Read on Twitter
If you look at polling of French Muslims, the overwhelming majority (82%) oppose vigilante attacks on blasphemers, but they also oppose publication of cartoons (70% think of them as unnecessary provocation) and things like headscarves ban (60% oppose). What the French response-
the State support of cartoons by projecting them on goverment buildings, statements on Islam & crackdown on Muslim civil society-does is to alienate this majority of Muslims from the French state. If the objective of the French moves is to integrate minorities within the French
framework of secularism, it has the opposite effect. We have, for instance, studies on the effect of the hijab ban, and the evidence clearly states that not only does it have a negative effect on the education and job prospects of French Muslim girls https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/political-secularism-and-muslim-integration-in-the-west-assessing-the-effects-of-the-french-headscarf-ban/2934B2DD5336FF53B8881F3F0C506B41
it also leads to a further entrenchment of religious identity, because it strengthens the perception of discrimination. You can only achieve integration and mainstreaming when you engender trust among the minorities about the motives of the State. Even the literature on the
growing Salafi movement in Europe, and states like France, emphasizes how these communities act as a parallel framework of organisation and meaning for people who have dropped out of mainstream French society, and feel that the State is hostile towards them. And many of these
Salafis are not immigrants, but people born in France and whose parents are not very practicing Muslims and were better integrated into society. When polls show that 30% of French Muslims prefer Sharia to French law, most of these are young people. Macron probably thinks
he is pushed to take these hardline stands to prevent the RW from completely co-opting issues of French secularism and French identity, and emerging even stronger. But in such a broad crackdown, and particularly on civil society organisations that act as a bridge between the
State and Muslim communities, he obviously pushes more Muslims to distrust the French State.
What France is dealing with is not a 'crisis in Islam', as Macron says, but a crisis of identity, among young French Muslims, shaped by experiences of systemic discrimination & the
What France is dealing with is not a 'crisis in Islam', as Macron says, but a crisis of identity, among young French Muslims, shaped by experiences of systemic discrimination & the
absence of long term secure jobs (in factories etc which were lost with deindustrialization). It was these jobs and institutions like trade unions that had somewhat helped integrate their parents generation into the national mainstrean.
Anyway, the French will eventually realise
Anyway, the French will eventually realise
strict laicite model simply does not work when you have the integrate people with a vastly different religion/culture. And they have no option but to devise a model that can integrate what is 10% of the population. Grandstanding on originalist founding ideals is not a solution.
Links to the survey figures
https://www.arabobserver.com/french-survey-islam-more-important-than-european-values/
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN11O0ET
https://www.arabobserver.com/french-survey-islam-more-important-than-european-values/
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN11O0ET
P.S. I get 82% is still a low number, it should really be closer to 100%. But it's weird that people from India are getting shocked at this, where 35% of *police personnel* justify beef related lynchings, let alone ordinary folks. http://www.indianexpress.com/article/india/survey-50-per-cent-cops-feel-muslims-naturally-prone-to-crime-5942783/lite/
I remember writing this in 2015 in my blog in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo attacks. It's weird that five years on, we are still at the same place, with a public debate that is still given to absolutes.
