tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/french-muslims-14419/articlesFrench muslims – The Conversation2019-08-07T13:38:51Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1205582019-08-07T13:38:51Z2019-08-07T13:38:51ZFrench cannabis legalization debate ignores race, religion and the mass incarceration of Muslims<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287107/original/file-20190806-84210-1dsw0i5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Evidence suggests that Muslim men in France have been disproportionately arrested and jailed for cannabis-related crimes since the drug became illegal in 1970.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/francisco_osorio/4977990504/in/photolist-8zTv9u-B1k938-6afVLk-87j3TU-8pdjy4-hP7vgs-8TfWUQ-RTuk8L-286TveU-M4roSU-27PfhL8-29c9WnD-SthGRk-26rpDLS-286Nae3-Sh5Y3t-26rsHMb-M4r8jQ-Srk5bE-286V31w-4KqDVQ-6afVDi-6afVyR-7gvLPB-E1RSo-59cKgy-7CsArq-7gzA71-7Cszo9-7gzBJU-8VeEE6-StLf8R-21inHSo-dDKSHJ-Rr8diz-StnAiF-AtWitz-25uMaQt-QBavfz-2crXZ5w-225FvMS-Sh5ZXR-7kj7sT-RecthX-Sh61da-SBqZUA-SBrz7C-StnCrP-B33Fs7-27Per9T">Francisco Osorio/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last summer in France, dozens of “CBD cafés” suddenly opened across the country.</p>
<p>Exploiting a legal loophole originally created for hemp farmers, these pop-up businesses sold queuing customers oils, drinks and salves infused with cannabidiol, a cannabis compound <a href="https://theconversation.com/cbd-rising-star-or-popular-fad-110146">that is a faddish if unproven “cure”</a> for insomnia, anxiety and more. The French government reacted quickly and by mid-June had <a href="http://www.drogues.gouv.fr/actualites/cannabidiol-cbd-point-legislation">officially prohibited the sale of CBD</a>. The CBD cafés vanished within a month. </p>
<p>But France’s brief experiment with cannabidiol seems to have started a movement to legalize cannabis, which has been illegal since <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000321402&categorieLien=id">1970</a>. </p>
<p>On June 19, dozens of French economists, physicians and politicians published an open letter in the popular news magazine <a href="https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20190619.OBS14590/l-appel-de-70-medecins-elus-economistes-pourquoi-nous-voulons-legaliser-le-cannabis.html">L’Obs</a>, denouncing the “bankruptcy” of cannabis prohibition and imploring the nation to “Légalisons-Le!” Soon after, an economic advisory council to the French prime minister released a <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000321402">report</a> criticizing France’s drug war as a costly “French failure” and calling for cannabis legalization on financial grounds. </p>
<p>Then, in July, France’s drug safety agency <a href="https://ansm.sante.fr/S-informer/Actualite/Cannabis-a-visee-therapeutique-en-France-l-ANSM-souscrit-au-cadre-de-la-phase-experimentale-de-mise-a-disposition-propose-par-le-Comite-d-experts-Point-d-information">approved</a> the launch of medical cannabis trials in France — something physicians and activists have pushed for since 2013. </p>
<p>France’s drug policy debate largely echoes similar conversations that have lead a <a href="https://theconversation.com/marijuana-expands-into-3-more-states-but-nationwide-legalization-still-unlikely-106512">dozen U.S. states</a> to legalize and regulate cannabis since 2014, but for one difference: France has all but ignored the <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/cory-booker-calls-marijuana-justice-biden-says-drug-criminals-shouldnt-be">link</a> between <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/legal-marijuana-made-big-promises-racial-equity-fell-short-n952376">race</a>, cannabis and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/nyregion/marijuana-legalization-african-americans.html">mass incarceration</a>.</p>
<h2>France’s hidden war on drugs</h2>
<p>Evidence suggests that cannabis prohibition over the past 50 years has disproportionately punished France’s Muslim minority. </p>
<p>About one-fifth of French prisoners were convicted for drug offenses, according to the <a href="http://www.justice.gouv.fr/art_pix/Stat_Annuaire_ministere-justice_2017_chapitre8.pdf">French Ministry of Justice</a> – a rate comparable to that of the <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html">United States</a>. Nearly all of them are men. </p>
<p>There is no demographic breakdown of this population, because the French credo of “absolute equality” among citizens has made it <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-french-law-makes-minorities-invisible-a7416656.html">illegal since 1978 to collect</a> statistics based on race, ethnicity or religion. But sociologist <a href="http://cadis.ehess.fr/index.php?1142">Farhad Khosrokhavar</a>, who studies France’s prison system, has found that roughly half of the 69,000 people incarcerated today in France are Muslims of Arab descent.</p>
<p>Muslims make up just 9% of France’s 67 million people.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>According to a <a href="http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/15/rap-info/i0595.asp">January 2018 study</a> commissioned by the French National Assembly, of the 117,421 arrests for drugs in France in 2010, 86% involved cannabis. Cannabis arrests are rising quickly, too. The same study reported that number of people arrested annually for “simple use” of cannabis in France increased 10-fold between 2000 and 2015, from 14,501 to 139,683.</p>
<p>Taken together, this and <a href="https://www.ofdt.fr/BDD/publications/docs/DCC2019.pdf">other data</a> suggests that up to 1 in 6 prisoners in France today may be an Arab Muslim man who used, possessed or sold cannabis. </p>
<h2>Hashish assassins</h2>
<p>The disproportionate impact of French drug laws on Muslim men is unsurprising considering that the French have long associated Muslims with cannabis – specifically hashish, a cannabis resin.</p>
<p>As I argue in my <a href="https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/collection/p245801coll10/id/490292/">doctoral dissertation</a> and forthcoming book on the history of hashish in France, the 19th-century French believed this mild drug caused insanity, violence and criminality among Muslim North Africans.</p>
<p>Writing in the early 1800s, the famed French scholar <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5656689h/f85.item.r=Sacy">Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy</a> popularized the idea that the word “assassin” derived from the Arabic word “hashish” and that both originated with a Muslim sect called the Assassins of Alamut, who operated during the Crusades. </p>
<p>First described in the 1300 Italian travelogue “<a href="https://www.wdl.org/en/item/14300/">The Travels of Marco Polo</a>,” the Assassins of Alamut were rumored to use an “intoxicating potion” to dupe devotees in Iraq and Syria into becoming assassins. Sacy believed the potion was made from hashish, citing contemporary Arabic references to the sect as the “al-Hashishiyya,” or “hashish-eaters.” </p>
<p>These assassins, Sacy argued, “were specifically raised to kill” by their leader, known as the Old Man of the Mountain. They were fed hashish to ensure “absolute resignation to the will of their leader.” </p>
<p>Though largely a fiction, Sacy’s contentions about cannabis-eating Muslim assassins <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/SHAD30010050">gained traction</a> in France, particularly in medicine. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=701&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=701&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=701&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Hashish.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_medical_hashish(2).jpg">Mjpresson/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dozens of mid 19th-century doctors cited Sacy’s work in their research, my research uncovered. They believed that Western pharmaceutical science could “tame” hashish – this dangerous and exotic intoxicant from the Orient – for use by physicians to treat such fearsome diseases as insanity, the plague and cholera. </p>
<p>Medical hashish, primarily in the form of tincture, <a href="https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/collection/p245801coll10/id/490272">flourished</a> in France during the 1830s and 1840s. </p>
<p>But the French soon grew disillusioned with their wonder drug. Cannabis, we now know, eases the symptoms of some diseases – but it cannot cure cholera.</p>
<p>As failed treatments mounted and many of the medical philosophies that underpinned the use of hashish became obsolete in France by the late 19th century, its use as medicine largely ended. In <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000845281&categorieLien=id">1953</a>, France made medicinal hashish illegal. </p>
<h2>Colonial reefer madness</h2>
<p>The link between hashish and violent Muslims, however, was ingrained in the national consciousness. And it influenced French public policy for decades.</p>
<p>Officials and physicians in French colonial Algeria, viewing hashish use as a cause of <a href="http://jubilotheque.upmc.fr/ead.html?id=CS_000020_020#!%7B%22content%22:%5B%22CS_000020_020_toc298%22,false,%22%22%5D%7D">insanity and violent criminality</a>, filled psychiatric hospitals across Algeria with local Muslims supposedly suffering “folie haschischique” – basically, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/re-criminalizing-cannabis-is-worse-than-1930s-reefer-madness-89821">reefer madness</a>.”</p>
<p>Such thinking also helped justify the creation of the <a href="https://www.editions-zones.fr/livres/de-l-indigenat/">Code de l’Indigènat</a> in 1875, a French law that institutionalized racism and apartheid in French North Africa by officially designating Muslims as subjects rather than citizens. </p>
<p>In the name of promoting “colonial order,” France established separate and unequal legal codes that promoted the segregation, <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/civilisations/1717?lang=fr">forced labor</a> and civil rights restrictions of Muslims and other Africans.</p>
<p>The stigmatizing association between Muslims, hashish and criminality persisted after the end of the <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668311.001.0001/acprof-9780199668311-chapter-5">French Empire</a> in 1968. It followed North Africans who emigrated to France, who were believed to <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/french-historical-studies/article-abstract/36/3/479/9749/Colonial-Techniques-in-the-Imperial-Capital-The?redirectedFrom=fulltext">prone to violence</a> and criminality and as such subject to government surveillance, interrogations and excessive police force in France.</p>
<p>French parliamentarians seeking to criminalize cannabis in the late 1960s embraced these discriminatory views. </p>
<p>They described the nation’s growing drug problem as a “<a href="http://archives.assemblee-nationale.fr/4/cri/1969-1970-ordinaire1/015.pdf">foreign plague</a>” spread by Arab drug traffickers. One French National Assembly member even cited Sacy, reminding fellow lawmakers that cannabis had once inspired a cult of Muslim murderers called the “Hachichins.” </p>
<p>French lawmakers today probably would not use such discredited research or stigmatizing language to connect Muslims to cannabis. But the number of Muslims imprisoned for drug-related crimes suggests that this historic racism is alive and well in France. </p>
<p>If France moves to regulate legal cannabis, many doctors, pot smokers and libertarian economists will surely rejoice. But it may be French Muslims who benefit the most.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David A. Guba Jr. 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>Muslims make up 9% of France’s population and half of all its prisoners – many convicted on drug charges. But social justice isn’t part of the country’s growing debate on legalization.David A. Guba Jr., History Faculty, Bard CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/760582017-04-18T06:08:46Z2017-04-18T06:08:46ZIs there such a thing as a ‘Muslim vote’ in France?<p>On April 8, the well-known French television show <em>Salut les terriens</em> <a href="http://www.ozap.com/actu/tensions-entre-sonia-mabrouk-et-marwan-muhammad-dans-salut-les-terriens/523759">turned sour</a> when guests discussed the very sensitive topic of the so-called “French Muslim vote”. </p>
<p>One panelist, journalist Sonia Mabrouk, argued that Muslims in France are constantly used by opportunists, from politicians to intellectuals, as a constituency to serve their own purposes.</p>
<p>The incident recalled the final televised debate of France’s 2012 presidential election, when then-candidate François Hollande sparred with incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy over the “Muslim vote”.</p>
<p>Hollande was in favour of extending the right to vote in local elections to non-EU citizens living in France, while Sarkozy <a href="http://world.time.com/2011/11/28/should-foreign-residents-be-allowed-to-vote-in-france-sarkozy-flip-flops/">argued against it</a>. The president claimed that such a move would lead to “identity-based voting practices” and “divisive sectarian demands”.</p>
<p>Women, it’s worth remembering, were once suspected of <a href="http://ljpol.com/why-is-womens-suffrage-in-france-only-70-years-old/">voting with their sex</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fhv1VVCRrJY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">France’s 2012 presidential debate emphasised the issue of the so-called ‘Muslim vote’</span></figcaption>
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<p>As the French go to the polls on April 23 and May 7 to elect their new president, the question reemerges: is it reasonable to assume that Muslims’ voting behaviour is based on their religion and on the Quran? </p>
<h2>The impact of religion on votes</h2>
<p>Some 93% of French Muslims cast their ballots for François Hollande in the second round of the 2012 presidential election, according to a poll by <a href="http://opinionlab.opinion-way.com/dokumenty/Sondage_jour_de_vote_T2_SOCIOLOGIE_DU_VOTE_2_1.pdf">OpinionWay</a>. That’s 41% above than the national average, since Hollande was ultimately elected with 52% of votes.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ifop.fr/media/pressdocument/482-1-document_file.pdf">Several attempts</a> have been made to explain why <a href="http://www.cevipof.com/fichier/p_publication/436/publication_pdf_cahierducevipof34.pdf">French Muslims voted almost unanimously for the left</a>.</p>
<p>In their 2012 book <a href="http://www.pressesdesciencespo.fr/fr/livre/?GCOI=27246100034710&fa=author&person_id=250"><em>Français comme les autres?</em></a> (As French as everyone else?), political scientists Sylvain Brouard and Vincent Tiberj concluded that the impact of religion on the voting practices of believers should not be overestimated. </p>
<p>Catholics in France and in the United States, for example, vote in ways diametrically opposed to each other. In France, people who identify as Catholic <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20170410-france-catholic-vote-presidential-race-conservatives-fillon-le-pen-libourne">are today markedly in favour</a> of the conservative <em>Républicains</em>, particularly since the <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20121105-french-catholic-church-weighs-against-gay-marriage-law-family-adoption">legalisation of same-sex marriage</a> in 2013. </p>
<p>In the US, on the other hand, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis">they tend to vote for the Democrats</a>, a more socially progressive party. </p>
<p>How can this difference be explained? According to Brouard and Tiberj, Catholics in the US vote Democratic for precisely the same reasons that Muslims in France went for Hollande’s Socialist Party: they cast their ballots for candidates who support minority rights.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164713/original/image-20170410-31911-13bw6v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164713/original/image-20170410-31911-13bw6v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164713/original/image-20170410-31911-13bw6v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164713/original/image-20170410-31911-13bw6v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164713/original/image-20170410-31911-13bw6v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164713/original/image-20170410-31911-13bw6v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164713/original/image-20170410-31911-13bw6v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">OpinionWay’s 2012 poll showed that many people who identified as Muslim voted for François Hollande.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">F.Khemilat</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Both groups are often found among racial and religious minorities – American citizens of Latin American origin and people of Maghrebian or African background in France – who have faced economic and social marginalisation in their respective countries. </p>
<p>In France, on the other hand, Catholicism is the main religious faith. Hence the difference in voting orientations (though <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/religions/article/2017/01/12/une-enquete-inedite-dresse-le-portrait-des-catholiques-de-france-loin-des-cliches_5061270_1653130.html">a bastion of left-wing Catholic voters</a> has also historically existed in France). </p>
<p>In other words, religion is not the be-all, end-all of a believer’s political choices.</p>
<h2>Identifying as Muslims</h2>
<p>Though the impact of faith must be taken with a grain of salt, it is not entirely irrelevant in the context of elections. <a href="http://afsr.hypotheses.org/">Qualitative research I conducted in 2012 and 2013</a> found that the vote of French Muslim citizens I interviewed was indeed influenced by their religious identity. </p>
<p>Being a Muslim did not predetermine their answer to the question, <em>Who should I vote for?</em> But it did lead people to ask, <em>Who shouldn’t I vote for?</em> The impact was negative, helping them eliminate candidates deemed Islamophobic, rather than positive ([I] choose a candidate who defends my values, including religious values). </p>
<p>French Muslims took into account laws banning the headscarf or <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/24118241"><em>niqab</em></a>, a veil that covers the face, as well as public comments against Islam, for instance, when weighing different candidates and their platforms. Candidates’ positions on foreign policy were also considered, with military interventions in Muslim-majority countries particularly frowned upon. </p>
<p>This is similar to how French citizens who identify as <a href="http://www.persee.fr/doc/rfsp_0035-2950_1983_num_33_6_394100">Jewish tend to be especially sensitive to antisemitism</a> and to the position of candidates regarding Israel.</p>
<p>According to my study, being a Muslim can have three different effects on a person’s vote: it can consolidate a choice previously made, based on factors unrelated to religion; it can help select among a few candidates on the basis of the Islamophobia criterion; and when a candidate’s attitude towards Muslims is negatively perceived, it can destabilise and change a person’s political orientation.</p>
<p>Take, for example, Youssouf, a self-made man who in 2007 voted for Nicolas Sarkozy, the Republican party candidate. But in 2012, after what he called “the unashamed Islamophobic discourses and public policies targeting Islam made by him and his governement”, Youssouf decided to vote for the left-wing François Hollande. Even though Youssouf didn’t at all like Hollande’s stance on economic and social issues. </p>
<p>Because of their lower socioeconomic status and <a href="http://www.cevipof.com/fichier/p_publication/436/publication_pdf_cahierducevipof34.pdf">the marginalisation they face</a>, many French Muslims, especially those living in France’s <em>banlieues</em> (suburbs), might simply choose <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20170306-socialist-stronghold-paris-suburb-turns-away-left">not to vote</a>. </p>
<p>Some of them <a href="http://www.saphirnews.com/Ces-musulmans-qui-usent-de-la-religion-pour-de-legitimer-le-vote_a18625.html">justify their abstention</a> with religious explanations, claiming that “voting is not halal”, since France is not a Muslim country.</p>
<h2>Calls for abstention in 2017</h2>
<p>Generally, this position is only held by a minority of highly orthodox Tabligh or Salafist Muslims. But today, several public Muslim intellectuals, including leaders who are not necessarily from those sects are calling for an “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL2jO7-zqKU">active abstention</a>” by Muslims of the 2017 presidential election. The intent is to escape the constant trap of voting for the “lesser of two evils”. </p>
<p>Nizarr Bourchada, leader of the <em>Français et Musulmans</em> (French and Muslim) party, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ccifofficiel/videos/1699162723432574/">advocates a similar approach</a>. His is one of the first French political parties to claim a strong attachment to both Islamic and French Republican values.</p>
<p>This echoes French author Michel Houellebecq’s prescient 2015 novel <em>Soumission</em> (Submission). Set in 2022, the book imagines the rise to power in France of a Muslim political party that imposes polygamy and prohibits women from wearing clothes that make them “desirable”. </p>
<p>Within a few weeks of publication, <em>Soumission</em> had become a <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/livres/2015/02/11/03005-20150211ARTFIG00053-houellebecq-superstar-des-ventes-en-europe.php">bestseller in France, Italy and Germany</a>. It bolsters the idea that a collective vote of French Muslims, or at least their federation into a political party, would be a threat for French society.</p>
<p>The reality is quite different. But whatever the outcome of this election season, it seems that the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/missionrep/videos/1736516329973298/">fantasy of a “Muslim vote”</a> will continue to haunt Europe’s imagination for years to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fatima Khemilat 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>A candidate’s perceived Islamophobia may influence a French Muslim’s vote, but the impact of religious faith on political choice should not be overstated.Fatima Khemilat, PhD Student, Sciences Po AixLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/746782017-03-17T00:08:03Z2017-03-17T00:08:03ZEU court allows companies to ban headscarves. What will be the impact on Muslim women?<p>The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that interprets EU law issued a landmark judgment on March 14 that upheld the right of private companies in EU member countries to enact policies barring employees from wearing “<a href="http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-03/cp170030en.pdf">religious, political and philosophical signs</a>” in the interest of “neutrality.” </p>
<p>Such visible signs range from Jewish kippahs to Sikh turbans and Hindu bindis; <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-21025332">Christian crosses</a>, can, perhaps remain hidden under clothing. </p>
<p>The court decision was a response to two legal cases, one from Belgium and the other in France, where a Muslim woman was dismissed by her employer because of her headscarf. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.enar-eu.org/IMG/pdf/forgottenwomenpublication_lr_final_with_latest_corrections.pdf">Employment discrimination against Muslim women</a> and anti-headscarf legislation have impacted Muslim communities in various parts of Europe, but particularly in France. In Western Europe, France has the <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/19/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/">largest percentage of Muslims</a> and the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-european-islam-9780199607976?cc=us&lang=en&#">most restrictive headscarf legislation</a>. In 2004 it <a href="http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR29.1/bowen.html">banned the headscarf</a> and all conspicuous religious “symbols” in public schools. </p>
<p>Every year, there are <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2014/01/28/la-difficile-mesure-de-l-islamophobie_4355742_3224.html">several hundred hate crimes</a> committed against French Muslims. Of these, the <a href="http://www.slate.fr/story/106363/actes-anti-musulmans-misogynie">majority of victims </a> who have been physically assaulted are women in headscarves.</p>
<p>So what will be the impact of the Court of Justice’s ruling on an already beleaguered minority of headscarf-wearing Muslim women? </p>
<h2>History of headscarf legislation</h2>
<p>It was in the 1990s and early 2000s that the headscarf started to be seen in France as a violation of secular, “neutral” space. It also became a symbol of political Islam and the oppression of women. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=20234">Debates over the issue</a> continued for years, until the Conseil d’Etat (France’s highest administrative court) recommended the ban on all conspicuous religious gear in public schools in late 2003. In 2011, the state also <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000022911670">banned the face veil</a>, worn by an extremely small minority of Muslim women, in all public spaces. </p>
<p>Efforts to have the headscarf removed expanded from public schools to workplaces. But dismissing women on the grounds of wearing the headscarf remained legally ambiguous or unchallenged. The March 14 ruling gives clarity and legal justification. With an official policy of neutrality that applies to everyone, companies can prohibit the headscarf without being considered discriminatory.</p>
<p>What about the perspectives of those who wear it? </p>
<p>As researchers have long demonstrated, women have many diverse motivations for wearing a headscarf. But for some, the headscarf is not merely a “symbol.” It is instead an <a href="http://iasc-culture.org/THR/archives/AfterSecularization/8.12IAsad.pdf">act of piety and a way of being</a>. Forcing them to remove it as a precondition for gaining work puts them, it can be argued, in an unfair and potentially harmful situation.</p>
<h2>Muslim women’s voices</h2>
<p>In the communities of French Muslims that I observed for <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/politicizing-islam-9780190225247">my book on Islam and politics in France and India</a>, the beginning of anti-headscarf legislation marked a major turning point in their hopes for integration and acceptance. </p>
<p>I began doing research in France in 2006 in the southeastern city of Lyon. Since then I have returned several times, totaling 14 months of ethnographic research in two different mosque communities. In both of these communities, most women I knew chose to wear a headscarf. </p>
<p>I had many conversations with people about the headscarf ban in public schools. Most felt demoralized when it was passed. As Ismat, a young woman of Moroccan descent, recalled, “we realized then…that Islam in France is going to remain difficult.” </p>
<p>Ismat, like almost every headscarf-wearing woman I met during my time in Lyon, had faced employment discrimination. When she went to see a lawyer for legal advice, the conversation quickly turned to his interrogating her about why she wanted to wear it in the first place.</p>
<p>According to the women I spent time with and interviewed, employers were explicit in their demands that the women take off their headscarves. There were eight women whom I knew well and who shared these stories with me. But I interacted briefly with many more who casually mentioned their experience with this kind of discrimination. Some women were willing to remove their headscarves to keep their jobs or continue their training, but many were not. Those who refused sometimes faced personally devastating consequences. </p>
<p>For example, Aisha, a lively young woman active in the mosque community, had long dreamed of becoming a psychologist and had studied hard to pursue her dream. In 2009, after moving to Paris with her husband, she found that no hospitals or clinics would accept her for clinical training in her headscarf. So she abandoned her ambition. Aisha lamented to me, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We women are psychologically exhausted.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the working-class suburbs of Lyon, where I spent time with Muslim women with much stricter forms of veiling, the situation was more dire. Some had dropped out of high school, even against the wishes of their parents, because they did not want to remove their headscarves at the door of the school. </p>
<p>Suffering both poverty and stigma, they struggled to find work as child-care and domestic-care workers. Occasionally, informal employers temporarily tolerated their veiling before eventually placing conditions on them. </p>
<p>Asma, an Afro-French woman, went back and forth with her employer over the issue until finally, her employer fired her. She warned Asma,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You will never be accepted here.” </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Why this will isolate women</h2>
<p>The Court of Justice’s ruling seems to validate such social and economic exclusion. </p>
<p>The ruling gives a stamp of approval to the <a href="http://www.enar-eu.org/IMG/pdf/forgottenwomenpublication_lr_final_with_latest_corrections.pdf">discriminatory atmosphere</a> that shapes the lives of women who choose to wear a headscarf as part of their faith. In my research, the women who managed to hold onto a job were those who found work only among other Muslims who tolerated or simply ignored their clothing. </p>
<p>What does this imply, then, about the ideal of integration?</p>
<p>These women will be further estranged from the formal labor market and are less likely to feel they “belong” in France – even though many come from families that have been in France for three generations. </p>
<p>Maryam, an observant Muslim who said she worked hard to reconcile her French identity with her Islamic faith, had a few years ago insisted in an interview with me,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I am just as French as ‘Jacqueline,’ even with my religion.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The question is, with yet another legal defeat, will she continue to believe this?</p>
<h2>Fueling discrimination?</h2>
<p>The court’s ruling will likely undermine religious freedom. And it will reinforce the arbitrariness of defining what practices are “political,” “philosophical” or “religious.” </p>
<p>In today’s globalized world, it is murky at best to distinguish between the religious and nonreligious. Many symbols we don’t think of as religious are, in fact, sacred in some traditions. For example, the yin-yang symbol is considered sacred in the Buddhist and Taoist traditions. Will companies prohibit employees from wearing the yin-yang on a shirt or ring? </p>
<p>There are other popular symbols we hardly notice, like the Apple logo or the Nike swoosh. In my view, these too raise a question, whether corporate logos like these could be seen as symbols of <a href="http://www.rae.com.pt/Caderno_wb_2010/Benjamin%20Capitalism-as-Religion.pdf">worshiping the market</a>. If so, should such logos be banned from employees’ clothing? </p>
<p>To be sure, the court’s ruling leaves specific matters to be decided by EU member states, who may interpret the issues differently in individual cases. Nonetheless, it is not a step forward.</p>
<p>I argue that the values and ideas of inclusion, democracy, freedom, or women’s rights, that the EU <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_6.4.1.html">claims to uphold</a> will not be advanced through this ruling. It might, in fact, undermine these values by allowing companies to discriminate against people in the name of “neutrality.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74678/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Z. Fareen Parvez received funding from the New Directions in the Study of Prayer at the Social Science Research Council; the National Science Foundation; the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation; and the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and Institute of International Studies.</span></em></p>For many Muslim women, wearing the headscarf is an act of piety and a way of being. Forcing them to remove it can have devastating consequences.Z. Fareen Parvez, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/702422017-01-24T12:18:14Z2017-01-24T12:18:14ZFrom colonial Algeria to modern day Europe, the Muslim veil remains an ideological battleground<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153945/original/image-20170123-8057-105g1rb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">egyjanke/shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/06/angela-merkel-cdu-partial-ban-burqa-niqab-german">proposed a ban</a> on the burqa and niqab at a conference of her political party in December 2016, she was following the lead of a number of countries in Europe which already have such legislation in place. In France and Belgium a woman wearing a full-face veil <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/burka-bans-the-countries-where-muslim-women-cant-wear-veils/">can be jailed</a> for up to seven days. In January 2017, there were also reports that <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/reports-morocco-bans-production-sale-burqa-170110140716164.html">Morocco had banned</a> the production and sale of the burqa.</p>
<p>Merkel, who has faced <a href="https://theconversation.com/german-election-is-this-really-a-verdict-on-merkels-open-door-to-refugees-56174">criticism</a> over her refugee policy, turned towards a ban on the Muslim veil as proof of her harder stance on integration in Germany. </p>
<p>The politicisation of the veil – whether it covers the full face (burqa), leaves the eyes open (niqab) or covers head and neck only (hijab, al-amira, khimar) – has a long history in European politics. And it often becomes a battleground for different ideologies at times of crisis.</p>
<h2>Fantasies of unveiling</h2>
<p>Throughout the 19th century, the Muslim veil functioned as an object of fascination for European travellers to the Middle East, despite the fact that Christians and Druzes – a religious sect with origins in 11th-century Egypt – would also veil. European photographers in the region produced eroticised representations of women lifting their veils and exposing their naked bodies. Reproduced as postcards, these images circulated across the Mediterranean, constructing the image of a Muslim woman whose erotic powers could be unleashed once the veil was lifted.</p>
<p>But in the 1950s, the veil played an important role during the Algerian war of independence against French colonial rule. Frantz Fanon, a Martinique-born psychiatrist and anti-colonial intellectual, <a href="http://www.csun.edu/%7Ejaa7021/hist434/Fanon.pdf">described</a> the French colonial doctrine in Algeria as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the women; we must go and find them behind the veil where they hide themselves and in the houses where the men keep them out of sight. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fanon was a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front who considered women’s ill-treatment by the French army to embody the whole country’s situation. For him, it was impossible for the colonial power to conquer Algeria without winning over its women to European “norms”. </p>
<p>In 1958, during the Algerian war of independence, mass “unveiling” ceremonies <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719087547/">were staged across Algeria</a>. The wives of French military officers unveiled some Algerian women to show that they were now siding with their French “sisters”. These spectacles formed part of an emancipation campaign aimed at demonstrating how Muslim women had been won over to European values and away from the independence struggle. They were also staged at a moment of political turmoil in mainland France, which was struggling politically and financially to maintain its colony in North Africa. </p>
<p>The unveilings were publicised and presented to the government in Paris as spontaneous acts. But the French leader Charles de Gaulle remained sceptical of the French settlers’ claims, and historians would <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719087547/">later find</a> that some of the women who participated in these ceremonies never even wore the veil before. Others were pressured by the army to participate.</p>
<h2>A form of resistance</h2>
<p>Following the staged unveilings, many Algerian women began wearing the veil. They wanted to make clear that they would define the terms of their emancipation – rather than being forcefully liberated by the French colonisers.</p>
<p>The unveilings had come a year after the end of the Battle of Algiers during which female freedom fighters began to carry explosives underneath the traditional white <em>haik</em>, a form of dress <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/life-style/2013/03/22/Algerian-women-march-in-white-to-defend-tradition.html">which dates back to Ottoman Algeria</a>. But once this technique was detected by the army, the female fighters unveiled and chose European dress instead. This meant they could pass through French checkpoints unnoticed, allowing them to smuggle bombs – a scene depicted in Gillo Pontecorvo’s celebrated 1966 film Battle of Algiers. Almost 40 years later, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/weekinreview/the-world-film-studies-what-does-the-pentagon-see-in-battle-of-algiers.html">film was shown</a> at the Pentagon following the invasion of Iraq, in order to scrutinise “terrorist” strategies.</p>
<figure>
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<p>After the collapse of French Algeria in 1962, many Algerian women in urban areas stopped wearing the veil, but with the rise of Islamic radicalism in the country which led to a civil war in the 1990s, veiling became mandatory.</p>
<p>Mobilisation of the veil against Western systems of thought and values also occurred in the 1970s in Egypt when college-educated women returned to wearing the veil. Among the reasons <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ccFuGe-hBt0C&pg=PA586&dq=Fadwa+El+Guindi+reina+lewis+egypt+1970&hl=pl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZgLudidnRAhXF0xoKHRtTCM0Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=Fadwa%20El%20Guindi%20reina%20lewis%20egypt%201970&f=false">cited</a> for their choice was a rejection of Western consumerism and materialism, in favour of modesty and minimalism.</p>
<h2>A screen on which to project anxiety</h2>
<p>The veil offers a visible, public marker that can be mobilised to emphasise various political and social agendas. Under colonial rule, the veil became a sign that demarcated those who did not belong to the European system of thought. It continues to do so, and has become mobilised within political debates at times of crisis – for example in Germany by Merkel facing the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party.</p>
<p>According to Gabriele Boos-Niazy, the co-chair of Germany’s Association for Muslim Women, there are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/06/angela-merkel-cdu-partial-ban-burqa-niqab-german">no more</a> than a hundred women in Germany who wear the full-face veil. In a country of 80m citizens, this forms 0.000125%. The focus on banning the full-face veil is not rational but ideological, with Muslim women’s dress now embodying a range of wider fears around terrorism, Islam and immigration. The Muslim veil has become a screen onto which Europe’s anxieties and political struggles are being projected.</p>
<p>Europeans have a history of portraying the veil as foreign to the continent’s mentality – and this shows no sign of abating. Yet, considering the way Muslim women have used the veil as a way of resistance in the past, they are likely to do it again in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70242/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katarzyna Falecka receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>The veil has long been a form of resistance.Katarzyna Falecka, PhD student: History of Art, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/667072016-11-13T09:08:10Z2016-11-13T09:08:10ZThe new normal: one year since terror attacks, Paris is a city afraid and divided<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145577/original/image-20161111-9083-xbbick.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/elpadawan/9462080682/sizes/l">ElPadawan/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been one year since <a href="https://theconversation.com/paris-terror-attacks-france-now-faces-fight-against-fear-and-exclusion-50703">the attacks on November 13, 2015</a> chilled all Parisians – Muslim, Christian, Jewish and secular alike – to the core. In <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34818994">coordinated attacks</a> on a football match and a music concert, 130 innocent civilians <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/20/world/europe/Paris-terror-victims-list.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2Fattacks-in-paris&action=click&contentCollection=europe&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection&_r=0">lost their lives</a>, and hundreds more were injured. The immediate impacts were obvious: police began <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/20/paris-attacks-manhunt-two-suspects-still-at-large">a manhunt</a> for suspects which would lead all the way to Brussels, and French President François Hollande imposed a nation-wide state of emergency which <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36842311">remains in place</a> to this day. </p>
<p>Further atrocities <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33288542">have occurred across France</a>, from Rouen in the north to Nice in the south. But Paris has been the symbolic and geographical centre of such attacks – and they have transformed the city in ways which are still coming to light.</p>
<p>Paris is a global hub for business, arts, diplomacy and culture, and the wider region is home to more than <a href="https://www.citypopulation.de/France-iledeFrance.html">12m people</a>. As with other large cities that have experienced terror attacks, such as London and New York, life simply had to go on. But it is not the same as before. Parisians have had to settle into a bizarre “new normal”, where daily routines are interrupted by unfamiliar sights, sounds and inconveniences.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious change has been the introduction of the huge security programme, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/paris-attacks-operation-sentinelle-soldiers-patrolling-streets-france-safer">“Operation Sentinelle”</a>: a major military deployment in civilian areas to complement France’s <a href="http://en.rfi.fr/africa/20150908-vigipirate-frances-temporary-anti-terror-plan-celebrates-20th-birthday">“Plan Vigipirate”</a> terror alert system. As a result of these measures, Paris has seen the largest deployment of military personnel since the second world war. </p>
<p>Of the 10,000 soldiers deployed nationally, more than 6,500 are based in the Paris metropolitan area. Parisians have had to adjust to the sight of military uniforms patrolling subway stations, museums, major streets and religious sites. While these troops were deployed to support police and reassure civilians, they have also served as a constant reminder that life has not fully returned to normal. </p>
<p>If anything, the atmosphere of the city has grown tense, and residents have become jumpy. Parisians have expressed shock at the growing frequency of evacuations due to suspicious packages and vehicles – these were not widespread before the recent wave of attacks. This sense of unease has manifested in unexpected ways.</p>
<h2>Safe schools</h2>
<p>One of the more disturbing new measures has been the decision to allow Parisian high school students to smoke on school premises. This behaviour has been banned since the early 1990s, but schools are anxious to prevent groups of students gathered outside high school gates from becoming targets. </p>
<p>Students have also been briefed on what to do in the event of a terrorist attack or incursion into school territory. During a recent research trip for <a href="http://lames.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article622&lang=fr">a new project in France</a>, the parents of Parisian school children have told me that their children were instructed to hide under their desks and remain silent, if the alarm is raised that a heavily armed terrorist is rampaging through their high school. This has deeply shocked them. </p>
<p>The lycée holds a special space in French life, as a place for children to experiment with their identities, have teen romances and grow up. This securitisation of school spaces curtails the sense of innocence which once accompanied education in France. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145588/original/image-20161111-9083-1tp04iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145588/original/image-20161111-9083-1tp04iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145588/original/image-20161111-9083-1tp04iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145588/original/image-20161111-9083-1tp04iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145588/original/image-20161111-9083-1tp04iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145588/original/image-20161111-9083-1tp04iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145588/original/image-20161111-9083-1tp04iv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&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">Lycée on lock down.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marsupilami92/6166106079/sizes/l">marsupilami92/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Of course, there are inequalities between the prestigious institutions on the left bank, and the crumbling, ineffective schools in the poorer Parisian suburbs where I have done much of <a href="http://etn.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/05/19/1468796815587007">my research</a>. And indeed, bullying is a terrible problem <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37505349">right across the spectrum</a>. </p>
<p>But these measures mark a significant shift in the way parents, teachers and students regard the lycée: they have gone from seeing it a safe space, to a target for political violence. The students, however, are apparently not as concerned by this as their parents. Many simply haven’t experienced less troubled times: for them, this is normal. </p>
<h2>On the periphery</h2>
<p>The suburbs on the outskirts of Paris have changed just as much as the centre. While extra security has been deployed to reassure residents in Paris proper, the interventions in areas such as Saint Denis in the north, and Vitry to the south, have had a rather different effect. </p>
<p>The communities which live in these areas tend to be poorer, and have higher numbers of migrants, than <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-other-france">the rest of the city</a>. In the wake of the Paris attacks, they have experienced an intensification of longstanding difficulties, where those of north and West African origin <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/23/new-research-shows-that-french-muslims-experience-extraordinary-discrimination-in-the-job-market/">are denied jobs</a>, treated with suspicion, and subject to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-attacks-nice-radicalisation-idUSKCN0ZY25A">outright hostility</a>. </p>
<p>While <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/paris-banlieues-seeds-of-terror-isis/">reports suggest that</a> these sites of poverty and high numbers of migrants are the origin of the recent wave of attacks, the overwhelming majority of residents – whether Muslim or not – have <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/2ce716d6-7e48-11e6-bc52-0c7211ef3198">no sympathy for terrorism</a>. </p>
<p>Yet these same communities have overwhelmingly been targeted with extra-judicial powers: individuals have been wrongly confined to house arrest, detained in prison and had their lives and business <a>ruined as a result</a>. One shop keeper was detained because someone known to associate with extremists was a regular customer at his shop. </p>
<p>Sadly, there have been several moments when this hostility has tipped over into civilian life. For instance, earlier this year two Muslim women <a href="http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/europe/123953-160829-paris-restaurateur-in-hot-water-after-islamophobic-tirade-caught-on-video">were ejected</a> from a cafe by the owner, who was filmed telling them that “all terrorists are Muslim, and all Muslims are terrorists”. Around France, the “burkini ban” has further fuelled anti-Islamic sentiment, with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/11/cannes-mayor-bans-burqinis-beachwear-must-respect-secularism">some claiming</a> the garment expresses an “allegiance to terrorist movements”. </p>
<p>Both sides of Paris – a city of <a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745631257">unparalleled inequality and marginalisation</a> across Western Europe – are suffering from the effects of this “new normal”. Civilians, politicians and scholars must know that the way to over these attacks is not to “protect” one side of the city from another. The memory of the Muslim victims of terrorism in France, and those further afield in throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia, remind us that we all need protection from the small number of people seeking to bring violence and bloodshed into our daily lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66707/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>Boots on the ground, schools on high alert and more hostility toward Muslims and migrants – this is daily life for Parisians.Joseph Downing, Guest Lecturer, European Institute, London School of Economics and Political ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/625732016-07-15T15:37:06Z2016-07-15T15:37:06ZNice attack: France’s social fabric frays<p>Last night, we sat toasting Bastille Day, and watching a glorious fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower from our window. We were joyful, oblivious to the events unfolding in Nice, almost 600 miles away. I had been cautious as we had walked the streets of Paris early in the day, mindful of the symbolic significance of an attack in the French capital on the country’s independence day.</p>
<p>But I was reasonably confident that Paris security forces could guard the crowds assembling for one of the most important events of the calendar after a month of watching them scrutinize the crowds at the fanzone in Paris during Europe’s premier soccer competition, which was located less than a quarter of a mile away from our apartment.</p>
<p>Tragically, the attack in Nice demonstrated once again that open societies have so many <a href="https://theconversation.com/terror-attacks-in-paris-and-california-expose-modern-societys-lack-of-resilience-51548">vulnerable targets</a> that the opportunities for carnage are numerous. </p>
<p>France has become the epicenter of terrorist violence in Europe because, in my view, of three factors. First, it still has the largest Muslim population in western Europe – at over <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/17/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/">seven percent of the population</a>. Second, that population has become disaffected by <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/chapter_1/integratingislam.pdf">years of economic neglect and resulting poverty</a>. And third, France has pursued <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/19/why-france-is-so-deeply-entangled-in-syria/">aggressive policies</a> against jihadists in North Africa and the Middle East.</p>
<p>The overwhelming proportion of that Muslim population has either remained passive or engaged in democratic debate over these issues. But, in tandem, these factors have provided the environment for a minute, disaffected, homegrown and radicalized fringe to develop. And – as attacks from California and Dallas to Brussels, Paris and Nice demonstrate - it doesn’t take many people to cause chaos. </p>
<p>Authorities have <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/15/europe/nice-france-truck/index.html">identified</a> Mohamad Lahouaiej Bouhel, a 31-year French-Tunisian as the attacker. There is no evidence yet of how many others orchestrated the attack. But the question of how to guard against such mayhem remains one of the insoluble problems of modern western societies.</p>
<h2>Defense and security</h2>
<p>I have spent much of the last two months as a visiting scholar at a research institute named <a href="http://www.defense.gouv.fr/irsem">IRSEM</a> that is nestled in France’s department of defense, located at the Ecole Militaire, just across the road from the Eiffel Tower. </p>
<p>I have interviewed numerous defense analysts and military officials. An abiding theme has been that the traditional distinction between public security and national defense has blurred to the point where they have become indistinguishable. The French Navy guards its shores against terrorist infiltration. The Army guards its streets against terrorist attacks.</p>
<p>This breakdown is symbolized by the state of emergency that exists in France today, one that President Hollande had promised to end in an interview broadcast on national TV yesterday. Sadly, within hours of the attack he announced it would have to be extended. </p>
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<p>In practice this means that France’s military forces are evident at every tourist site in Paris. It means that the rooms at a hotel across the street from our apartment are generally empty and the local traders complain of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34965000">a lack of tourists</a> this summer. It means that people view each other with suspicion. And it means that there are constant delays on Paris’ fabled Metro rail system because of “suspicious packages.” </p>
<p>Jihadism does not represent an existential threat to France: its very existence is not threatened. But the social fabric of life in France is fraying at the edges.</p>
<h2>Who is the enemy?</h2>
<p>All these events, however, must be kept in perspective. </p>
<p>We will never become blasé to the sight of blood on the streets of Europe’s cities, although we may have to become accustomed to it as we have in the Middle East – at least in the short term. And we should not lose sight of who is our enemy. </p>
<p>The assailants are indiscriminant. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/world/europe/nice-bastille-day.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0">One press report</a> I read in the early hours noted that one of the first victims of the Nice attack was a Muslim mother, killed as her son stood next to her. </p>
<p>This is not a war of religions, or of civilizations. It is a war between civility and barbarism. </p>
<p>So I will take in several of Paris’ most notable tourist sites today. It is the only weapon that I have.</p>
<p><em>Simon Reich is currently a visiting fellow at <a href="http://www.defense.gouv.fr/irsem">IRSEM</a>, funded by the <a href="https://www.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/foundation">Gerda Henkel Foundation</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62573/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Reich is currently a visiting fellow at IRSEM, funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation</span></em></p>France’s military forces are evident at every tourist site in Paris. The question of how to guard against terrorist violence remains one of the insoluble problems of modern western societies.Simon Reich, Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/507362015-11-16T14:08:22Z2015-11-16T14:08:22ZWhy Paris?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101989/original/image-20151116-10393-s4qcg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A patrol in front of Notre Dame November 15. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Why Paris? I am struggling for answers after cold-blooded mass killers struck the French capital for the second time in a year.</p>
<p>For a few months I lived next door to the Le Carillon bar in the Rue Bichat. I wandered home along the canal, enjoying the lively chatter at the tables and the spicy fragrances of the Little Cambodia restaurant opposite. The Rue Bichat is now a place of silence, blood and shattered glass. Piles of flowers mark the world’s grief.</p>
<p>Why Paris? The answer is complex.</p>
<h2>Paris makes the front page</h2>
<p>One answer is simply opportunism. Although the attackers’ identities are not yet clear, we know that a shadowy network of skilled persuaders has been at work, priming young men to become human killing machines. The answer, then, is that it could easily have been New York, Sydney, Munich, Stockholm.</p>
<p>But it was none of these cities. It was Paris, and Paris makes the front page. This is another part of the answer. </p>
<p>We know that vicious attacks also took place in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/world/middleeast/beirut-lebanon-attacks-paris.html?_r=0">Beirut</a> and <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2015/11/13/Suicide-bomb-in-Baghdad-kills-at-least-18.html">Baghdad</a> and were barely mentioned anywhere, while Paris dominated the news channels and the banner headlines. That is certainly one reason why recruiters went to so much trouble planning these coordinated attacks.</p>
<p>But there is more. </p>
<p>Those of us <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520260658">who study France</a> know how uncomfortable French society is with its own diversity. At least <a href="https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/demographic-facts-sheets/faq/how-many-immigrants-france/">five million</a> French citizens have another language, culture or nationality. </p>
<p>Yet terms equivalent to “Arab American” are unknown – in France you are either French or Arab. Affirmative action and quotas are fiercely rejected. In consequence, <a href="http://azizsenni.fr/aziz-senni-ascenceur-social.asp">as one writer</a> has put it, “the social elevator has broken down.”</p>
<p>The French are not just ill-at-ease but ill-informed about their own diversity. </p>
<p>No-one knows exactly how many Muslims live in France, because it is illegal to count them. The prohibition on collecting such data is, apparently, intended to protect minorities from attack, but it relegates them to the shadows.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/chapter_1/integratingislam.pdf">Estimates</a> range wildly from 5 to 8 million: perhaps seven to ten per cent of the population. This is more than any other European nation. </p>
<h2>France’s colonial legacy</h2>
<p>For 130 years, France carved out an empire in the Muslim world. France’s India, Canada, Australia were Morocco, Syria, Lebanon. Yet Islam was never recognized as a French religion in the way that Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism were. </p>
<p>In 1830, France brutally invaded Algeria and incorporated its territory - but not its people - into mainland France. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101990/original/image-20151116-10417-ncxacw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101990/original/image-20151116-10417-ncxacw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101990/original/image-20151116-10417-ncxacw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101990/original/image-20151116-10417-ncxacw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101990/original/image-20151116-10417-ncxacw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101990/original/image-20151116-10417-ncxacw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101990/original/image-20151116-10417-ncxacw.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">
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<span class="caption">Fighting at the gates of Algiers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fighting_at_the_gates_of_Algiers_1830.jpg">Anonymous</a></span>
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<p><a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520260658">To become citizens</a>, Muslims had to renounce their “Muslim status”: only a handful would ever agree. After 1881, a new code excluded Muslims entirely from the protections of French law. </p>
<p>France today prides itself on its “laicité” (secularism) which some seek to add to its national values of liberty, equality and fraternity. Church and state were separated in France by the law of 1905. But many French people think this means all signs of religion must be removed from the public space.</p>
<p>Students in public schools, or government employees can be excluded for wearing “ostentatious” signs of their religion such as an Islamic headscarf, a Sikh turban, or a Jewish kippah. Women wearing an Islamic face covering on the street can be arrested. This is fuel to the fire of radicalization.</p>
<p>Religious struggles have riven French history, from <a href="http://www.museeprotestant.org/en/notice/the-eight-wars-of-religion-1562-1598/">the wars </a>between Protestant and Catholic in the 16th century to the schisms of the French Revolution. The legacy was so bitter that some Republicans began to hate priests with an almost superstitious passion. Voltaire is still a hero to many for his crushing attacks on religion: the magazine Charlie Hebdo was a great heir of this tradition. </p>
<p>This antipathy is deeply etched into French Republicanism, and it can translate into a knee-jerk hatred of all religion. Republicans would not support votes for women until 1944, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xtLSly2RN2wC&pg=PT75&lpg=PT75&dq=why+women+in+france+only+got+vote+1944&source=bl&ots=KlQBUpUzJW&sig=NrNHxe8j-94hzt-3x11LYBS549k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDsQ6AEwBjgKahUKEwjC_aTHgJTJAhUMWh4KHdBAB-k#v=onepage&q=why%20women%20in%20france%20only%20got%20vote%201944&f=false">in case it allowed priests</a> more influence. This helps to explain the French hysteria around the hijab, the Islamic headscarf. </p>
<p>Recently, I was told by a French acquaintance that Muslims in France are not a problem because most of them are not Muslim anyway. It is not surprising, then, that many French Muslims do not feel French. </p>
<h2>Islam kept at bay</h2>
<p>When religion was driven out of metropolitan France, it found its niche in the colonies. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=s-ZoAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=how+many+converts+french+empire&source=bl&ots=U7SNrci2DX&sig=I4x4_I5iRAyONNxRjzi9uZCjcvk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC8Q6AEwA2oVChMImvK8uYaUyQIVRqUeCh3_ugim#v=onepage&q=how%20many%20converts%20french%20empire&f=false">Millions of Africans and Indochinese</a> converted to Catholicism, and churches <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=sFXwAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99&dq=churches+flourished+in+colonial+france&source=bl&ots=sn-6rJMyeX&sig=kx3KkAxMeF2m5G1YLPFdfcLClk4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEcQ6AEwB2oVChMI6drm_oWUyQIVAxceCh2I-QTS#v=onepage&q=churches%20flourished%20in%20colonial%20france&f=false">flourished</a> - sometimes in confiscated mosques. But Islam was also encouraged in the colonies as a way of controlling the population. </p>
<p>When Muslims began to move to the mainland to work – around 10,000 Algerians migrated before 1914, <a href="http://countrystudies.us/algeria/49.htm">rising to 800,000</a> in the mid 1980s – religion was a useful way to control them and preserve the barrier that kept them from becoming full citizens. French Muslim men could not vote until 1944, and Muslim women until 1958. </p>
<p>After the bitter eight-year Algerian war came to an end in 1962 with Algeria’s independence, many North African Muslims stayed in France. Special agreements between governments allowed migration to continue, and even to accelerate as the French economy boomed, and Algeria’s stagnated.</p>
<p>With the loss of most of its empire by the end of the 1960s, France appeared to be decolonized. But the same colonial relationships continued and continue today.</p>
<p>In Paris, above all, the bulk of the second and third generations of Muslims remain in a kind of colonial shanty-town on the outskirts of the wealthy, vibrant city where I was lucky enough to rent an apartment. This is the Arab Paris of today, a Paris that most tourists never see. It is a place of vibrant markets, hardworking families and close-knit neighbourhoods. It is also a place that breeds unemployment, crime, despair and radicalization. </p>
<p>These suburbs burst into <a href="http://riotsfrance.ssrc.org/">three weeks of riotous protest</a> in 2005 after the death of two young Muslims in a police chase. What was striking then was that religion was not involved. But the government has failed to learn the lessons of anger, inequality and exclusion. </p>
<p>It would be foolish to suggest that such considerations are the reasons <a href="http://theweek.com/speedreads/446139/france-says-name-isis-offensive-call-daesh-instead">Daesh </a>(a loose acronym for ISIS in Arabic that also has negative connotations because of its similarity to “dahes” or “one who sows discord”) trumpets its bloody threats against Paris. </p>
<p>It is precisely because the so-called Islamic State is not a state that it must attempt to show its power through attacks of this nature. The choice of Paris is as much about a perverted kind of cultural resentment as it is about history.</p>
<p>But history does help to explain the disturbing number – <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/25/world/isis-western-recruits/">an estimated 1,200</a> – of eager recruits in France.</p>
<p>The dark areas of France’s past have bred an army in the shadows. To “declare war”, as the French President has insisted he will do, is only to give this alienation a new impetus, and to lend a lunatic fringe-group the aura of statehood it so desperately seeks.</p>
<p>The only answer is to meet shadow with light, and evil with good. There is no quick fix for this violence. Instead, the patient work of fighting racism, exclusion and intolerance must continue. </p>
<p>France must keep struggling to be the France we believe in, the France we love: the France of human rights, justice and respect, and not the shrunken parody of nationalism pedalled by its extreme right.</p>
<p>In this respect, Je suis and always will be Paris.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50736/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Coller receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p>The answer is complex. But part of it lies in the fact that French society is still uncomfortable with its diversity.Ian Coller, Associate Professor of History, University of California, IrvineLicensed 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.