20201123-23-16efi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370895/original/file-20201123-23-16efi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At a memorial march for slain teacher Samuel Paty – an act that prompted school reform proposals – people hold placards stating ‘Love for all, hate for no one’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FranceTeacherDecapitated/f263f455fe1a4a00b0ec0b1713b0e05e/photo?Query=Samuel%20Paty,&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=89&currentItemNo=46">AP Photo/Lewis Joly</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The school reforms proposed by Macron may be well intentioned. But they will further limit parental choice by eliminating the option of home-schooling, as well as simultaneously, and somewhat <a href="https://www.fondationpourlecole.org/communique-de-presse-la-fpe-appelle-a-un-debat-de-fond/">paradoxically</a>, restricting and stigmatizing the alternative choice of independent schools.</p>
<h2>Schooling French Islam</h2>
<p>The first two Muslim grade schools opened in France in 2001. Today, there are around <a href="https://rmc.bfmtv.com/emission/ecoles-musulmanes-en-france-a-quoi-ressemblent-ces-etablissements-1985239.html">70 such schools</a>. Similar to their <a href="https://enseignement-catholique.fr/chiffres-cles-enseignement-catholique/">7,500-plus Catholic</a>, <a href="https://www.alloj.com/fr/ecole-juive.html">200-plus Jewish</a> and <a href="https://www.ecoles-libres.fr/statistiques/">30-plus Protestant</a> counterparts, Muslim schools in France teach typical school subjects as well as offer a religious education and environment. </p>
<p>The vast majority of Muslim schools are not state-funded. This is usually not by choice, but because they have not yet completed the required <a href="https://www.education.gouv.fr/les-etablissements-d-enseignement-scolaire-prives-2942">five-year waiting period</a> to apply for funding or have yet to meet the necessary academic requirements. Instead, they are funded via private donations – usually from local communities – and student tuition fees.</p>
<p>The proposed school reforms are applicable to all schools attempting to open or to apply for state funding. However, the political framing and <a href="https://www.fondationpourlecole.org/lionel-devic-interroge-par-breizh-info/">discourse</a> surrounding them has been specifically linked to attenuating Islamic radicalism or separatism, leading to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/paris-france-emmanuel-macron-islam-europe-ea5e15bb651bbe443b27bc19948cae6b">stigmatization</a> of France’s Muslims as well as a growing distrust and suspicion of Muslim schools.</p>
<h2>A source of stability</h2>
<p>When discussing the sources of radicalization in France, scholars often point to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13602004.2015.1046743">social exclusion of Muslim youth</a>, especially those from the <a href="http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Hors-serie-Connaissance/Quatre-vingt-treize">city suburbs</a>. Some Muslim school directors told me they opened in order to provide safer, higher-quality education for youth who would otherwise attend some of France’s <a href="https://www.letudiant.fr/palmares/classement-lycees/statut-public/page-30.html">most poorly ranked public schools</a> found in these city suburbs.</p>
<p>Other Muslim schools opened with the express purpose of providing a space for Muslim girls wishing to both pursue their academic aspirations and wear a headscarf after a 2004 <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000000417977/#:%7E:text=%C2%AB%20Art.-,L.,dialogue%20avec%20l'%C3%A9l%C3%A8ve.%20%C2%BB">law banned religious symbols in public schools</a>. My research and <a href="https://humsci.stanford.edu/feature/stanford-scholars-report-french-headscarf-ban-adversely-impacts-muslim-girl">other studies</a> have shown that the headscarf ban has negatively impacted Muslim girls beyond the realm of education.</p>
<p>Moreover, interviews with Muslim school teachers and former students revealed <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00344087.2017.1303768?journalCode=urea20">intentional programs to educate students about the coherence of French Muslim identity</a>, about citizenship and French secularism as well as giving students a clear yet flexible foundation in Islam. These are strategies that <a href="https://www.la-croix.com/Debats/Islamisme-reseaux-sociaux-lassassinat-virtuel-meurtre-reel-2020-11-16-1201124824">some scholars</a> suggest help hedge against the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/12/19/506118904/defusing-the-lure-of-militant-islam-in-france-despite-death-threat">lure of radicalization</a>.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/34898">small-scale online survey I conducted in 2014</a> of 225 recent high school graduates, all former students of state-funded private Muslim high schools said that they learned about French citizenship. Only 30% of their Muslim public school counterparts and only 48% of their non-Muslim public school peers said the same. About 70% of Muslim school alumni said they were proud to be French, while only 45% of their Muslim public school peers agreed. </p>
<p>Former students also cited benefits of Muslim school environments, such as the absence of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03054985.2017.1352356">stigmatization present in some public schools</a>, freedom to practice their religion (or not) as they so chose and an especially supportive network of teachers to help them succeed. The hardest part, for some, was leaving.</p>
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<p>One former student wrote, “One of the ‘disadvantages’ [of Muslim schools] is that after having spent three years in an environment where we don’t feel guilty for being Muslim, after three years [of being] far from all the discrimination and signs of Islamophobia, after three years during which we experience liberty, equality and fraternity, the return to real life and notably entering [university], can constitute a shock after such a brutal change in environment.”</p>
<p>There is no evidence that Muslim schools, independent schools or home-schooling are the root problems of radicalization and Islamic separatism in France. To the contrary, my research suggests many of these options provide quality educational alternatives. I believe future reform efforts would be well served to consider these schools as potential allies in the fight against both radicalization and Muslim exclusion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149802/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol Ferrara does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>School reforms pushed by French President Emmanuel Macron are aimed at pushing Muslim students into public schools. An expert explains why this may be the wrong approach.Carol Ferrara, Assistant Professor, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1499432020-11-20T13:44:41Z2020-11-20T13:44:41ZFrance’s laïcité: why the rest of the world struggles to understand it<p>A wave of <a href="https://theconversation.com/teachers-in-france-on-the-front-line-of-defending-the-values-of-the-republic-148363">knife attacks</a> in France has come amid a government crackdown on what President Emmanuel Macron has described as “Islamist separatism”. The killings, in particular the killing of history teacher Samuel Paty <a href="https://theconversation.com/la-communaute-educative-face-a-la-radicalisation-des-jeunes-148790">in the Paris suburbs</a>, sparked demonstrations in France, but in some Muslim countries, there have been calls for a boycott of French goods in retaliation for Macron’s perceived attack on Islam.</p>
<p>In the English-speaking world, there is confusion over the debate about French society that has followed these attacks. The common factor is that the government and the demonstrators see themselves as defending France’s principle of “laïcité”. So why do people outside France struggle to understand what laïcité is? And why are the French so attached to it?</p>
<p>One problem for English speakers is that we have no satisfactory equivalent for the word laïcité. It is usually translated as “secularism”, though this tends to imply scepticism or hostility rather than neutrality towards religion. The “lay principle” may be a better equivalent, but laïcité has so much history behind it that you need to know something about France to understand its nuances.</p>
<p>Every country has to find a balance between the authority of the state and the influence of religion, arising from its particular history. The French Republic in its modern form was established in the late 19th century, after long struggles by republicans against royalist and authoritarian movements that were supported by the Catholic church. The religious differences were settled in 1905, when the <a href="https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/coming-to-france/france-facts/secularism-and-religious-freedom-in-france-63815/article/secularism-and-religious-freedom-in-france">church and the state were legally separated</a>. The state was declared neutral with respect to religion, and people were free to believe and practice any religion or none. In French, this became known as laïcité (lay-ness).</p>
<p>After the separation, laïcité faded into the background. Few people had a problem with it, including the main religious organisations. And there were pragmatic exceptions to the principle. For example, the state funds historic religious buildings (not just Notre-Dame in Paris). It funds Catholic schools and it has kept earlier arrangements with the Catholic Church in some of the former colonies and in <a href="https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2013/02/french-challenge-to-exception-of-alsace-moselle-from-separation-law-fails">Alsace-Moselle</a>, which was under German administration at the time of the separation. The lay principle was eventually embraced by all religious groupings, as well as by France’s large minority of non-believers. It has been included in the constitution since 1946.</p>
<h2>Tensions arise</h2>
<p>What brought laïcité back to prominence was the large-scale migration from North Africa after decolonisation in the 1960s, and the emergence of new generations of French-born Muslims. In 1989, disputes began over whether Muslim girls should be allowed to wear headscarves in state schools. Politicians from right and left piled in, and it rapidly escalated from there. The boundaries of the lay principle were tested to the limits, focusing mainly on religious symbols: what they were, where they could be worn or displayed, and by whom. New laws were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/11/world/french-assembly-votes-to-ban-religious-symbols-in-schools.html">passed in 2004</a> banning people from wearing conspicuous religious symbols in state schools and 2010 banning face coverings in public spaces.</p>
<p>Every dispute and every round of national elections has produced new debates and has increased the range of interpretations of the lay principle, taking in questions of women’s rights, civil liberties, freedom of speech and many other issues. One <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/sept-la%C3%AFcit%C3%A9s-fran%C3%A7aises-fran%C3%A7ais-Interventions-ebook/dp/B078YYZ3YR">prominent analyst</a> has identified seven distinct meanings of laïcité, which may now be an underestimate. With more political groupings claiming it as their core value, it has increasingly been accepted as an important marker of French identity – part of the national DNA, as former Prime Minister <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/04/12/manuel-valls-depuis-plus-de-trente-ans-on-me-demande-si-je-suis-de-gauche_1445774">Manuel Valls</a> put it.</p>
<h2>Islam and laïcité</h2>
<p>Although the lay principle applies to all religions, the debate around it has become increasingly focused on Muslim practices. Tensions were raised by right-wing movements hostile to immigration and have been raised further by the terrorist attacks carried out by supporters of al-Qaida, Islamic State and other extremist groups. In January 2015, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/charlie-hebdo-attack-14299">shooting of journalists at Charlie Hebdo</a> and the murder of Jewish hostages at a supermarket sparked mass demonstrations. In November that year, 130 people were killed in a spate of attacks, including at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. Attacks of different kinds have taken place many times since then, most recently the murder of Paty and of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54729957">three Christian worshippers in Nice</a> in October 2020.</p>
<p>These attacks have intensified the feeling among many people in France that they are embattled. At the same time, French Muslims are put under pressure to disavow the extremists or to accept guilt by association with them. In either case, Muslims’ place in the nation is in question.</p>
<p>What is at stake in these debates is not just the secular state, but also the wider framework of rights and responsibilities, and ultimately the very identity of the French Republic. So, from being the basis of a religious settlement, laïcité has increasingly become an expression of French identity. It now acts as a touchstone for le vivre-ensemble: how French people can live together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Kelly is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>Why are Emmanuel Macron’s reform plans so controversial and why are people protesting about freedom after another spate of violent attacks?Michael Kelly, Emeritus Professor of French in Modern Languages and Linguistics, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1480702020-10-20T19:40:32Z2020-10-20T19:40:32ZBeheading in France could bolster president’s claim that Islam is in ‘crisis’ – but so is French secularism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364353/original/file-20201019-21-1qrz6hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=69%2C0%2C5749%2C3882&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An homage to Samuel Paty, a teacher murdered after showing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Oct. 18, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-gathered-in-place-de-la-republique-in-paris-france-news-photo/1229165233?adppopup=true">Adnan Farzat/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A French high school teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his class <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/france/2020/10/16/terrorisme-un-enseignant-decapite-dans-les-yvelines_1802673">was beheaded on Oct. 16 by an 18-year-old Muslim refugee</a> in what <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54579403">France’s President Emmanuel Macron characterized as an “Islamist terrorist attack.”</a></p>
<p>The killing is the latest high-profile attack by a Muslim extremist in France, coming after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-paris-50736">2015 massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine</a> and the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36801671">2016 truck attack</a> in Nice. It also occurred two weeks after Macron gave <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/2/macron-announces-new-plan-to-regulate-islam-in-france">a controversial speech defining Islam</a> as “<a href="https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2020/10/02/la-republique-en-actes-discours-du-president-de-la-republique-sur-le-theme-de-la-lutte-contre-les-separatismes">a religion that is in crisis today all over the world</a>.”</p>
<p>France, which colonized many Muslim-majority territories in Africa and the Levant in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Algeria and Mali, has Western Europe’s largest Muslim minority – <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/29/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/">6 million people, or 9% of its population</a>. </p>
<p>Macron’s Oct. 2 speech outlined a legislative proposal to fight “Islamist separatism.” If passed in Parliament, it would essentially ban home-schooling of all children aged 3 and up and prevent foreign-trained imams from leading French mosques. The goal, said the president, is “<a href="https://www.elysee.fr/front/pdf/elysee-module-16114-fr.pdf">to build an Islam in France that can be compatible with the Enlightenment</a>.” </p>
<p>Macron’s analysis concludes, simply, that Islam is somehow at odds with modern Western society. But my <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/sociology/sociology-religion/secularism-and-state-policies-toward-religion-united-states-france-and-turkey?format=PB">research on state secularism and religion</a> shows that the reality is much more complicated.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Macron speaks at a lectern with the French and EU flags behind him" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">French President Emmanuel Macron.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/french-president-emmanuel-macron-delivers-a-speech-during-a-news-photo/1201691009?adppopup=true">Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>French versus American secularism</h2>
<p>French secularism, which is embraced by both the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/alien-citizens-state-and-religious-minorities-turkey-and-france?format=HB&isbn=9781108476942">progressive left and the Islamophobic right</a>, goes well beyond the American democratic concept of <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1970/89">separating religion and state</a>. Called “laïcité,” it essentially excludes religious symbols from public institutions. France has <a href="https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/the-weaponization-of-laicite">banned Muslim women’s headscarves in schools and outlawed religious face coverings everywhere</a>. There are no such bans in the United States.</p>
<p>While both America and France have ongoing debates about “Islamic fundamentalism” and “Muslim terrorists” and <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20100830,00.html">views that can be defined as Islamophobic</a> have some popular support, American democracy generally provides better opportunities for <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-future-of-religious-freedom-9780199930913?lang=en&cc=us#">the integration of various religious groups</a>. </p>
<p>In France, <a href="http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/connaissance/constitution.asp">the Constitution</a> defines the state only as secular, without delineating the boundaries of that secularism. In the United States, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">the First Amendment</a> restricts the secular state’s engagement with religion, saying the government can neither establish a religion nor prohibit a religion’s free exercise. </p>
<p>It would be difficult for the U.S. to announce, as Macron did, a state-sponsored project to “<a href="https://uk.ambafrance.org/France-to-restore-the-Republic-to-fight-Islamist-separatism">forge a type of Enlightenment Islam</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pupils in headscarves sit at desks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In France, Muslim girls may wear headscarves in Islamic private schools like the Alif school in Toulouse, but not in public schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/veiled-pupils-attend-a-lesson-in-a-classroom-on-may-11-2011-news-photo/114395069?adppopup=true">Eric Cabanis/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, 11 years before Macron voiced his provocative view, U.S. President Barack Obama gave a <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6-04-09">famous speech on Islam</a> in Egypt in 2009, attempting to reset the relationship between America and the Muslim world.</p>
<p>Emphasizing Muslims’ contributions to American society, Obama said, “It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear.”</p>
<p>Obama’s speech reflected an idealized American melting pot, a place where hyphenated identities like <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199930890.001.0001/acprof-9780199930890-chapter-11">Muslim-American</a> are common. </p>
<p>French secularism sees no hyphenated identities – only French or Not French.</p>
<h2>Islam and the secular state</h2>
<p>Some in France also see this rigid secularism as unequal to the challenges of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/sociology/sociology-religion/secularism-religion-and-multicultural-citizenship?format=HB&isbn=9780521873604">multiculturalism</a> and <a href="http://grease.eui.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/10/France-country-report.pdf">migration</a>. The eminent scholar <a href="https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/laicites-sans-frontieres-jean-bauberot/9782020996167">Jean Bauberot</a>, for example, defends a more “pluralistic secularism” – one that tolerates certain religious symbols in public institutions. </p>
<p>France has in fact made many exceptions for Catholics. The government provides substantial public funding to <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691144214/the-emancipation-of-europes-muslims">private Catholic schools</a>, which educate about a quarter of all K-12 students, and six of 11 official holidays in France are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_France">Catholic holidays</a>. </p>
<p>Too often, laïcité translates into an unwillingness to accommodate the religiously based demands of Muslims. </p>
<p>In 2015, a Muslim advocacy organization sued a municipal authority in France’s Burgundy region for refusing to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/pork-school-dinners-france-secularism-children-religious-intolerance">offer an alternative to pork</a> in public school cafeterias. The court compelled the town to reverse its policy, but not because it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/28/non-pork-meals-must-be-available-for-school-lunch-rules-french-court">violated religious freedom</a>. The court found the menu <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/08/28/chalon-sur-saone-la-justice-annule-la-fin-des-menus-sans-porc-dans-les-cantines_5177551_3224.html">violated the children’s rights</a>.</p>
<p>France’s founding commitment to equality under the law likewise forestalls meaningful social debate on <a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/1122">racial discrimination</a>; its census does not even collect information on race. Although France’s biggest minority is mostly composed of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/world/europe/macron-radical-islam-france.html">nonwhite Muslim immigrants from its former colonies in Africa and their descendents</a>, Macron’s speech referenced only in passing to French colonialism.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=experts">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p>
<h2>Blasphemy</h2>
<p>That said, I find some truth in Macron’s speech. But the “crisis” facing Islam lies in the historical and political failings of the Muslim world, not in the religion itself.</p>
<p>As my 2019 book, “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/islam-authoritarianism-and-underdevelopment-global-and-historical-comparison?format=PB&isbn=9781108409476">Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment</a>,” documents, many Muslim countries like Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia have long-lasting authoritarian regimes and chronic underdevelopment. In <a href="https://theconversation.com/execution-for-a-facebook-post-why-blasphemy-is-a-capital-offense-in-some-muslim-countries-129685">32 of the world’s 49 Muslim-majority countries</a>, blasphemy laws punish people who speak sacrilegiously about sacred things; in six countries, blasphemy is a capital offense. </p>
<p>These laws, which block freedom of expression, are more rooted in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/execution-for-a-facebook-post-why-blasphemy-is-a-capital-offense-in-some-muslim-countries-129685">interests of the conservative clergy and authoritarian rulers</a> than in the Islamic faith, my research shows. They actually contradict several Quranic verses that urge Muslims not to coerce or retaliate against people of other faiths. </p>
<p>Still, in Western countries where Muslims are a minority, extremists occasionally take it upon themselves to punish those who, in their view, mock the Prophet Muhammad. That has <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300124729/cartoons-shook-world">caused global controversies</a> over <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-theres-opposition-to-images-of-muhammad-36402">cartoons and movies</a>. At times, in France and beyond, it has led to an unacceptable outcome: murder.</p>
<p>Such killings, whether perpetrated by the state or by individuals, are tragedies. But to frame them as a purely religious problem ignores the socioeconomic and political origins of Islamic blasphemy laws, and the anti-democratic cultural consequences of authoritarianism in many Muslim countries. </p>
<p>It also overlooks the difficult reality that social alienation is an underlying factor in the <a href="https://behavioralpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/BSP_vol1is2_-Lyons-Padilla.pdf">radicalization of some young Muslims in the West</a>.</p>
<h2>Multiple secularisms, multiple Islams</h2>
<p>Macron’s speech made some gestures toward greater inclusion. </p>
<p>“I want France to become a country where we can teach the thoughts of Averreos and Ibn Khaldun,” he said, referencing two eminent Muslim thinkers of the 12th and 14th centuries, and envisioned “<a href="https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2020/10/02/la-republique-en-actes-discours-du-president-de-la-republique-sur-le-theme-de-la-lutte-contre-les-separatismes">a country that excels in the study of Muslim civilizations</a>.” </p>
<p>That plural in “civilizations” is meaningful. It acknowledges that Islam is not monolithic. Neither is French secularism. Both are complex systems with varied interpretations. </p>
<p>In truth, Macron doesn’t need to “build an Islam in France that can be compatible with the Enlightenment,” because that already exists. Whether French secularism can adapt to Islam is another question.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148070/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ahmet T. Kuru does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Macron wants to ‘build an Islam in France that can be compatible with the Enlightenment.’ But that goal assumes France is compatible with Islam, says a Muslim scholar of religion and politics.Ahmet T. Kuru, Professor of Political Science, San Diego State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1177112019-05-26T13:52:27Z2019-05-26T13:52:27ZClashing rights: Behind the Québec hijab debate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276145/original/file-20190523-187179-18aba1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People hold up signs as they march during a demonstration in Montreal, April 7, 2019, in opposition to the Quebec government's newly tabled Bill 21.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government has introduced Bill 21, a law that would supposedly <a href="http://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/projet-loi-21-42-1.html?appelant=MC">entrench religious neutrality in the province.</a> It would do so by prohibiting providers of government services in positions of authority such as judges, police and teachers from wearing religious symbols, including hijabs (headscarves for female Muslims), turbans (for male Sikhs), kippas (skullcaps for male Jews) and visible Christian crosses. </p>
<p>Bill 21 also prohibits providing or seeking a government service with one’s face covered. This principle is relatively uncontroversial in Québec, though some worry that it might discriminate against the very few Muslim women who cover their faces.</p>
<p>The principle behind Bill 21 is laicity, or secularism. Québécois are currently debating the human rights implications of Bill 21, just as they debated earlier versions proposed by the Parti Québecois government <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/952478/read-full-text-of-bill-60-quebecs-charter-of-values/">in 2013</a> and the Liberal government <a href="http://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/projet-loi-62-41-1.html">in 2014.</a></p>
<p>I wrote a detailed analysis of these debates in an academic article <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/article/685700">“The ‘Quebec Values’ Debate of 2013: Minority vs. Collective Rights” for <em>the Human Rights Quarterly</em>, published in 2018.</a></p>
<h2>Three types of rights clashes are involved</h2>
<p>The first clash is about whether public servants in positions of authority, while at work, should be permitted to exhibit their religious beliefs through their dress.</p>
<p>The CAQ considers wearing religious dress to be a violation of state religious neutrality. In the CAQ’s view, wearing religious dress is a form of passive or silent proselytism, trying to convert others to your own religion. </p>
<p>For the CAQ, prohibition of government servants’ wearing of religious symbols is necessary to preserve the secular character of Québec society. The prohibition is a relatively minor violation of freedom of religion, if indeed it is a violation at all.</p>
<p>Yet the 1975 Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms includes the right to openly profess religious beliefs <a href="http://legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/ShowDoc/cs/C-12">without fear of reprisal</a>. International law protects this right too, in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx">Article 18</a>, as does a <a href="https://www.revolvy.com/page/R-v-Big-M-Drug-Mart-Ltd">1985 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada</a>. </p>
<p>From this point of view, while the state has to demonstrate its religious neutrality, its individual employees do not have the same obligation.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276142/original/file-20190523-187172-ydctyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276142/original/file-20190523-187172-ydctyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276142/original/file-20190523-187172-ydctyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276142/original/file-20190523-187172-ydctyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276142/original/file-20190523-187172-ydctyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276142/original/file-20190523-187172-ydctyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276142/original/file-20190523-187172-ydctyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man wears a Kippah during a demonstration opposing the Quebec government’s newly tabled Bill 21 in Montreal, Sunday, April 14, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second clash is about women’s rights. Bill 21 states that the Québec nation “attaches importance to the equality of women and men.” This equality takes precedence over religious customs that imply discrimination against women.</p>
<p>Some Québec feminists, including some of Muslim background, maintain that men have always used religion to oppress women. Even if Muslim women wear the <em>hijab</em> voluntarily, many feminists believe, they have been taught to believe that the sexes are unequal. </p>
<p>Some of the older women who support Bill 21 remember when the Catholic Church dominated Québec. During the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/quiet-revolution">1960s Quiet Revolution</a>, Québécois freed themselves from the church’s control over marriage, divorce, contraception and abortion. These older women believe Bill 21 will similarly help Muslim women <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bill-21-quebec-feminists-on-opposite-sides-of-religious-symbols-ban-1.5139422">free themselves from religious control.</a></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276143/original/file-20190523-187185-yqdzbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276143/original/file-20190523-187185-yqdzbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276143/original/file-20190523-187185-yqdzbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276143/original/file-20190523-187185-yqdzbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276143/original/file-20190523-187185-yqdzbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276143/original/file-20190523-187185-yqdzbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276143/original/file-20190523-187185-yqdzbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People hold up signs during a demonstration in Montreal in opposition to the Quebec government’s newly tabled Bill 21.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those who oppose Bill 21 argue that it is discriminatory to refuse the opportunity of state employment to women who choose to wear religious symbols. They believe the ban on religious clothing and accessories will undermine some minority women’s right to employment, as in the case of Muslim women teachers.</p>
<p>Opponents also maintain that women who enjoy equality should be permitted to make independent individual decisions about whether to wear the hijab. If women are being forced to wear religious clothing, then the people forcing them should be punished, not the women themselves.</p>
<p>The third debate is about collective versus individual rights. Bill 21 states that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Laicity should be affirmed in a manner that ensures a balance between the collective rights of the Québec nation and human rights and freedoms.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>According to Bill 21, these include the collective right to maintain Québec’s religious cultural heritage, even if the state is formally secular. Thus for example, religious place names can still exist. </p>
<p>People favouring the new law believe in the right of the community to a certain level of social integration or cohesion. It is important for all to live together in harmony, emphasizing sameness rather than difference. People who speak French at home are more likely to believe this than people who speak other languages.</p>
<p>Many critics of this view assume that anyone who defends it is afraid of residents of Québec not descended from the original French Catholic settlers. The law appears to be directed primarily against Montreal and Québec City and reflects a fear of strangers in Québec’s more homogeneous regions. </p>
<p>Critics argue that it’s not necessary for more recent immigrant groups — or for long-standing Québecers like Jews — to remove their religious symbols in order to be part of Québec society.</p>
<p>If Bill 21 is passed, it’s likely that many Québec Muslims, Jews and Sikhs will migrate to other parts of Canada so that they can freely manifest their religions at work. The rest of Canada will gain from this migration, and Québec will lose.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann received funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program that supported her scholarly research on Quebec until June 20, 2016. </span></em></p>The proposed secular law (Bill 21) in the province of Québec appears to be directed primarily against Montreal and Québec City, and reflects a fear of strangers in Québec’s more homogeneous regions.Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1147992019-04-24T22:58:47Z2019-04-24T22:58:47ZSecularism: Québecers are religious about it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267408/original/file-20190403-177167-7ce8jh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C3000%2C2227&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Quebec Premier François Legault stands in front of the crucifix in the provincial legislature where he announced the religious symbol will be removed. Québec is both the most homogeneous province from a religious point of view and the most detached from its religious culture.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.cpimages.com">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some Canadians outside of Québec have <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-are-we-going-to-do-anything-to-protect-quebecs-minorities">reacted with disbelief at the tabling of a bill in the provincial legislature</a> by the Coalition Avenir Québec government to ensure the religious neutrality of the state. </p>
<p>Two factors should be considered when seeking to understand the debate around Bill 21 and secularism in Québec: <a href="http://www.cdpdj.qc.ca/publications/religion-Quebec-statistiques.pdf">the vast majority of the French provincial population share a Roman Catholic heritage</a>, yet Roman Catholic religious practices and beliefs are rapidly declining in Québec.</p>
<p>In other words, although French Québecers overwhelmingly have the same religious origins, they are becoming less and less religiously active. </p>
<p>Put these two factors together and it helps to shed light on why Québecers are so attached to the concept of secularism. </p>
<h2>Equating Catholic culture as Québec culture</h2>
<p>The result of the Roman Catholic historic domination in Québec is that many French Québecers equate Québec culture with Catholic culture. They view non-Catholic expressions of religion as something foreign to Québec’s identity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266888/original/file-20190401-177181-1i34smi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266888/original/file-20190401-177181-1i34smi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266888/original/file-20190401-177181-1i34smi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266888/original/file-20190401-177181-1i34smi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266888/original/file-20190401-177181-1i34smi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266888/original/file-20190401-177181-1i34smi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266888/original/file-20190401-177181-1i34smi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Église Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, in Old Québec. Of that city’s population, 93.6 per cent call themselves Catholic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2012, Jean Tremblay, the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/saguenay-mayor-attacks-pq-candidate-s-foreign-background-1.1168777">then mayor of the city of Saguenay, demonstrated this attitude</a> when he claimed to appreciate the contribution of immigrants “as long as they marry our culture.” Underscoring that the cross on Québec’s Fleur-de-lis flag is a Christian cross, he viewed Quebec’s Catholic heritage as something inseparable from French-Canadian culture. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/national-assembly-votes-to-remove-crucifix-1.4355860">removal of the crucifix from the main chamber of the Québec’s National Assembly</a> is another example of the conflation of religion and culture. When Premier François Legault tabled the secularism bill, the legislation said the crucifix would be removed. </p>
<p>Although the decision to remove the crucifix was seen as a compromise by the government, Québecers answering a new poll felt differently. A survey indicated that <a href="https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2019/04/01/les-quebecois-veulent-la-laicite-et-le-crucifix">63 per cent of respondents</a> believed that “crosses and other religious symbols that adorn public institutions should remain in their place because they are part of our heritage.”</p>
<h2>Increasingly detached</h2>
<p>If Québec can been seen as the most homogeneous province in Canada from a religious point of view, French Quebecers are increasingly detached from active religious practices and beliefs. </p>
<p>Over the past 50 years, the religious practice of French-speaking Québecers who were baptized Catholic has dropped to historic lows. In 2014, <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/emissions/second_regard/2013-2014/fichiers/sondage-sans-religion.pdf">a survey found only seven per cent of Catholics reported that they practised their faith on a weekly basis</a> — the proportion was almost 100 per cent in 1960.</p>
<p>The survey also found only one-third of Catholic respondents said they still had their faith. Less than half of the respondents considered Jesus to be the son of God, with the majority saying they considered him either an “ordinary man,” a philosopher or a prophet.</p>
<p>In a way, Québec is similar to France. <a href="https://www.la-croix.com/Religion/France/Qui-sont-vraiment-catholiques-France-2017-01-11-1200816414">In 2010, 64 per cent of French identified as Roman Catholic</a> but of these, 57 per cent did not attend Sunday mass. Catholics who went to mass represented only 4.5 per cent of the French population, compared to 27 per cent in 1952.</p>
<h2>A growing tension</h2>
<p>The tension between historic religious homogeneity and religious indifference explains part of the debate on secularism. Whereas the historic religious homogeneity of French Québecers makes anyone who deviates from the Catholic norm appear to be foreign, religious acculturation makes people suspicious of those who claim rights on behalf of their religion. </p>
<p>In either case, non-Catholics are rejected. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266904/original/file-20190401-177199-1n2rybl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266904/original/file-20190401-177199-1n2rybl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266904/original/file-20190401-177199-1n2rybl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266904/original/file-20190401-177199-1n2rybl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266904/original/file-20190401-177199-1n2rybl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266904/original/file-20190401-177199-1n2rybl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266904/original/file-20190401-177199-1n2rybl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Religious acculturation makes Quebécers of Catholic heritage suspicious of those who claim rights on behalf of their religion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s not surprising then that Canadians in the rest of the country have a hard time understanding this rationale. The secularism debate in Québec appears <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/two-solitudes">an illustration, yet again, of the “two solitudes” between French Canadians and the rest of the country.</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114799/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jean-Philippe Warren ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Many Canadians are puzzled by Québec’s law banning some civil servants from wearing religious symbols. A Québec sociologist explains the law is rooted in the province’s troubled history with religion.Jean-Philippe Warren, Professor, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1157342019-04-18T14:42:49Z2019-04-18T14:42:49ZNotre Dame: the public and private lives of France’s spiritual home<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269989/original/file-20190418-28119-ue5z72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C998%2C655&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Seine and Notre Dame, physically and spiritually the heart of Paris.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Iakov Kalinin via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>While flames engulfed Notre Dame on the evening of April 15 and the world watched in despair, French president Emmanuel Macron <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bcd5aa90-5fc9-11e9-a27a-fdd51850994c">told news cameras</a> that the Paris cathedral was part of the history of all French people: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is our history, our literature, our imagination, the place where we have lived our great moments … it is the epicentre of our life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Macron hit the mark in more ways than one. Certainly, since its first stone was laid in 1163, Notre Dame has witnessed a great many of France’s iconic moments. It was, after all, the church of the country’s medieval kings long before the royal court moved out to Versailles in the 17th century.</p>
<p>In 1558, it witnessed the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to the Dauphin, soon to be King François II. In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor there. And, on August 26 1944, the towering frame of general Charles de Gaulle strode triumphantly down the aisle for a thanksgiving service on the liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation – having braved snipers on the way.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269996/original/file-20190418-28103-1hevo6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269996/original/file-20190418-28103-1hevo6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269996/original/file-20190418-28103-1hevo6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269996/original/file-20190418-28103-1hevo6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269996/original/file-20190418-28103-1hevo6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269996/original/file-20190418-28103-1hevo6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269996/original/file-20190418-28103-1hevo6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Napoleon Bonaparte crowning himself emperor in Notre Dame, December 1804.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jacques-Louis David and Georges Rouget</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Notre Dame is one of the country’s “lieux de mémoire”, a “realm of memory”, to use <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2928520">historian Pierre Nora’s term</a>; a place where historical memory is embedded and commemorated.</p>
<h2>Secret lives</h2>
<p>All buildings have their “secret lives” – a topic that Edward Hollis explores in his brilliant book with that very title. One of the cathedral’s secret lives was its part in the “culture war” that bitterly divided France after the Revolution of 1789. The Revolution was not only a frontal assault on hereditary privilege, seigneurialism and the monarchy – it also developed into an attack on the Catholic church, and Notre Dame was one of the most important sites of this conflict. </p>
<p>In the autumn of 1793, as the Terror gathered pace, the firebrands who dominated Paris’ municipal government ordered the removal of the statues that lined Notre Dame’s façade above its great doors.</p>
<p>These, it was proclaimed, were “the gothic simulacra of the Kings of France” (in fact, they represented the Kings of Judea). As the iconoclasm swept through the city, the interior of the cathedral was gutted: all religious images, statues, effigies, reliquaries and symbols were stripped out until all that remained was a bare shell of masonry and timber. The cathedral’s bells and spire were melted down for their metal.</p>
<p>This was the most serious damage sustained by the cathedral in modern times, until the recent fire, and yet (and here we might take heart) Notre Dame would be restored in the 19th century by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, whose work included the replacement spire that fell so tragically in flames on April 15.</p>
<p>The crescendo of the revolutionary campaign of “dechristianisation” came on November 10, 1793 when Notre Dame – renamed the “Temple of Reason” – played host to a secular, atheist festival to the triumph of human reason over religion and superstition. The French Revolution left a legacy of cultural and political division between, on the one hand, the Republic, the secular and visions of a democratic, rights-based order, and, on the other hand, the Church, the sacred and memories of the old monarchy.</p>
<h2>Crisis of faith</h2>
<p>Napoleon Bonaparte papered over the chasm in 1801 by signing a Concordat – an agreement with the Pope, whereby he pragmatically recognised Catholicism as the religion of the “great majority of French citizens”. This was a clever formula that was both a statement of fact and left room for other faiths. In return, the Pope accepted many of the reforms of the Revolution and Notre Dame was returned to the Church in April 1802. </p>
<p>Despite this compromise, friction continued between the church and the state as the political pendulum swung back and forth over the course of the 19th century. Education was a particularly contentious battleground, as both sides fought to win the hearts and minds of the younger generations.</p>
<p>From this conflict sprang the republican principle of “laïcité”. While French people of all races and creeds were free to practice their beliefs as private individuals, in their contacts with the state, particularly in schools, they were meant to be equal citizens abiding by the same laws and adhering to the same, universal, republican values.</p>
<p>Notre-Dame was given a role in this – if only in opposition to laïcité. When the Eiffel Tower was opened in 1889 for the Universal Exposition, itself commemorating the centenary of the French Revolution, it was heralded by republicans as a triumph of human reason, science and progress over faith and superstition. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269988/original/file-20190418-28087-pyt7es.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269988/original/file-20190418-28087-pyt7es.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269988/original/file-20190418-28087-pyt7es.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269988/original/file-20190418-28087-pyt7es.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269988/original/file-20190418-28087-pyt7es.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269988/original/file-20190418-28087-pyt7es.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269988/original/file-20190418-28087-pyt7es.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two of Notre Dame’s oldest inhabitants enjoying the view of the Eiffel Tower.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Neirfy via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The French diplomat and travel-writer <a href="https://www.revolvy.com/page/Eug%C3%A8ne%252DMelchior-de-Vog%C3%BC%C3%A9">Eugène Melchior de Vogüé</a> imagined an argument between Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, between the old and the new, between faith and science. The cathedral’s two towers mock Eiffel’s creation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You are ugly and empty; we are beautiful and replete with God … Fantasy for a day, you will not last, because you have no soul.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The iron structure retorts: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Old abandoned towers, no one listens to you anymore … You were ignorance; I am knowledge. You keep man enslaved; I free him … I have no more need of your God, invented to explain a creation whose laws I know. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1905, the republicans finally triumphed, formally separating church and state, thereby tearing up Napoleon’s Concordat. Notre Dame itself, along with other ecclesiastical property, was taken over by the government.</p>
<h2>Sacred union</h2>
<p>So Notre Dame is certainly a symbol of France’s past, but not only because of its longevity, its royal associations, its undeniably stunning architecture and its location on the Île de la Cité – the ancient legal, political and ecclesiastical heart of the former kingdom. It also stood as a site – and a symbol – of the culture war: the “Franco-French” conflict between, on the one hand, the country’s monarchist and Catholic traditions and, on the other hand, its revolutionary and republican heritage. These frictions have periodically torn the country apart since 1789. This is its hidden history.</p>
<p>This alone is reason to mourn the damage, because its “secret life” carries lessons for all of us – about the relationship between church and state, faith and reason, the secular and the sacred, about tolerance and intolerance, about the use and abuse of religion and culture.</p>
<p>But happily this is not the full story. In times of national crisis, the French have shown an inspiring capacity to rally together, evoking the “union sacrée”, the unity of wartime in 1914, just as they mobilised around the democratic, republican values in response to the terrorist attacks in 2015. </p>
<p>And Notre Dame has historically played a part in these moments of reconciliation and union. When France emerged from the brutal, sectarian 16th-century strife between Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots – remembered as the Wars of Religion – the Protestant Henri de Navarre, who took the crown as Henri IV, pragmatically decided that: “Paris is well worth a Mass” and converted to Catholicism.</p>
<p>When he rode into the capital in 1594, he immediately took communion in Notre Dame: it was a moment that promised peace between Catholics and Protestants (and four years later, the new king issued the Edict of Nantes, which declared toleration for both faiths). </p>
<p>It was in Notre Dame, too, that the official celebrations of Napoleon’s compromise with the Church, the Concordat, came to a climax on Easter Sunday 1802, with a Mass attended by the entire government of a republic once deemed “Godless”.</p>
<p>In 1944, de Gaulle’s triumphant march to Notre Dame through liberated Paris was a moment of catharsis for French people humiliated by four years of Nazi occupation. And in 1996, the then president Jacques Chirac (also the first French president to make a state visit to the Vatican) helped to arrange a Requiem Mass for his agnostic predecessor, François Mitterand.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269991/original/file-20190418-28103-4s10ix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269991/original/file-20190418-28103-4s10ix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269991/original/file-20190418-28103-4s10ix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269991/original/file-20190418-28103-4s10ix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269991/original/file-20190418-28103-4s10ix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269991/original/file-20190418-28103-4s10ix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269991/original/file-20190418-28103-4s10ix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">General Charles de Gaulle marches down the Champs Elysees to Notre Dame for a service of thanksgiving following the city’s liberation in August 1944.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imperial War Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The gesture – and the subsequent papal visit that same year – certainly <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/historians-battle-over-clovis-first-french-king-1306501.html">elicited protests from people</a>, particularly on the left, who defended a pure form of laïcité. Yet that Chirac, who in other contexts steadfastly defended the Republic’s secularism, could as president do these things suggests how far the boundaries between republicanism and Catholicism have softened. Notre Dame is certainly an appropriate site to reflect on this because it is both state property – and officially designated a “monument historique” as long ago as 1862 – and a fully-functioning church.</p>
<h2>Bridges to build</h2>
<p>This is not to say that there are no bridges still to build, or frictions to resolve – far from it. Recently, controversies over laïcité have revolved around attempts to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/14/headscarves-and-muslim-veil-ban-debate-timeline">ban the hijab, the burka and the burkini</a>, which have stoked fears of racism and of the exclusion of France’s substantial Muslim population. And while there is certainly a dark side to les gilet jaunes, they are no less a symptom of deep economic distress and social malaise.</p>
<p>So when Macron, on first learning of the terrible fire consuming Notre Dame, could tweet that his thoughts were with “all Catholics and for all French people” and that “tonight I am sad to see this part of us burn”, he was – perhaps intentionally – almost using the Napoleonic language of the Concordat. His tweet recognised that not all French people are Catholic, while at the same time stating that the iconic cathedral is the heritage of all citizens regardless of belief. </p>
<p>And indeed the rector of the Paris Grand Mosque, <a href="https://churchpop.com/2019/04/16/french-islamic-leader-calls-for-muslims-to-aid-notre-dame-rebuilding-citing-their-veneration-of-mary/">Dalil Boubakeur</a>, issued a press release as the fire still blazed, saying: “We pray that God might safeguard this monument so precious to our hearts.” </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/japans-pm-has-frog-in-throat-as-ecological-crisis-looms-15230">Japan's PM has frog in throat as ecological crisis looms</a>
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<p>When the reconstruction of Notre Dame begins, the country will be restoring not only a site of its history, but also a symbol of the complexities of that history, complexities that, hopefully, remind us of a capacity for healing, inclusion and unity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115734/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Rapport receives funding from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust for his work on Revolutionary Paris. He is a member of Stirling4Europe.</span></em></p>From coronations to Revolution to reconciliation, Notre Dame has witnessed nearly 900 years of French history.Michael Rapport, Reader in Modern European History, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1060922019-02-21T12:13:17Z2019-02-21T12:13:17ZHow to tackle Islamophobia – the best strategies from around Europe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259604/original/file-20190218-56240-16co5g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A need for different narratives. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/muslim-female-friends-using-mobile-phone-588853601?src=QEqjesdcdpYqU-EhuCQr7w-1-1">Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A growing body of research points to the proliferation of Islamophobia <a href="http://islamophobiaeurope.com">across Europe</a> in recent years. In the UK, record numbers of Islamophobic hate crimes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/20/record-number-anti-muslim-attacks-reported-uk-2017">were recorded in 2017</a>, and <a href="http://hatecrime.osce.org/">across the continent</a> there have been similar findings on the growth of explicit Islamophobia. </p>
<p>In a new, pan-European <a href="http://cik.leeds.ac.uk">research project</a>, my colleagues and I set about to devise a <a href="https://cik.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2018/09/2018.09.17-Job-44240.01-CIK-Final-Booklet.pdf">toolkit</a> that can be used to counter Islamophobia. It summarises a range of the best methods and tools we saw being used to challenge Islamophobic thought and actions in Europe.</p>
<p>In any discussion about Islamphobia, a definition is required that acknowledges both direct forms of Islamophobic discrimination and also its more subtle, nuanced manifestations. A <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/599c3d2febbd1a90cffdd8a9/t/5bfd1ea3352f531a6170ceee/1543315109493/Islamophobia+Defined.pdf">definition</a> published by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in November 2018, which states “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness” does precisely this and is a useful starting point.</p>
<p>In our research, we began by examining the most common Islamophobic ideas that circulated in eight countries: France, Belgium, Germany, the UK, Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece and Portugal. While the language and rhetoric of Islamophobia differed in each, we found much of it perceived Muslims, Islamic practices and sites, such as mosques or community centres, as inherently violent, threatening and incompatible with the view of a European way of life. For example, in France, wearing the headscarf and being visibly Muslim is viewed by some as being <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2018/07/27/01016-20180727ARTFIG00053-l-affaire-des-foulards-de-creil-la-republique-laique-face-au-voile-islamique.php">against French secular values</a> and by extension contrary to being French.</p>
<p>We found many examples of good practice when counteracting Islamophobia. For example, <a href="https://salaamshalom.org.uk/">interfaith projects</a> in Germany highlighted conviviality and cultural compatibility between Muslims and non-Muslims. </p>
<p>Art was also used in a number of cases, including Belgium and the UK, to challenge Islamophobic ideas. The <a href="http://tuffix.net/">Tuffix</a> comic strips by German artist Soufeina, and the 2017 British film, <a href="http://arakancreative.co.uk/freesia-film/">Freesia</a>, highlight the contribution of Muslims in society, and the issues many Muslims face as a result of Islamophobia. </p>
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<h2>Another narrative</h2>
<p>Based on our analysis, our toolkit highlighted some specific strategies that work to counter Islamophobia. Since a great deal of Islamophobia is based on the notion that Muslims threaten the European way of life, values and culture, one way to challenge these ideas is to highlight the many everyday roles Muslims occupy in society. And since we found that Islamophobic perceptions are often based on the idea that Islam and Muslims are sexist, projects that champion Muslim women, their work and their voices will go some way towards breaking down these preconceptions. </p>
<p>Muslim women are <a href="http://ccib-ctib.be/wp-content/uploads/CCIB_PUBLIC_PDF_RapportChiffresCCIB/CCIB_RapportChiffres2017_Septembre2018.pdf">disproportionately affected by Islamophobia</a>. They are not only seen as a threat to the West, but they are also paradoxically portrayed as victims of an alleged Islamic sexism. These contorted ideas must be overturned with new narratives, led by Muslim women themselves, presented via art, media and popular culture, to portray the diversity of their lives. </p>
<p>Islamophobia needs to be properly recorded to assess the scope and nature of the phenomenon, and the narratives and flawed logic used in Islamophobic attacks must be effectively deconstructed and challenged. Where misinformed narratives concerning Islam and Muslims circulate these must be broken down. A reconstruction of mainstream ideas surrounding Islam and Muslims is needed, one that is closer to the realities of the faith and its practice. This means that dominant ideas about Muslims and Islam that circulate in popular culture should reflect the diverse everyday experiences of Muslims and their faith. </p>
<p>All this amounts to a four-step approach: first defining, and second documenting Islamophobia, next deconstructing its narratives, and then reconstructing new positive and realistic narratives around Muslims. </p>
<p>Such an approach moves away from misinformed and often reactionary counter-Islamophobia strategies, such as the way Muslims repeatedly condemn terror attacks and seek to dissociate such acts from Islam. In doing so, they often find <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2017/mar/26/muslims-condemn-terrorism-stats">their comments fall on deaf ears</a> and instead risk contributing to associations between Muslims and violence. </p>
<p>The ultimate goal in countering Islamophobia should be to create a fair and just society for all, one that values and safeguards the citizenship of its members.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106092/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Counter-Islamophobia Kit project is funded by the European Commission's Rights, Equality and Citizenship programme (JUST/2015/RRAC/AG/BEST/8910) </span></em></p>Researchers have put together a toolkit for countering Islamophobia.Amina Easat-Daas, Researcher, Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1059672018-11-05T22:37:21Z2018-11-05T22:37:21ZQuébec’s push to ban the hijab is ‘sexularism’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243969/original/file-20181105-74772-13j1lnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Coalition Avenir Québec leader François Legault on the campaign trail last September before the election that saw his party form a majority government.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2006, I wrote a <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/discourses-of-denial">book about how Canadians — journalists, politicians, lawyers, teachers and everyday people — are in denial about racism</a>. I explained our tendency to regard explicit racism as something that happened in the United States. Racism in Canada was camouflaged in politeness or regarded as a simple preference. It was erased from the national Canadian narrative, except for exceptional cases where the evidence was irrefutable and could not be explained as an overreaction on the part of the aggrieved, or trivialized as a meaningless irritation. </p>
<p>I thought that things might change over the next decade. But almost 12 years later, the denial continues. </p>
<p>The recent election in Québec which propelled the right-leaning <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/10/01/coalition-avenir-quebec-wins-provincial-election-ending-quebecs-two-party-rule.html">Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) into power</a> signals a moment that solidifies this denial of racism. This denial is rooted in the mythology of Québec uniting around its survival of francophone culture (<a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/education-history-and-la-survivance-252393941.html"><em>la survivance</em></a>) in the face of British colonization and its rejection of its Catholic past (through secularism). </p>
<p>Both of these ideas go hand in hand, cemented by the adhesive of language through Bill 101 which made French the official language of business in Québec. Passed into law more than 30 years ago, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/1237519/fact-file-what-is-bill-101/">Bill 101</a> also promised an inclusive future for minorities in the province, as the only condition to belonging was speaking or learning French and participating in French civic culture.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243968/original/file-20181105-74772-czjcqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243968/original/file-20181105-74772-czjcqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243968/original/file-20181105-74772-czjcqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243968/original/file-20181105-74772-czjcqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243968/original/file-20181105-74772-czjcqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243968/original/file-20181105-74772-czjcqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243968/original/file-20181105-74772-czjcqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Québec Premier Réne Lévesque tries to hush supporters at a Parti Québecois rally in Montréal, Nov. 15, 1976, following his party’s victory in the provincial election. The PQ victory led to the landmark Charter of the French Language, more commonly known as Bill 101, which became law on Aug. 26, 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Files</span></span>
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<p>The CAQ wants more. It wants minorities to meld in completely by losing their ostentatious religious symbols. This move capitalizes on the two previous governments attempts to foster a distinctly secular society by separating church and state. </p>
<p>As an Allophone (whose language at birth is neither French nor English), the CAQ’s victory signals a trenchant denial of racism for me. The <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07256868.2012.673473?casa_token=KKCPrq2XEecAAAAA:bSR33pc9jtOS3JuhVRIWkO72nmx0gxQuaIUEMbCTZVT1tyMIVfFtB7RWvY5u7ykzIMGQQAFCf4Ut">CAQ’s political agenda demands that membership in Quebecois society</a> is contingent on separating one’s identity into compartmentalized parts.</p>
<p>Vacillating between disallowing and conditionally allowing the wearing of the hijab and other religious symbols by public servants, CAQ continues the tradition of exclusion that is the hallmark of any nationalism — a definitive separation between those who belong and those who do not. </p>
<h2>Belonging and not-belonging</h2>
<p>This desire to enfold individuals into a national collective by forcibly making them conform to norms of an “<a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2259-imagined-communities">imagined community</a>” is basic nationalism — one that pits an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07256868.2012.673473?casa_token=KKCPrq2XEecAAAAA:bSR33pc9jtOS3JuhVRIWkO72nmx0gxQuaIUEMbCTZVT1tyMIVfFtB7RWvY5u7ykzIMGQQAFCf4Ut">“us” against a constructed “them,” where the “they” represent multiple threats to the nation</a>. </p>
<p>These threats include a perceived challenge to a secular nation through the donning of religious symbols and adherence to different cultural ways, as well as a sense of being engulfed by immigrants who threaten to dilute Quebéc’s distinct culture. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243972/original/file-20181105-74775-ii7mvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243972/original/file-20181105-74775-ii7mvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243972/original/file-20181105-74775-ii7mvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243972/original/file-20181105-74775-ii7mvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243972/original/file-20181105-74775-ii7mvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243972/original/file-20181105-74775-ii7mvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243972/original/file-20181105-74775-ii7mvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Québec Premier-designate Francois Legault leaves after speaking to the media in Québec City on Oct. 2, the day after after winning the provincial election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz</span></span>
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<p>Akin to Australia’s <a href="https://www.nswtf.org.au/files/against_paranoid_nationalism.pdf">“paranoid nationalism,”</a> Canadian scholar Daiva Stasiulis describes Québec’s response as that of a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589346.2013.768079?casa_token=-XZ-Pitggo4AAAAA:ZdNWPl_poo1qjwqa162vW-BxckwRRDcayZB1CXmyRKW3tqlc6ig141ey9rDGpecV8bZfVo7Vaw7s">“worrier nation,” continually troubled and distressed about threats to its cultural distinctiveness and the status of the French as a founding nation.</a> </p>
<p>Who are the intended <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-chador-religious-symbols-1.4876212">targets of CAQ’s exclusionary ban</a>? <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/10/24/quebec-burka-niqab-chador-ban_a_23570832/">Muslim women are the most obvious targets</a> but Jewish men are also included, as are Rastafarians, Sikhs or anyone that looks visibly different. </p>
<h2>A reminder to leave part of yourself at home</h2>
<p>Why the focus on different “others?” Such lines of demarcation have been drawn across numerous terrains — the practice is not exclusive to Québec. However, living under such conditions is a visceral reminder of how tenuous “belonging” really is for those who are on the margins of race, religion and gender. These <a href="http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199751457.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199751457-e-2">axes of power</a> delimit and decide the level of access that is afforded to those who are different. </p>
<p>But more than that, the limitations pivot on the assumption that one can separate oneself into different parts — leave the hijab at home, work as a public servant in a position of authority, and then come home and wear it in private. Identity is privatized, as is faith. Faith is fine as long as it stays at home and doesn’t impinge on the public sphere. </p>
<p>This kind of compartmentalization is possible in abstraction but in reality, it is another issue. It imposes unnatural parameters on self-expression and it targets particular groups of people and specific identities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-hypocrisy-of-quebecs-move-to-ban-religious-dress-105194">The hypocrisy of Québec's move to ban religious dress</a>
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<p>In the making of the Québec nation and identity, language was identified as the main conduit through which belonging was to be attained. </p>
<p>Yet, it seems that in spite of fluency in French (and, bearing in mind that most immigration to Québec is from French-speaking countries), it is clear that knowing the language is not enough. Not only does one have to speak the majority language, but one also has to be like and look like “one who belongs.” This is where the state’s imposed secularism comes in. The CAQ want to assimilate difference — make “them” like “us.” </p>
<h2>‘Sexularism:’ They want to see the whole woman</h2>
<p>Part of these ideas are also based on a desire to have women accessible — to be able to see the whole woman. <a href="https://theconversation.com/quebecs-niqab-ban-uses-womens-bodies-to-bolster-right-wing-extremism-86055">In Saudi Arabia, men want to cover women so only they can look at them;</a> in Québec, men want to uncover them, so that they can look at them. </p>
<p>The act of being able to see suggests a kind of visual possession, of being able to access, consume and digest difference so that it is less threatening. <a href="http://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/11553">Québec’s secularism fits what Joan Scott has called “Sexularism.”</a> </p>
<p>If those women who wear hijab refuse to unveil, shed their chadors, then what happens to them? They remain invisible, confined to their homes, refused work or services, and are disadvantaged, economically, socially and politically. This creates a vulnerable class of people who can then be exploited for gain — as cheap labour, and invisible “others” whose lives are not deemed worthy of societal concern and attention.</p>
<p>CAQ is following in the footprints laid by the Liberal government preceding it — through its adherence to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-bill-62-guidelines-accommodations-1.4655620">Bill 62</a> banning ostentatious religious symbols for those in positions of power. But does that mean that those who wear these symbols will not be able to climb the social ladder – attain any positions of power? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quebecs-niqab-ban-uses-womens-bodies-to-bolster-right-wing-extremism-86055">Quebec's niqab ban uses women's bodies to bolster right-wing extremism</a>
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<p>Given how few women actually wear the chador or the niqab (the face veil), is this yet another attempt at managing dissent given that protesters often wear masks in fear of reprisal and retaliation by authorities, a move that Jean Charest, former liberal premier, tried to pass into law in Québec? </p>
<p>Or is the move designed to engender a sense of fear among minorities that if they don’t abide by this government’s law, they too will be abandoned by law altogether? And, is the move designed to appease the growing far right in Québec?</p>
<p>We are walking a tightrope in Québec. Allophones are caught in the interstices of power between the right of <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-globe-editorial-quebecs-caq-keeps-getting-it-wrong-on-immigration/">centre political party in power and the ongoing racism that remains unacknowledged by those in power.</a></p>
<p>Just as Trump has upped the ante on the acceptability of hate speech, so too has the CAQ’s insistence on passing this legislation. It has escalated the degree to which exclusion is rendered acceptable. If democracy is premised on individual rights, then clearly, Québec’s ideal of democracy has yet to be attained.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yasmin Jiwani receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>The Québec government’s push to ban the hijab is ‘sexularism’ and also basic nationalism – one that pits an ‘us’ against ‘them,’ where the ‘them’ represent multiple threats to the nation.Yasmin Jiwani, Professor of Communication Studies; Research Chair on Intersectionality, Violence and Resistance, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/951852018-07-26T11:48:40Z2018-07-26T11:48:40ZWhy the arguments of the ‘New Atheists’ are often just as violent as religion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226962/original/file-20180710-70057-owvwm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Professor Richard Dawkins next to a bus displaying an atheist message in 2009.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.paimages.co.uk/search-results/fluid/?q=richard%20dawkins&category=A,S,E&fields_0=all&fields_1=all&imagesonly=1&oldestfirst=1&orientation=both&text=richard%20dawkins&words_0=all&words_1=all">Anthony Devlin/PA Archive/PA Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Celebrity atheists such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/richard-dawkins-2830">Richard Dawkins</a> appear to claim the moral high ground when it comes to violence. Dawkins, along with <a href="https://samharris.org/an-atheist-manifesto/">Sam Harris</a> and the late <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16212418">Christopher Hitchens</a>, insist that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nAos1M-_Ts">because religion is intrinsically violent</a>, then atheism is inherently more pacific. After all, if all the evils in the world can be blamed on religion, then arguably eliminating religion is not only desirable but a moral obligation for atheists who believe in peace.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629817302640">Yet our research shows</a> that in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/war-on-terror-542">War on Terror</a>, these atheists have been surprisingly willing to align themselves with policies which are at least as violent – and in some cases more so – than many of those perpetrated in the name of religion. </p>
<p>Our study (jointly conducted by a Christian, an agnostic and an atheist) involved analysing the writing of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens – the so-called “New Atheists”. We sought to establish their positions on US and UK foreign policy since the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/9-11-1414">September 2001 attacks</a>. We critically examined their bestselling books, along with their op-eds, social media posts and videos, to ascertain their positions – not on science or morality – but on politics, especially foreign policy. </p>
<p>They each argue that religion inherently incites violence, whereas atheism is more peaceful. Dawkins in particular asks: “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/02/religion-wars-conflict">Who would advocate killing in the name of a non-God?</a>” </p>
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<h2>Atheism, ancient and modern</h2>
<p>The word “atheism” stems from the Greek a-theos, “without deities”. Although the term was coined in antiquity, it is only in the Enlightenment that the first self-professed atheists became known. </p>
<p>This modern European atheism promised emancipation from superstition – but quickly morphed into extreme violence. At the apex of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/french-revolution-8454">French Revolution</a>, the Jacobin government implemented the original “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/529789">reign of terror</a>” in its murderous effort to impose state atheism. The early USSR’s campaign against religion, spearheaded by “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/anti.html">The League of Militant Atheists</a>”, involved the violent persecution of religious believers and institutions.</p>
<p>With the demise of the Soviet Union and a global resurgence of political religion from the 1970s onwards, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9wsH2c7mYm8C&pg=PA24&redir_esc=y">some authors believed</a> that atheism was in terminal decline. But the early 21st century has witnessed the rise of writers like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. They emerged as public intellectuals advancing ferocious attacks on religion as both untrue and uniquely dangerous. </p>
<p>Their arguments are not new. But, unlike more ponderous academic atheist philosophers, they seemingly cultivated combative and acerbic, media-savvy personae. Their success at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/books/review/Holt.t.html">writing bestselling books</a>, giving engaging public talks and cultivating a <a href="https://twitter.com/richarddawkins">global following through social media</a>, has made them minor celebrities. For example, Dawkins has been depicted in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5KdJAT_GHc">South Park</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE5UkbZQYyM">Family Guy</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F1aFvmx8go">The Simpsons</a> – and even <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AuA03cu6Qk">made a cameo appearance in Dr Who</a>. </p>
<h2>New atheism and the ‘War on Terror’</h2>
<p>All three of these New Atheists were <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629817302640">sympathetic to the attack on Afghanistan in 2001</a>. Hitchens also <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629817302640">vociferously supported the 2003 Iraq invasion</a>, while Harris saw Western engagement with Islam and the Muslim world as part of a war that the West must win, or else face “bondage”. In his 2004 book, The End of Faith, Harris <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-End-of-Faith/Sam-Harris/9780743268097">says</a> (p.131):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While it would be comforting to believe that our dialogue with the Muslim world has, as one of its possible outcomes, a future of mutual tolerance, nothing guarantees this result – least of all tenets of Islam. Given the constraints of Muslim orthodoxy, given the penalties within Islam for radical (and reasonable) adaption to modernity, I think it is clear that Islam must find some way to revise itself, peacefully or otherwise. What this will mean is not all obvious. What is obvious, however, is that the West must win the argument or win the war. All else will be bondage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And in specific reference to the Afghan war, Harris <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-End-of-Faith/Sam-Harris/9780743268097">adds</a> (p.53):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is in fact no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified killing them in self defence. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We argue that the three supported this war because they read global politics through the lens of their atheism. They appear to see the West as locked in an existential war with religion, particularly Islam. There are four striking aspects of this atheist vision of global geopolitics.</p>
<p>First, they see religion as essentially violent. “<a href="https://carm.org/religion-cause-war">Religion is the most prolific source of violence in our history</a>,” says Harris. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/15/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety1">The 9/11 attacks “came from religion”</a>, adds Dawkins, who claims it is the “deadly weapon” which is “<a href="https://www.salon.com/2014/10/14/richard_dawkins_religion_isnt_the_problem_in_the_middle_east_partner/">the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East</a>”. This analysis obscures the murky role of foreign powers and corrupt rulers in the Middle East and the ability of charismatic leaders to co-opt religion and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629817302640">fuse it with legitimate grievances</a>.</p>
<p>Although highly critical of Christianity’s historical record, they regard Islam as an existential threat to modern, secular societies. Whereas US President George W. Bush insisted that “<a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010917-11.html">Islam is a religion of peace</a>”, the New Atheists disagree. Dawkins singles out Islam as “<a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/12/richard-dawkins-slams-islam-as-most-evil-religion-/">one of the great evils in the world</a>”. “We are at war with Islam,” argues Harris, not merely with “an otherwise peaceful religion that has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/08/religion-atheism">‘hijacked’ by extremists</a>.”</p>
<p>The New Atheists are convinced that their version of Western civilisation is superior to what they understand to be the religious-based cultures of the Middle East. “All the world’s Muslims,” <a href="https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/365473573768400896">tweeted Dawkins in 2011</a>, “have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge.” Hitchens wrote that the 9/11 attacks led him to feel “exhilaration” because they plunged the world into an “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/08/hey-look-a-chickenhawk/45853/">unmistakable confrontation between everything I loved and everything I hated</a>”. </p>
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<p>Finally, they exhibit a version of the “white man’s burden” to rescue Afghanistan, Iraq and other places from their own religious backwardness. Adopting what looks like a classic colonial attitude, Harris writes that “however mixed or misguided our intentions were” in invading Iraq “we are attempting, at considerable cost to ourselves, <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/dec/1/20041201-090801-2582r/">to improve life for the Iraqi people</a>”. </p>
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<h2>Imagine no religion</h2>
<p>Harris extends his argument by suggesting that the <a href="https://samharris.org/in-defense-of-profiling/">racial profiling of Muslims</a> and <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-torture_b_8993.html">judicial torture of terrorists</a> may be ethical in what he calls “<a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-torture_b_8993.html">our war on terror</a>”. At its extreme, he contends that “Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence” because theologically they don’t fear death. He reasons they are immune to the usual logic of Mutually Assured Destruction. Therefore, if an Islamist government acquired nuclear weapons, then “a nuclear first strike of our own” may be “the only course of action available to us”. The irony in this argument, which began with the declaration that religion is uniquely violent, is apparently missed by Harris, who has since qualified his position on torture as <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/collateral-damage-torture_b_855546.html">this</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My argument for the limited use of coercive interrogation (‘torture’ by another name) is essentially this: If you think it is ever justifiable to drop bombs in an attempt to kill a man like Osama bin Laden (and thereby risk killing and maiming innocent men, women, and children), you should think it may sometimes be justifiable to water-board a man like Osama bin Laden (and risk abusing someone who just happens to look like him).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our research demonstrates the paradox that although New Atheists claim that their ideology is more enlightened and peaceful than religion, they often end up advocating violence. This is because they exhibit a simplistic view of the world as being divided between two civilisations – secular and religious – which cannot coexist. In this, ironically, they arguably mirror the hardline religious leaders whom they so vociferously denounce. </p>
<p>Fifteen years after the invasion of Iraq <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/united-states-iraq-war-lessons-by-javier-solana-2018-03?barrier=accesspaylog">and the chaos it unleashed</a>, it is clear that there needs to be a more nuanced understanding of Middle Eastern societies and politics. Those nuances are as unlikely to be found in the analysis of fundamentalist atheists as they are in their religious antagonists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell Foster receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Megoran does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some ‘celebrity’ atheists espouse the very doctrines of violence that they accuse organised religon of.Nick Megoran, Reader in Political Geography, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/947932018-04-13T08:38:58Z2018-04-13T08:38:58ZIslamophobia in Paris and London – how it differs and why<p>Islamophobia in France and Britain has intensified in recent years, particularly in the wake of terrorist incidents, such as the 2015 <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlie-hebdo-changed-the-way-the-french-say-liberte-egalite-fraternite-89553">Charlie Hebdo attack</a> in Paris and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/islamophobia-and-causes-of-terrorism-must-be-part-of-awkward-conversations-after-london-bridge-attack-78954">London Bridge attack</a>. This led British prime minister, Theresa May, and French president, Emmanuel Macron, to meet in January 2018 to agree a shared approach to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/12/may-macron-online-terror-radicalisation">counter-terrorism</a>.</p>
<p>In many respects, France and Britain face similar challenges. They are both in Western Europe and have significant Muslim populations. It’s estimated there are <a href="https://www.thelocal.fr/20171201/how-frances-muslim-population-will-grow-in-the-future">5.7m</a> Muslims in France and just over <a href="http://www.mcb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/MCBCensusReport_2015.pdf">2.7m</a> in the UK. But our research shows that Islamophobia operates differently in each country. </p>
<p>In an effort to shed light on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/eight-ways-that-islamophobia-operates-in-everyday-life-64444">complexities of Islamophobia</a>, our research <a href="http://research.ncl.ac.uk/sama/">into anti-Muslim acts</a> focuses on where Islamophobia happens in France and the UK – mainly in Paris and London. Data from 2015 from the associations <a href="http://www.islamophobie.net/">Collectif contre l'islamophobie en France </a> (CCIF) in France and <a href="https://tellmamauk.org/">Tell MAMA</a> in the UK reveal the specific contexts of Islamophobia.</p>
<p>In both countries, most anti-Muslim acts take place in the two capital cities, but the distribution of Islamophobic acts varies. In Paris, anti-Muslim acts take place more in the <a href="https://issuu.com/ccif/docs/ccif_rapport_final_complet/25">Parisian centre</a> and they decrease progressively the further out from the centre you go. This creates a contrast between the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anti.12303">centre and the suburbs</a>.</p>
<p>This is different to <a href="https://www.tellmamauk.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/tell_mama_2015_annual_report.pdf">London</a>, where there are similar numbers of Islamophobic incidents in both inner and outer London. Many anti-Muslim acts take place on buses and trains, or in <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/campaign-against-antiislam-hate-crime-launched-across-london-transport-network-a3659351.html">transport hubs</a>. The phenomenon is therefore spatially more diffuse, because anti-Muslim acts occur mainly in everyday spaces.</p>
<p>Latifa, who took part in our research in London, explained to us that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A man walking onto the bus decided to lean over me, and directed a few derogatory Islamophobic comments calling me ‘ISIS terrorist’ – he was actually touching me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In France, the majority of Islamophobic acts take place in <a href="https://issuu.com/ccif/docs/ccif_rapport_final_complet">public institutions</a> such as a town hall, a school or a hospital. In Paris, most anti-Muslim acts are based around personal discrimination. One of the people we interviewed in France, Kenza explained: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>One of my friends arrived in the school, while the director snatched her veil in front of everyone. I always have this image in my head, seeing her climbing up the stairs ashamed. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reason why most discrimination takes place in public institutions is largely due to the impact of a 2004 French law which bans the headscarf in state-funded schools, in the name of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2014.939150"><em>laïcité</em></a> or secularism. Some civil servants – whether they know the law or not – believe that they have the right to extend its scope to all the users of diverse public institutions and not only schools. While the wearing of the niqab, or full face veil, <a href="https://theconversation.com/life-under-the-french-veil-ban-is-nothing-like-living-together-29120">has been banned</a> in public in France since 2010, headscarves are not. As a result, Islamophobia in France is more institutionalised. </p>
<h2>Different victims and perpetrators</h2>
<p>In both France and the UK, the main victims are <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-truths-about-the-hijab-that-need-to-be-told-63892">veiled Muslim women</a> and in France, many of them are students. Victims in the UK tend to have a South Asian background, while in France they tend to be from North Africa. This connects with the immigration history and <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-geographie-2009-1-page-61.htm">colonial past</a> of each country.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214279/original/file-20180411-566-1k8kjn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214279/original/file-20180411-566-1k8kjn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214279/original/file-20180411-566-1k8kjn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214279/original/file-20180411-566-1k8kjn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214279/original/file-20180411-566-1k8kjn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214279/original/file-20180411-566-1k8kjn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214279/original/file-20180411-566-1k8kjn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘I am French. I am Muslim. I condemn these barbarous acts.’ A woman holds up a sign in Paris after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/home">from www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2043820616655018">White men</a> are the main perpetrators of anti-Muslim acts in the UK. In France, it is equally likely to be a man or a woman. Some French women – notably <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/jul/20/france-feminism-hijab-ban-muslim-women">French feminists</a> – resist the wearing of the veil, and consider that a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/i-am-a-hijabi-feminist_us_593c78b4e4b014ae8c69e11d">hijabi woman</a> cannot be a feminist. In the UK, Islamophobia is often related to white men’s domination over ethnic and religious minority women.</p>
<h2>The role of the state</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgOsb5anMwM">Our findings</a> consider the role of the state in fostering where and how Islamophobia happens. The French republican model sees all citizens as French and does not differentiate between people on the basis or race or religion. This could partly explain why there are fewer Islamophobic acts reported in France as it is challenging to make a claim based on religious intolerance or racial discrimination when such divisions are not easily recognised by the French state.</p>
<p>The UK tends to promote an approach that is built around multiculturalism and the promotion of diverse ethnic and religious communities. Unfortunately, some resist this multicultural approach and are racist against those who they feel do not “belong” in the UK. These factors are also likely to shape how Muslim communities engage in <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-muslims-want-to-participate-in-politics-but-prejudice-and-islamophobia-may-be-stopping-them-73985">politics</a> and participate in society. </p>
<p>Both the French and British approaches demonstrate the role that the state plays in shaping where anti-Muslim acts take place and who is involved. The state has been described as one of the <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/david-miller-tom-mills-hilary-aked-narzanin-massoumi/five-pillars-of-islamophobia">five pillars of Islamophobia</a> – so the governments in both countries should be more critical and aware of the role their <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/islamophobia-anti-muslim-prejudice-definition-discrimination-government-prevent-dominic-grieve-a7820486.html">policies</a> play in shaping everyday experiences of Islamophobia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94793/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kawtar Najib receives funding from the European Commission. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Hopkins receives funding from the European Commission. </span></em></p>While Islamophobic acts in Paris mainly take place in public institutions, in London they’re mainly on the street or on public transport.Kawtar Najib, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle UniversityPeter Hopkins, Professor of Social Geography, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900102018-02-22T02:03:54Z2018-02-22T02:03:54ZCrimes of solidarity: liberté, égalité and France’s crisis of fraternité<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204502/original/file-20180202-123829-1jsq304.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'I am a migrant' solidarity signs were displayed during the European Parliament debate on immigration and asylum in the Strasbourg plenary.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/european_parliament/16688394004/">European Parliament/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The French republican ideals of freedom and equality – indeed of all modern democracies – crystallised in the late 18th century. This was when revolutionary forces combined and fought to abolish two hallmarks of the <em>Ancien Régime</em>: absolutism (unrestricted government power) and privilege (aristocratic rights and status).</p>
<p>Freedom and equality are assumed to be reinforced, brought into harmony by the republic’s third principle – fraternity. Yet, while liberty relates to government, and equality to the law, fraternity is the domain of society. And as France today struggles with its changing social fabric, fraternity is in crisis.</p>
<p>To understand this, and importantly the growing dissidence of citizens who refuse a fraternalism that diminishes human solidarity, we need to spend a moment covering the workings of French republicanism.</p>
<p>The 1789 revolutionaries’ aim of destroying feudal privilege, and ultimately the monarchy, had its roots in republican “anti-particularism”. The concept endures in French democracy today to describe a political and social system opposed to any exclusive or special devotion to the interests of particular groups, whether based on ethnicity, religion or gender, to name but a few.</p>
<p>Anti-particularism is enacted through a variant of Enlightenment universalism that positions human nature as a “rational” universal that is capable of resisting cultural and historical differences. That is, reasoned deliberation would underpin France’s universal republican values: a secular public sphere, equality, freedom, and autonomy.</p>
<p>France’s republicanism laid further claim to universality by offering citizenship to all those willing to belong to the nation on the basis of their active participation as citizens. The “citizen” is defined solely through the notion of equal political rights and duties, and not, for example, through ethnic or territorial ties.</p>
<p>So, in France, the citizen is a purely political concept, and an abstract one, to comply with its demands of universalism. Abstract universalism establishes France as a political nation, through its body of equal citizens, whose aim is to integrate diverse populations. </p>
<p>In this way, abstract universalism functions to prevent particularism, or the division of the republic into individual and multiple identity groups. Their demands for recognition are seen as threatening republican unity and equality.</p>
<h2>Are some people more equal than others?</h2>
<p>A key challenge of equality, in establishing the public sphere as primarily one in which individual interests are subjugated to the common interest, is whether particular groups are able to recognise themselves, and are recognised, as belonging to a wider whole, as equitable contributors to common societal goals.</p>
<p>In post-revolutionary France, the obsession has always been with equality. <em>Laïcité</em>, its distinctive take on secularism, is an extended exercise in equality. </p>
<p><em>Laïcité</em> implies in its varying dimensions: freedom of conscience for all, thereby ensuring the republic’s commitment to individual autonomy; state neutrality toward religious difference to allow for the cohabitation of all religions in the name of equality; and the fostering of civic bonds and allegiance to a particular historical community, the republic’s public culture.</p>
<p>This third dimension, which <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/critical-republicanism-9780199550210?cc=au&lang=en&">Cécile Laborde</a> terms the “laic” civic bond, is what encourages feelings of republican fraternity. </p>
<p>Particularist nationalism rounds out, in a sense, France’s political culture and model of citizenship. But does a strong sense of <a href="https://theconversation.com/modis-polarising-populism-makes-a-fiction-of-a-secular-democratic-india-80605">national</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/everyday-makers-defy-populists-false-promise-to-embody-your-voice-78762">identity</a> not inspire feelings of suspicion towards the politics of diversity?</p>
<h2>The impossible and the ‘unassimilable’</h2>
<p>Historically, and to this day, it is not arbitrary groups that have been denied access to the public sphere, or deemed “unassimilable” – that is, incapable of becoming a part of the <em>res publica</em>. </p>
<p>Women, Jews, gays and more recently Muslims have all been <a href="http://www.eurozine.com/universalist-politics-and-its-crises/">excluded</a>, not as abstract citizens, but on the very basis of their difference. </p>
<p>In other words, the content of the abstraction continues to resurface. It’s a sign that not everyone’s particular identities – whether gendered, ethnic or religious and so on – can be so easily abstracted.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not everyone’s particular identity can be so easily abstracted and assimilated by French republican ideology.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/khalidalbaih/5631903720">Khalid Albaih/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet, paradoxically, those excluded by French republican ideology and its politics are unable to petition the state for political recognition or inclusion on the basis of their difference. </p>
<p>Where recognition and rights have been achieved, excluded groups had to write themselves into the logic and reach of universalism. The women’s rights movement, for example, succeeded in erasing sexual difference from the list of categories that carried weight in French politics.</p>
<p>Likewise, the more recent success of the marriage equality movement wasn’t attributed to activists’ demands for “gay rights”. This would have been viewed as too particularistic or individualist – not republican enough. </p>
<p>Instead, equality was achieved by petitioning for <a href="https://theconversation.com/liberte-egalite-fraternite-france-and-the-gay-marriage-debate-14852"><em>mariage pour tous</em></a>, “marriage for all”. The language of republicanism was used to point out that a universal – the right to marriage – was not truly universal if it excluded certain groups. </p>
<p>All manner of activists have <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=11923">succeeded</a> in shattering the hypocrisy of formal equality by drawing attention to ways in which the French model creates “impossible subjects” who do not neatly fit into its republican categories.</p>
<p>Universalism holds within it a paradox: its need to be reconciled with the particularism of states, without which promises like <em>liberté</em>, <em>égalité</em> and <em>fraternité</em> could never be reality. </p>
<p>While these tensions and paradoxes are not isolated to the French case, France is often held up as the model (in Europe) for the political integration of culturally diverse populations. Yet its citizenship requirement that outsiders be “culturally fit” to fully integrate French values shows that certain ideas of a secular public sphere, or republican national identity, can result in speculation about the “unassimilable” nature of some populations.</p>
<p>What’s more, the French Republic has long sacralised human rights and the right to asylum in political and ideological presentations of itself. </p>
<p>In holding dear its image of a nation as simultaneously a strong supporter of societal and national sovereignty and a land of asylum, France is arguably the most glaring demonstration of the tension between the universal and the particular.</p>
<h2>Solidarity delinquents</h2>
<p>France actively pursues the criminalisation of its citizens for acts of solidarity and fraternity toward vulnerable refugees. At best this is puzzling. It is even more so when citizens refer to their civil disobedience as restaking a claim on the values upon which the republic was founded. </p>
<p>In their specific understanding of what it means to be French, fraternity and its modern equivalent, solidarity, are wedged between particularist politics of closure and ethical considerations of universal obligation. This has very real consequences for citizens and non-citizens alike.</p>
<p>On January 4, 2017, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/cedric-herrou-convicted-helping-refugees-border-170808082804597.html">Cédric Herrou</a>, a farmer from the Roya valley (a key crossing point for migrants into France from Italy), was placed on trial for helping some 200 asylum seekers to enter and pass through France. He had provided many of them with shelter, first in his home and later a disused railway building.</p>
<p>His initial penalty (a suspended fine of €3,000) was increased to a suspended four-month prison sentence after an appeal by the prosecution.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LyN6TxpjB90?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Cédric Herrou is a farmer who defies French authorities by helping African refugees.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On October 17, 2016, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/01/23/good-samaritans-or-criminals-france-wrestles-with-fate-of-those-helping-migrants.html">Pierre-Alain Mannoni</a>, a 45-year-old geography professor at Nice University, was arrested while driving three badly injured Eritrean girls to seek medical attention. Following his acquittal, the prosecutor appealed and continued to press for a six-month suspended prison term. The appeals court imposed a suspended sentence of two months in September 2017.</p>
<p>In 2015, Education Without Borders Network volunteer <a href="https://www.humanite.fr/denis-lambert-un-juste-solidaire-des-sans-papiers-579512">Denis Lambert</a> was arrested for receiving direct “compensation”, in the form of domestic chores, while lodging a family of undocumented Armenians at his Perpignan home following their failed asylum claim.</p>
<p>French immigration law, the Code on the Entry and Sojourn of Foreigners and Right to Asylum (<a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCode.do;jsessionid=1A9342280202A01546C2D310267E0825.tpdila19v_3?idSectionTA=LEGISCTA000006147789&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070158&dateTexte=20170731">CESEDA</a>) punishes persons found guilty of “assisting the entry, travel or undocumented stay” of irregular status foreigners. The offence carries a five-year prison sentence and €30,000 fine.</p>
<p>Since 2012, the law does exempt from prosecution anyone providing aid in the form of “legal advice, food, accommodation or medical care to ensure the foreigner with dignified and decent living conditions”, provided no benefit is received in return. On the other hand, transporting irregular foreigners and assisting their safe passage across or around border zones are punishable offences.</p>
<p>But the law operates on an ambiguity. Although intended to combat organised networks of illegal immigration (human trafficking and people smugglers), its wording lends itself to associating “disinterested” humanitarian assistance with the profit motives of human trafficking. </p>
<p>This has led to numerous arrests and prosecutions of French citizens who have received direct or indirect “benefits” or “compensation” for their humanitarian assistance of vulnerable people. The ongoing <a href="http://www.gisti.org/spip.php?article1399">intimidation, prosecutions and convictions</a> have sparked a collective movement of “<a href="http://www.delinquantssolidaires.org/">solidarity delinquency</a>”, or “<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/01/france-prosecuting-citizens-crimes-solidarity-170122064151841.html">crimes of solidarity</a>”. The movement asserts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If solidarity with foreigners is a crime, then we are all delinquents. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How did France come to this?</h2>
<p>How is it that universalist France punishes citizens for helping vulnerable refugees? One explanation is found in the way that France’s republican ideals meet state rationalities. </p>
<p>The state invokes universalism and secularism to reserve the right not simply to determine who can become a member of French society, but more generally to maintain a stronghold on symbolising Frenchness. And so the state defends the republic’s indivisibility, unity and social and moral order – no more so than when the nation perceives itself plagued by insecurity.</p>
<p>Themes of insecurity, national identity and immigration have <a href="https://theconversation.com/le-pen-vs-macron-after-an-acrimonious-debate-the-french-will-now-choose-their-next-president-76995">featured heavily in French election campaigns</a> since 2002. Asylum and immigration have become increasingly regulated and politicised within a security framework. This is because there is electoral capital in making both so central to anxieties about national identity, safety and order, and the public purse.</p>
<p>For <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520271173">Didier Fassin</a>, insecurity takes three forms: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>public insecurity is used to legitimate stricter border policing and limits on immigration to secure the nation from external (terrorist) threats</p></li>
<li><p>identity insecurity, apparent in growing mistrust and hostility towards Islam, seeks to reinforce republican belonging and insists upon more secularism in the public sphere</p></li>
<li><p>social insecurity lies in the threat that unwelcome outsiders pose to the welfare and medical systems, as well as the nation’s capacity to provide citizens with jobs.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The “tough on crime”, securitarian approach to asylum, immigration and borders began in earnest under Interior Minister <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pasqua-in-new-war-on-immigrants-1398372.html">Charles Pasqua</a> in 1993. It gained momentum under <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/sarkozy-intensifies-anti-immigration-rhetoric/a-15703843">Nicolas Sarkozy</a> as interior minister from 2002 and president from 2007. </p>
<p>Sarkozy’s “<a href="http://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-La_fr__n__sie_s__curitaire-9782707154323.html">securitarian frenzy</a>” and subsequent focus on immigration policy – which included prolonged detention, performance targets, deportations, high-tech police checks and surveillance – was intended to “fix” the issues of republican integration. It is perhaps better understood as the systemisation of a logic of suspicion toward all foreigners.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests did little to reverse the state’s ‘securitarian frenzy’ under the presidency of Nicholas Sarkozy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alainbachellier/257074889/">Alain Bachellier/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The significance of this reconfiguring of relations between citizens and foreigners is that the state’s desire to monopolise what it means to “be French” also brings about dissidence.</p>
<p>We see this in the collective movement of “solidarity delinquency” and in individual crimes of solidarity. Ethico-political acts of civil disobedience call attention to the inhospitable treatment of vulnerable refugees. Solidarity delinquents demand that, in extolling the virtues of fraternity, their public institutions act more hospitably toward refugees and asylum seekers. They also seek to overturn laws so that a minimum of their fellow humans’ fundamental interests can be met. </p>
<p>These acts are a democratic refusal of the blackmail of universals. They attempt to revive and recover a vanishing dimension of French values, namely solidarity and fraternity.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abigail Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fraternity is one of the three pillars of the French Republic, but social solidarity is fraying as citizens are criminalised for acting on their beliefs in the human rights of asylum seekers.Abigail Taylor, PhD Researcher in Political Theory and Government, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/916692018-02-21T18:48:38Z2018-02-21T18:48:38ZDebate: On secularism in the 21st century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206159/original/file-20180213-44651-fdmcoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C1100%2C740&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://theweek.com/articles/590501/europe-islam-clash-failures">Charles Platiau</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In January 2018 the French commemorated the <em>Charlie Hebdo</em> attacks that occurred three years earlier. The expression of American solidarity then toward the victims in France was quick and unwavering – just as it was in the aftermath of the even deadlier November 2015 attacks.</p>
<p>And yet, to this day, a sense of uneasiness seems to run deep through some political and academic circles in the United States that have often had a hard time understanding France’s approach to its disenfranchised minorities, to secularism and to religious liberties in general. It has become fashionable for some Americans to invite France to rethink its approach to <em>laïcité</em> (or secularism) in order to strengthen its social pact. One example is a December 2017 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/opinion/france-racism-rokhaya-diallo.html"><em>New York Times</em> editorial</a> accusing France of failing to face up to its racism. The editorial caused a stir even among the most open-minded French, who often consider these types of comments ill-informed at best.</p>
<p>This mutual uneasiness sheds light on how different societies view religion in the public sphere and interpret the notions of separation between church and state and freedom of speech in different ways. These views and interpretations shape the policy responses from Western powers towards religious minorities: whereas some place emphasis on freedom, others view religious demands as political demands that should be treated as such. Policy responses are fundamentally different as a result.</p>
<h2>Two opposing traditions</h2>
<p>In the United States, the question of separation between church and state and freedom of speech are essentially seen through a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">First Amendment</a> prism. The European immigrants’ experience of religious oppression largely influenced its phrasing and the definition of religious rights that were meant to guarantee individual freedom of worship. Those who wrote the First Amendment looked to protect the freedoms of speech and religion from political interference.</p>
<p>In France, the 1789 revolution targeted established political powers – first and foremost aristocracy, to be certain, but the clergy as well, to a large extent. In fact, the clergy – as much as French aristocracy – profoundly shaped the political environment of France in a way that the revolution looked to curtail. As a result, France’s interpretation of separation between church and state is diametrically opposed to the US tradition: it is far more about limiting political interference of <em>religious</em> forces in society and about curbing the political weight of religions in public life. The separation of church and state, at the heart of the <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/martin-evans/what-french-secularism">French definition of secularism</a>, means a systematic refusal on the part of public authorities to recognise the significance of any religion in general – and any religious right in particular. This guarantees the ability of the Republic to protect society against religious influence that, historically in France, has done more to undermine individual rights than promote them.</p>
<h2>Lasting effects on today’s debates</h2>
<p>This tradition has largely informed the French approach to secularism and to minorities in general. In practice, this tradition means that the French society would rather ban all signs of religious faith in public schools for instance – <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/civic-dilemmas/france-bans-veil-public-schools">including the Islamic veil</a> – and thus limit the extent to which an individual can publicly affirm his or her faith, than allow any religious belief to influence a political debate – and thus limit individual freedoms of others. Whereas laws that limit the exercise of individual religious liberties would be unconstitutional in the United States, these usually tend to be relatively well-accepted by a French society which is far more concerned with the political imprint that religions can leave in the public sphere than with religious freedoms.</p>
<p>Religions, in other words, are not sacred to the French Republic. The individual ability to decide, in isolation of outside forces, is. As a result, it is socially acceptable in France to ridicule and caricature others’ faith, which pertains to the realm of religious beliefs – so long as that ridicule and caricature do not target individuals, in which case it becomes punishable by law.</p>
<h2>Secularism – post-Trump?</h2>
<p>The uneasiness among US political and academic circles is growing as they fear that Donald Trump’s views are paradoxically seem far closer to French <em>laïcité</em> than what common sense and Trump’s <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/trump-even-more-unpopular-europe-he-us-survey-shows-790700">low approval ratings in Europe</a> would suggest. This view may be misguided though: French <em>laïcité</em> does not demand religious minorities be banned but that the religious dimension not be the decisive factor in the policy process – pressures from the French far right notwithstanding.</p>
<p>The real issue therefore lies elsewhere. Those on both sides of the Atlantic who feel that the French approach to secularism is ill-advised and hypocritical have a legitimate concern: radical groups could woo disenfranchised and vulnerable minorities more easily as a result of these policies that are perceived as targeting the same groups. Meaningful policies to tackle the threat emanating from <a href="https://theconversation.com/comic-explainer-what-is-lone-actor-terrorism-86774">lone actors</a> as well as from well-organised groups with ties to extremist groups abroad should account for this risk. But it is also noteworthy that terror attacks, like those carried out in Paris, seek to wear our societies from within by challenging social pacts, sowing divisions, and creating a sense of uncertainty about the sustainability of our societal models.</p>
<p>In this political battle, religion is undoubtedly a pretext, but it is still shaping the terms of the struggle. The ability of Western notions to strike the right balance between religious freedom and the political responsibility of religious minorities will ultimately be key in this struggle that may have far less to do with theology than with political governance and values.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91669/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Ghez ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>While France and the US both guarantee individual religious freedom, the two nations’ approach to religion in the public sphere and the separation between church and state are profoundly different.Jeremy Ghez, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, HEC Paris Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/721292017-01-30T15:23:50Z2017-01-30T15:23:50ZQuebec mosque attack forces Canada to confront some ugly problems<p>The shocking attack on a mosque in Quebec City, the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec, has been condemned as terrorism by both Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Quebec premier Philippe Couillard.</p>
<p>The attack is being investigated by the Quebec version of the <a href="https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/hidb-bdih/initiative-eng.aspx?Hi=76">Integrated National Security Enforcement Team</a>, a combination of a number of Canadian security agencies including police forces and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. This also suggests the authorities believe the violence to be motivated by terrorism. If it is indeed a terrorist attack, it is the worst to unfold in Canada, in terms of a loss of life, for at least 25 years.</p>
<p>Attacking a mosque seems like the ultimate un-Canadian atrocity. After all, Canada has a powerful international reputation for tolerance. Trudeau has received widespread praise for welcoming Syrian refugees to Canada, even as the United States closes its doors.</p>
<p>Canada, however, is not immune from the same forces driving fear and anger toward Muslim minorities in a number of Western countries. Incidents of vandalism have occurred at mosques across Canada. The Quebec mosque at the centre of this attack was itself the site of one such incident in the summer of 2016, when a pig’s head was <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/01/29/witnesses-report-shooting-at-mosque-in-quebec-city.html">left there</a>. In November 2015, a mosque in Peterborough, Ontario was <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mosque-peterborough-fire-1.3320013">destroyed by arson</a>.</p>
<p>There is also a broader backlash against Muslims within Canada. Some of it emanates from concern about Islamist terrorism, including two high profile lone-actor terrorist attacks within Canada in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/22/canadian-parliament-hill-lockdown-shootout">October 2014</a>. But it also connects to suspicion around Muslim religious practices and anxiety about increasing diversity within Canada.</p>
<p>In October 2016, a far-right group based in Quebec unveiled a banner at the province’s legislative assembly which said in French: “Death to terrorists; Muslims out.” The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ran a series of articles on the growth of the far right in Quebec and the focus of its vitriol on <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-far-right-how-worried-should-we-be-1.3947183">Muslims and Islam</a>.</p>
<p>More broadly, some of the backlash against Muslims has moved into the political mainstream, mainly but not exclusively in Quebec. In 2013, while in power, the Parti Québécois (PQ) government, under the leadership of Pauline Marois, proposed a <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/charter-of-quebec-values-would-ban-religious-symbols-for-public-workers-1.1699315">“Charter of Values”</a> for the province which would emphasise the secular nature of Quebec society and ban the wearing of religious symbols among civil servants. Although not specifically directed at Muslims, much of the accompanying rhetoric focused on clothing such as hijabs, niqabs, and burkas. Despite receiving widespread criticism, polls showed a majority of Quebeckers supported the legislation. </p>
<p>The PQ ultimately lost the election and the new Liberal government of Philippe Couillard promised to replace the Charter of Values with more moderate legislation. However, more recently, another Quebec political party, Coalition Avenir Québec, ran an ad saying that its political opponents were in favour of <a href="http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/a-short-history-of-scapegoating-muslims-in-quebec/">teachers wearing chadors in schools</a>.</p>
<p>At the federal level, during the 2015 general election, concern about terrorism was a key issue but that was extended into worries about the integration of immigrants coming to Canada. A hotline to report “barbaric cultural practices” was proposed during the campaign by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/canada-conservatives-barbaric-cultural-practices-hotline">Conservatives</a>. The party subsequently lost to the Liberals, led by Trudeau, but they don’t appear to have abandoned the stance. Kellie Leitch, one of those connected with the “barbaric cultural practices” policy, is currently running to be leader of the Conservative Party. One of her main proposals is that immigrants to Canada <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/leitch-responds-survey-question-1.3746470">be screened for</a> “anti-Canadian values” – a measure viewed as being mainly directed against Muslims.</p>
<p>If the attack in Quebec is indeed terrorism motivated by Islamophobia, how Canada responds will be crucial. Politicians will need to reflect on the rhetoric they use and the atmosphere it assists in creating. Security agencies, such as CSIS and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, will need to assess whether they have been paying enough attention to the potential for far-right violence.</p>
<p>And the Canadian public will need to recognise that no single community has a monopoly on terrorism – and that prejudice can lead to murder.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72129/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Hewitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Canada is dealing with some of the same tensions about integration and tolerance as other Western countries.Steve Hewitt, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/634782016-08-12T08:43:55Z2016-08-12T08:43:55ZSecular France is no stranger to interfaith dialogue – now it is more vital than ever<p>Recent terror attacks in France combined with increasing <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/6-in-10-french-people-think-jews-are-responsible-for-anti-semitism-survey-finds-a6848911.html">antisemitism</a> and <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/11/14/Paris-Muslims-brace-for-Islamophobia.html">Islamophobia</a> have stirred up centuries-old debates about the relationship between the state and religion. Far from inhabiting two separate spheres, there has actually been a very active relationship between the state and religious organisations in France for decades – both at the national and local level. </p>
<p>This is an arena in which the French state is not supposed to be active: it <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/race-policy-in-france/">is illegal</a> under French law to recognise the ethnic or religious difference of citizens. But by liaising with these groups, local authorities are demonstrating the flexibility of secularism when the time calls for pragmatism, regardless of voices of opposition across the political spectrum. </p>
<p>While no means a panacea in helping the French state repair <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-existential-war-between-islamic-state-and-secular-france-63133">fractured relationships with Muslim communities</a>, interfaith relations are proving to be a force for peace and understanding at a time when religious tensions in France are the highest they have been for decades. The ability of organisations and communities to make public statements that demonstrate the fringe nature of the violent attacks in <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/paris-attacks-2015">Paris</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/nice-attack">Nice</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/rouen-attack">Rouen</a> has never been more important.</p>
<h2>Solidarity in face of clampdowns</h2>
<p>The role of the state in regulating religious training and practice has led to a number of struggles between the Muslim community and the state in recent years. These have included laws banning the headscarf from being worn in schools and public places, to debates about the need to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/apr/23/france.islam">train imams better</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14945467">bans on</a> Friday prayers spilling over into the streets outside mosques. In early August, local authorities ordered that <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/halal-supermarket-paris-pork-alcohol-closure-threat-islam-a7173286.html">a halal food store must sell</a> pork and alcohol as it was breaking the terms of its lease. </p>
<p>But there has been <a href="http://cgs.psu.edu/cgs/documents/Franceupsidedownovera_headscarf2.pdf">inconsistency</a> in some of these measures. Banning individuals from praying in the street masks a deeper issue relating to the severe lack of places of religious worship for the Muslim community, largely due to decades of planning issues faced by Muslims across France. In Marseille, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/03/marseille-muslim-community-grand-mosque">plans unveiled in 2001</a> to build a Grand Mosque have been stymied by campaigns and law suits by the far right and others, meaning a city with over 250,000 Muslims currently has no large Muslim place to worship. </p>
<p>But in the wake of recent terror attacks have come some very public displays of interfaith dialogue and unity – ranging from statements by official bodies down to grass roots efforts. The French Council of the Muslim Faith – <em>Conseil Francais du culte musulman</em> (CFCM) –<a href="http://www.la-croix.com/Religion/France/Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray-la-reaction-des-musulmans-2016-07-26-1200778317"> has been active</a> in condemning attacks, most recently the slaughter of a priest during mass in Rouen. It also <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2016/07/28/01016-20160728ARTFIG00306-le-cfcm-appelle-les-musulmans-a-aller-a-la-messe-dimanche.php">called on</a> its members to attend mass across the country in an effort to show solidarity with Catholics. </p>
<p>These acts reveal how the French state has many more connections to religion and religious organisations than the veneer of a secular republic would initially suggest. The CFCM, while legally a non-profit, non-state organisation, not only has significant links to the French state, but its creation in 2003 <a href="http://leplus.nouvelobs.com/contribution/698830-le-conseil-francais-du-culte-musulman-cfcm-de-moussaoui-un-conseil-fantome.html">was actively supported</a> by Nicolas Sarkozy when he was interior minister. </p>
<h2>Local collaborations</h2>
<p>Local administrations are even more closely enmeshed with religious organisations and use a range of means to regulate relationships with religious communities for a number of political and social purposes. In Lyon, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2014.996241">my own research has </a>looked at the interfaith organisations of the Abrahamic Group of Duchère, which has been active for over 30 years in promoting inter-communal understanding. Recently, this has gone as far as featuring in the city’s flagship membership of the “intercultural cities program” to demonstrate the city’s commitment to intercultural and inter-religious understanding. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133372/original/image-20160808-18050-14vfjfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133372/original/image-20160808-18050-14vfjfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133372/original/image-20160808-18050-14vfjfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133372/original/image-20160808-18050-14vfjfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133372/original/image-20160808-18050-14vfjfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133372/original/image-20160808-18050-14vfjfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133372/original/image-20160808-18050-14vfjfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Marseille’s Arbe de l'espérance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">iko/flickr.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>In Marseille, the <a href="http://social.marseille.fr/marseille-esperance">Marseille Espérance Forum</a> has operated for over 25 years bringing together representatives of the city’s Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Buddhist, Armenian and Orthodox communities to issue edicts of public unity in times of tension or conflict. Most recently, the group <a href="http://marseille.catholique.fr/Message-de-Marseille-Esperance-suite-aux-attentats-de-Paris">has issued condemnations</a> against Islamist terror attacks in France.</p>
<p>While the group insists it is “informal”, it benefits significantly from material and political support from the municipal government of Marseille. Robert Vigouroux, the city’s former mayor who founded the forum during his time in office has <a href="https://www.cadran-lunaire.fr/livre/214872-laicite-religions-marseille-esperance-robert-vigouroux-jacques-ouaknin-transbordeurs">argued that</a> it is an example of “secularism+religions”. This should not just be interpreted as a pragmatic mayor attempting to square the circle of a secular state faced with a religious society. It also demonstrates how the French secular state can be independent of alliances to religious organisations or beliefs, but at the same have fruitful relationships with religious organisations to help insure social cohesion.</p>
<p>In the wake of terror attacks and the level of polemic against religions, particularly Islam, the place of forums such as Marseille Esperance to become means through which local communities can come together to create a sense of dialogue has never been more necessary in France.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63478/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Downing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Local collaborations between the fiercely secular state and religious groups have a long history.Joseph Downing, Guest Lecturer, European Institute, London School of Economics and Political ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/390772015-03-23T12:25:47Z2015-03-23T12:25:47ZGerman court rules against banning veil in schools, but Europe remains divided<p>After more than a decade of legal battles and public debates in Germany, the country’s highest court has ruled against North Rhine-Westphalia’s 2006 ban on teachers wearing religious dress in state schools. On March 13, the German Federal Constitutional Court <a href="http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2015/bvg15-014.html">decided</a> that an absolute prohibition on the wearing of a veil (generally the hijab) by state school teachers is incompatible with the <a href="https://www.btg-bestellservice.de/pdf/80201000.pdf">German Constitution</a>, in particular its provision on freedom of faith and of conscience.</p>
<p>But the German decision came in the same week that former French president <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/564950/Nicholas-Sarkozy-headscarf-veil-France">Nicolas Sarkozy argued</a> France’s ban on the headscarf in schools should be extended to universities. </p>
<p>Across Europe, discussion continues about the extent to which the state can, or should, ban the wearing of headscarves or other religious symbols, such as the <em>kippa</em>, especially when worn by civil servants, other employees of state bodies or with public functions, or even by students of state schools. It has become a <a href="http://www.intersentia.co.uk/searchDetail.aspx?back=reeks&reeksCode=SHR&bookid=102454&author=Hana%20M.A.E.%20van%20Ooijen&title=Religious%20Symbols%20in%20Public%20Functions:%20Unveiling%20State%20Neutrality">wide-ranging, contentious and divisive debate</a>.</p>
<h2>Legal challenges</h2>
<p>Several countries in Europe have already <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13038095">prohibited the burqa in public spaces</a>. In a <a href="http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000417977&categorieLien=id">2004 Act</a>, France prohibited the “adoption of signs or behaviours manifesting affiliation to a religion in state schools”, so restricting the freedom of both teachers and pupils based on its <a href="http://www.robert-schuman.eu/fr/librairie/0019-laicite-le-modele-francais-sous-influence-europeenne">unique model of secularity</a> or <em>laïcité</em>. France also has a ban on face veils in public spaces, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)<a href="https://theconversation.com/life-under-the-french-veil-ban-is-nothing-like-living-together-29120"> upheld the law</a> in July 2014.</p>
<p>In Switzerland and Turkey, teachers and students respectively have also been prohibited from wearing the hijab, and the laws have won the approval of the ECHR. Yet these <a href="http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-22643#%7B%22itemid%22:%5B%22001-22643%22%5D%7D">decisions regarding Switzerland</a> and <a href="http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-70956#%7B%22itemid%22:%5B%22001-70956%22%5D%7D">Turkey</a> have been rightly criticised as <a href="http://internationalhumanrightslaw.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/European-Court-of-Human-Rights-State-and-Religion-Schools-and-Scarves-An-Analysis-of-the-Margin-of-Appreciation-as-Used-in-the-Case-of-Leyla-Sahin-v-Turkey.pdf">excessively restrictive</a> and poorly justified. The ECHR used arguments relating to state religious neutrality, the need to protect children from undue religious influences and the right of parents to educate their children according to their religious beliefs. These arguments all seemed clearly insufficient to justify any such drastic limitation on the right of individuals to freedom of religion and to wear certain clothes.</p>
<p>The UK has not remained immune from this debate. Both <a href="http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2007/0009_07_3003.htmlv">teachers</a> and <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldjudgmt/jd060322/begum-1.htm">pupils</a> have judicially challenged some of the restrictions on their freedom to wear certain religious attire, and courts are still in the process of clarifying the applicable law. </p>
<p>In Germany too, there have been some restrictive measures put in place throughout the last decade. <a href="http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/rs20030924_2bvr143602">Earlier decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court</a> have accepted that the legislation of the German Länder (states) could lawfully impose a restriction on teachers’ religious dress. Yet, the Court has been somewhat sympathetic to the rights of complainants and conceded that state neutrality did not necessarily prevent state school teachers from wearing the hijab.</p>
<h2>Getting the state out of our wardrobes</h2>
<p>The debate on freedom of religion and the manifestation of religion through dress codes inevitably leads us to consider a range of fundamental rights: the right to privacy, the right to development of one’s personality, the right to equality, freedom of expression and the rights of minorities. Others have <a href="http://www.hartpub.co.uk/BookDetails.aspx?ISBN=9781841136523">considered these issues</a> within a wider discussion on the rights of parents, children, teachers and minorities, as well as on crucial aspects of national identity, multiculturalism, Islamophobia, secularism and liberalism.</p>
<p>These debates betray very clear – often narrow – understandings of <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415533362/">individual autonomy</a>, gender equality and religion. Many restrictions are justified within <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138805170/">current preoccupations with global security</a>, which can inevitably lead to even greater social tensions and limitations to individual rights. This is particularly relevant in educational contexts, where children should learn to respect differences and cherish diversity, rather than to fear and hate “the Other”.</p>
<p>“State neutrality” should not be used as an excuse for inactivity, as German lawyers <a href="https://www.germanlawjournal.com/pdfs/Vol08No02/PDF_Vol_08_No_02_143-152_Articles_Augsberg_Ladeur.pdf">Karl-Heinz Ladeur and Ino Augsberg</a> have already argued. Prohibiting the burqa in public spaces may well be necessary for public security reasons as authorities need to be able to identify individuals. Yet banning religious symbols in the public arena altogether would be inappropriate as well, and should not be carried out on the basis of any model of secularism or neutrality. A more balanced and nuanced legal framework needs to be achieved.</p>
<h2>Long live multiculturalism</h2>
<p>Not long ago British prime minister, <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130109092234/http:/number10.gov.uk/news/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference/">David Cameron</a>, and the German chancellor, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11562477">Angela Merkel</a>, announced the failure of multiculturalism. Now this recent German court decision seems to be telling society that it has to keep trying: giving up on multiculturalism is not an option. </p>
<p>Only time will tell whether the decision will have an impact across borders and whether this approach will be emulated in other European countries. This would undoubtedly represent a welcome sea change, doing away with pointless restrictions on religious freedom and extreme models of secularism. Hopefully, multiculturalism is not dead yet – and will not be for a long time to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39077/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nuno Ferreira does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Banning teachers from wearing the veil at school is incompatible with the German constitution.Nuno Ferreira, Senior lecturer in law, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/360922015-01-21T10:59:57Z2015-01-21T10:59:57ZThe cycle of anti-Muslim discrimination in France is likely to worsen<p>Muslims in France and the French host population are locked in a discriminatory equilibrium. This is the conclusion, summarized in our soon-to-be published <a href="https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/events/book-conference-why-muslim-integration-fails-inquiry-christian-heritage-societies">book,</a> of a six-year research program that investigates whether and why Muslims are discriminated against in France.</p>
<p>In 2009, we organized behavioral games in Paris in which “rooted” French (French with no recent immigrant background) interacted with Muslim and Christian immigrants. With the exception of their religion, these Muslim and Christian immigrants were similar. They hail from the same two ethnic groups and the same socio-economic class in Senegal and migrated to France at the same time (the 1970s) and for the same economic reasons.</p>
<p>Our behavioral games allowed us to compare the level of trust and altruism that rooted French exhibit toward Muslim immigrants and their Christian counterparts by having them play simultaneously a <a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bestiary_of_Behavioral_Economics/Trust_Game">trust game</a> and a <a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bestiary_of_Behavioral_Economics/Dictator_Game">dictator game</a>.</p>
<h2>The research shows basic bias against Muslims</h2>
<p><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/ALV_EquilibriumJPopE.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1">Our results</a> show that, while the rooted French do not distrust Muslims any more than Christians, they are less altruistic toward Muslims. </p>
<p>Put differently, rooted French discriminate in a “non rational” manner against Muslims. When given a common task, they are less cooperative toward Muslims (particularly those with recognizably Muslim names) even when they do not expect any particular hostility from the Muslims with whom they interact.</p>
<p>Moreover, while increasing the proportion of Muslims in French society might reduce such prejudice due to increased opportunity for interaction, <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/AESFullPaper_AdidaLaitinValfortREVISED-FINAL.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1">our results</a> suggest the opposite. </p>
<p>When we increased the proportion of Muslims in our game environment there were measurable signs that the discriminatory attitudes of the rooted French were heightened. The <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2011/01/27/the-future-of-the-global-muslim-population/">expected</a> increase of the Muslim population in France (from 7.5% in 2010 to 10.3% in 2030), our research suggests, will not improve anti-Muslim prejudice, other factors remaining constant.</p>
<h2>Discrimination evident in the workplace</h2>
<p>The anti-Muslim discrimination we reveal is not confined to the lab. </p>
<p>We accompanied our behavioral games with <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/ALV-PNAS.pdf?attredirects=0">a correspondence test</a> comparing responses to a Senegalese Christian (<em>Marie</em> Diouf) and to a Senegalese Muslim (<em>Khadija</em> Diouf) job applicant who submitted the exact same CVs, with two differences only: one job and one volunteer experience. </p>
<p>One of Khadija’s past positions was with <em>Secours Islamique</em> (Islamic Relief) and one of Marie’s was with <em>Secours Catholique</em> (Catholic relief). Also, Khadija did voluntary work for the <em>Scouts Musulmans de France</em>, whereas Marie did the same for the comparable Catholic organization, <em>Scouts et Guides de France</em>. </p>
<p>Our findings reveal that a job applicant in France is 2.5 times less likely to receive a job interview callback when she is perceived as Muslim instead of Christian by the employer.</p>
<h2>What about religious norms?</h2>
<p>Is there a factual basis for the sense of cultural threat rooted French experience when interacting with Muslims? </p>
<p>In his research, Berkeley political scientist Steven Fish <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/are-muslims-distinctive-9780199769209?cc=us&lang=en&">shows</a> that the average Muslim respondent is more religious than the average Christian respondent. The average Muslim score (on a 1 to 10 scale where 1 means that God has the least importance in one’s life and 10 means that it has the greatest importance) is 9.5. For the average Christian it is 8.1. </p>
<p>Our own survey, conducted in France among the group of Senegalese Christian and Muslim immigrants mentioned above, <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/ALV_EquilibriumJPopE.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1">confirms</a> that Muslims are distinctive from their Christian counterparts in terms of religiosity. Their mean score on the 1 to 10 scale is 9.0 compared with 7.6 for their Christian counterparts and 3.1 for the average rooted French respondent. </p>
<p>But Muslims are distinctive in other ways also. </p>
<h2>What about women?</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Are-Muslims-Distinctive-Look-Evidence/dp/0199769214">Steven Fish’s work showed</a> that Muslims are more likely to agree that “a university education is more important for a boy than for a girl,” to think that “when jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to a job than women” and to support the idea that “men make better political leaders than women do.” </p>
<p>Our research <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/Economics%26Politics_ALV.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1">confirms</a> that Muslim immigrants in France differ from their Christian counterparts in gender attitudes. Senegalese Christian immigrants and rooted French show greater altruism toward their female game partners than toward their male ones but the opposite is true for Muslims: they are more generous toward men than women.</p>
<p>Muslims in France not only attach more importance to religion than do the average French, but they also support more conservative views and behaviors towards women. </p>
<p>They <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20121025-france-muslim-opinion-poll-survey-exposes-french-anxieties-over-islam-mosque-far-right/">are perceived by the French host population</a> as a challenge to France’s century-long commitment to the separation of church and state (what the French call laïcité) and its 50-year struggle for gender equality. </p>
<p>But this sense of a cultural threat is not rational. As French political scientists Sylvain Brouard and Vincent Tiberj <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2103_reg.html">have shown,</a> the average Muslim’s higher level of religiosity has nothing to do with the Islamist position that religious principles should be the foundation of governance. Nor do their more traditional views on gender roles call for the repression of women.</p>
<h2>Discrimination leads Muslim community to withdraw further</h2>
<p>Yet, this sense of threat felt by the so-called rooted French feeds irrational anti-Muslim behavior. And this behavior, in turn, encourages Muslims to withdraw from French society. </p>
<p>Our survey results <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/ALV_EquilibriumJPopE.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1">clearly indicate</a> that Muslim immigrants detect more hostility in France toward them than do their Christian counterparts. Consequently, they have few incentives to abandon their own cultural norms to identify more closely with French culture and society. This withdrawal further feeds anti-Muslim discrimination in France.</p>
<p>Distressingly, the Charlie Hebdo shooting and the attack on a kosher supermarket can only reinforce this vicious cycle of discrimination. </p>
<p>The attack by a few has strengthened the misguided belief that Muslims as a whole constitute a major threat to France. </p>
<p>To break this cycle, actions must be taken to increase public awareness that “being a Muslim” is not equivalent to “being a Jihadist.” Mobilizing the Muslim population in France to coalesce at least around the “I am neither Koachi nor Coulibaly” slogan if not around “I am Charlie” would also help unravel France’s worrisome discriminatory trap.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36092/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Laitin receives funding from the United States National Science Foundation. He was affiliated with Sciences-Po (Paris) as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire L. Adida and Marie-Anne Valfort do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Muslims in France and the French host population are locked in a discriminatory equilibrium. This is the conclusion, summarized in our soon-to-be published book, of a six-year research program that investigates…Marie-Anne Valfort, Associate Professor of Economics, Paris School of Economics , Université Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneClaire L. Adida, Assisant Professor, Political Science , University of California, San DiegoDavid Laitin, James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science, Stanford UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/362272015-01-15T11:02:14Z2015-01-15T11:02:14ZThe French myth of secularism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69060/original/image-20150114-3891-145e6pm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With controversial headline "This brazen Islam" a French magazine in 2012 claimed Muslims were infiltrating hospitals, cafeterias, swimming pools, schools
</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Commentators in France and elsewhere have taken the recent terrorist attacks in Paris as an occasion to reflect more broadly about Muslims in France. Many read the attacks as a sign of French Muslims’ refusal to integrate. They’ve asked whether Muslims can be fully secular and expressed doubt as whether one can be both Muslim and French. </p>
<p>Even as we try to make sense of what happened, however, we should be wary of myths about French secularism (laïcité) and French citizenship being spun in the aftermath of the attacks.</p>
<p>France understands itself and <a href="http://time.com/3659241/paris-terror-attack-muslim-islam/">is often accepted</a> as a preeminent secular nation that fully separates church and state and restricts religion to the private sphere. </p>
<p>The reality is more complicated, as more than <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Republic-Unsettled-Contradictions-Secularism/dp/0822357488">10 years of research</a> on this issue have taught me.</p>
<p>In 1905, a major law officially separated church and state in France, though it did not go into effect in the northeastern region of Alsace-Moselle, which was under Prussian rule at the time. Even when Alsace-Moselle was reintegrated into France, however, it remained exempt from the 1905 law, and Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Judaism are still officially recognized religions in the region. As a result, religious education in one of those religions is obligatory for public-school students and the regional government pays the salaries of clergy of the four recognized religions. </p>
<h2>Other exceptions to the separation of church and state</h2>
<p>The 1905 law itself contains a number of exceptions.
For instance, though it forbids government financing of new religious buildings, it allows the government to pay maintenance costs for religious edifices built before 1905 – most of them Catholic churches. Thanks to later laws, the state also subsidizes private religious schools, most of them Catholic, some of them Jewish. And there exist other traces of Catholicism within the education system, like a public school calendar organized around Catholic holy days and public school cafeterias that serve fish on Fridays. </p>
<p>However, when Muslim French request the kind of accommodations offered to other religious communities in France, for example, state-funded Muslim schools, a school calendar that incorporates Muslim holy days, and the official recognition of Islam in Alsace-Moselle, they are reminded that France is a secular country where proper citizenship requires separating religion from public life. </p>
<p>Muslim appeals for religious accommodation are claims to civic equality within the existing parameters of laïcité. Yet those appeals paradoxically become the basis for questioning Muslims’ fitness as proper French citizens, by both right-leaning French Catholics and left-leaning French secularists. </p>
<h2>Discrimination against Muslims</h2>
<p>French Muslims are also caught in the contradictions of the French model of citizenship. The French state ostensibly recognizes individuals as individuals rather than as members of a community, but it also consistently <a href="http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/urban-violence-france">discriminates</a> against minorities. Because France refuses to recognize communal identities, however, it is difficult to voice claims of discrimination based on communal belonging. For example, because citizens are supposed to forgo particular racial, cultural, and religious attachments in lieu of a French national identity, the state refuses to collect census data about racial or religious belonging. This makes it hard to gauge racial and other disparities in government, higher education, and the workplace.<br>
Yet social science research shows that nonwhite immigrants and their descendants as a group suffer <a href="http://ftp.iza.org/dp6953.pdf">systematic discrimination</a> on the basis of their race, culture, and religion. </p>
<p>Indeed, race and religion come together in the term “Muslim,” used to identify a population of North and West African descent whose members a few decades earlier were referred to as immigrants and foreigners, or with terms that marked their ethnicity (e.g. Arabs). Muslim citizens and residents suffer disproportionately high levels of unemployment and face discrimination in the hiring process. CVs with <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/11/22/fake-cvs-reveal-discrimination-against-muslims-in-french-job-market/#.VLaqpMbJ7Zfon">Muslim-sounding names</a> are often rejected on that basis alone, and Muslims are <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/28/ST2008042802857.html">disproportionately imprisoned,</a> due in part to racial profiling and differential treatment in the criminal justice system. Muslim children attend overcrowded, underfunded <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=g95mZ4ZKZAcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">public schools</a>. </p>
<p>Moreover, in recent years, the public practice of Islam has become increasingly difficult: a 2004 law bans the wearing of headscarves in public school and a 2010 law bans the face veils in all public spaces. Veiled women have been refused entry to university classes, banks, and doctors’ offices. </p>
<h2>Neutral laws that are not neutral</h2>
<p>However, because the republican model of citizenship refuses to recognize communal claims, anyone claiming to be the target of anti-Muslim discrimination only reinforces their communal difference from self- described “native” French. Moreover, much discriminatory legislation, including the two veil laws, is couched in neutral terms even as it clearly targets certain Islamic practices. The 2004 law against headscarves, for instance, bans “conspicuous religious signs” and the 2010 law against face-veils bans “the dissimulation of the face.” When Muslim French call attention to this problem, they are met with charges of <em>communautarisme</em>, of thinking and talking too much as Muslims rather than as French citizens. Not surprisingly, the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) is often accused of “communalism.”</p>
<p>Even when Muslims make explicit claims to being French – and the vast majority does – those claims are rejected. In a telling incident, the Paris transit authority in <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2012/11/13/la-ratp-refuse-une-campagne-de-pub-contre-l-islamophobie_1790051_3224.html">2012 refused</a> to display an advertisement by the CCIF because of its “religious character” and “political demands.” The ad, part of the CCIF’s “We too are the nation” (<em>Nous assusi sommes la nation</em>) campaign, reimagined the painter David’s French Revolution-era <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_Court_Oath">“Tennis Court Oath”</a> in the present, with veiled women, Arab men in hoodies, and visibly orthodox Jews, among other citizens, holding <a href="http://www.islamophobie.net/articles/2012/10/31/ccif-nsln-campagne-communication-islamophobie-nous-sommes-la-nation">aloft French flags</a> and copies of the oath pledging revolutionary ideals. The CCIF thereby affirmed their commitment to France, symbolically inscribing themselves into the French nation as original <em>citoyens</em>.</p>
<p>Rather than stemming from Muslims’ rejection of Frenchness, then, the supposed impossibility of being a Muslim and being a French citizen is largely generated by the contradictions of French secularism and French citizenship and by the majority’s inability to conceive of Muslims as French.</p>
<p>We should not deny the horror of January 6. But, in its aftermath, rather than uncritically reaffirm French national identity and wring our hands about Muslims’ refusal to integrate, we should use this moment of reflection to understand the various ways in which Muslims are consistently excluded from the nation, and to reassess the narrow bases of what it means to be French.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36227/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mayanthi Fernando does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Commentators in France and elsewhere have taken the recent terrorist attacks in Paris as an occasion to reflect more broadly about Muslims in France. Many read the attacks as a sign of French Muslims…Mayanthi Fernando, Associate Professor, Anthropology, University of California, Santa CruzLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.