Some will say that secularism implies a form of legitimate distrust of religions. But the uninhibited Islamophobia that is growing in France now goes beyond the limits of distrust. It is the very negation of the universalist and humanist ideals which founded the Republic.
At a time when a growing part of the population, pushed by a fringe of extremists, is reconnecting with this irrational fear of Islam and Muslims, let us delve into the roots of this French evil. Its matrix draws on the troubled sources of colonial wars and the Algerian rift.
It is the still raw wound of this unacknowledged memory of France of the "dark years", with its practices of torture, abuses and crimes against humanity which haunt the relations of the French with some of their fellow citizens of North African origin.
How could these heirs of the victims of the worst of colonization still place their trust in a state which, half a century later, continues to deny them part of their identity and their dignity?
Islamophobia, this primary and irrational rejection of Islam and Muslims in their entirety, fuels a vicious circle of mutual distrust and unhealthy withdrawal into identity. Instead of peacefully integrating its citizens from immigrant backgrounds, France still maintains ghettos where communitarian temptations, precariousness and despair then flourish.
A large part of the 5 million French citizens from Muslim families experience this xenophobia on a daily basis: discrimination in hiring, housing problems, hateful looks in the street, police facial checks, Islamophobic invectives, etc. Added to this is the schizophrenic hypocrisy of official speeches, describing Islam as a “retrograde religion” in essence and Muslims as “second-class citizens”.
How can we be surprised, then, that the most brilliant elites from this scorned French youth are increasingly fleeing a country that rejects them? The hemorrhage to other, more welcoming and tolerant nations is accelerating. A terrible loss of talent and wealth for France.
Should we recall that in the name of the Enlightenment, the Republic established freedom of conscience and worship as founding principles? That the revolutionary fathers were committed to combating the obscurantism of fanaticism and religious oppression?
How did France come to sacrifice on the altar of blind hatred these ideals of openness, reason and tolerance which were the pride of its universalism? By cowardly giving in to the Manichaeism and populist ease of a growing part of the political, media and intellectual elites.
Basically, systematically pointing the finger at the Muslim religion and stigmatizing its practitioners is to become complicit in the same sectarian inclinations that we claim to denounce. It is undermining the secular foundations of the nation, by insidiously reintroducing a new form of oppression and state hostility towards a particular religion. It is high time that the Republic stopped betraying its noblest ideals. May she regain her moral integrity in the face of the nauseating pressures of small Islamophobic groups. May it once again become the France of the Enlightenment, land of asylum for oppressed peoples, generous utopia and refuge of freedom of conscience for all.
Political and media entrepreneurs
Unfortunately, some of the political, media and intellectual elites did not hesitate to play with these old demons of stigmatization for their electoral calculations or their thirst for easy ratings. Through demagoguery and opportunism, some have not hesitated to stir up fears and prejudices instead of fighting them.
By constantly designating the so-called "threat" of Islam as the sole scapegoat for the ills of French society, by demonizing without nuance entire sections of the population, these entrepreneurs of vindictiveness have trivialized a climate of distrust and rejection carrying worst abuses.
Whether they are driven by an assumed far-right ideology or by simple electoral ulterior motives, these slayers of the “republican divide” have paradoxically contributed to increasingly widening community divides. By playing on the populist fiber of fear of the Other and withdrawal into identity.
With an escalation of sterile controversies on the values of the Republic, religious symbols or secularism, they have engaged in a real cultural battle against a part of the French population, now presented as foreign to the national community.
Discourses of rejection and hasty amalgamations then gradually became extremely commonplace, even in intellectual spheres, accredited by pundits eager for media buzz. The Republic was thus diverted into a land of repression of individual freedoms rather than a crucible of the values of equality and universalism.
Double punishment
This spiral of rejection and distrust towards a part of our fellow citizens is all the more glaring in that it ignores the decisive historical contribution of immigrants from former colonies to national prosperity.
Let us never forget that it was the valiant arms of these workers from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and overseas departments who enabled France to rebuild itself and establish its extraordinary economic and industrial during the Thirty Glorious Years. Without them in the factories, construction sites, mines and fields, the great social success of the post-war period would not have been possible.
What ingratitude, what moral betrayal, to reject today the grandchildren of these builders in the darkest and most fragile interstices of the Republic! To confine them en masse to the ghettos of deindustrialized suburbs, these forgotten territories where social poverty has taken root.
By assimilating some of its own children to a threat, by relegating them to the margins, France is creating with its own hands the conditions for a disintegration of its model. It seals the failure of the emancipatory promise by denying these young people a dignified future, by depriving them of the means to fully belong to the national community. This immense human waste, this waste of living forces through territorial, economic and social segregation, constitutes a double iniquitous penalty for these families who have paid a heavy price for the greatness of the French nation. It is urgent to recognize this debt and pay it off, before it is too late.
Rejection of Islamism
However, it would be unfair and counterproductive to ignore the excesses of a section of Islamist currents which, through their controversial speeches and sectarian practices, also contribute to fueling fears and rejections.
The strategies of entryism and spearhead strategy carried out in France by organizations close to the Muslim Brotherhood or of Salafist and Wahhabi persuasions are factors in community fractures that cannot be ignored. Their reaffirmed desire to create a political Islam contesting the laws of the Republic, their victimizing preaching and their repeated questioning of secular principles and individual freedoms are sowing trouble.
Their attempts to interfere in the educational, religious and associative spheres to distill their rigorist theses and their reactionary ideology opposed to the values of openness and equality, are a threat that must be denounced and fought with the greatest firmness in the world. very name of freedom of conscience.
Because these theological-political movements are the first gravediggers of the civic bond, cynically exploiting fears and rejections to increasingly anchor the idea of a confessional separatism incompatible with the emancipatory promise of the French Republic. Playing a harmful game with consequences as disastrous as that of primary xenophobes and Islamophobes.
The most total lucidity is therefore required to denounce and fight resolutely, without any concession, all the forces of this civilizational chaos: whether they are the result of old stale hatreds or the new leprosy of religious radicalism, all threaten the republican foundations . Because the Republic will remain standing with its ideal of freedom, equality and universal fraternity for all, or it will no longer be.
Invisible success of integration
In the midst of these headwinds which threaten national cohesion, it is also appropriate to welcome the major progress and the invisible success of republican integration for a large part of France of Muslim faith. Far from discriminatory fantasies and political co-opting, the vast majority of this significant segment of the French population lives the values of the Republic in total harmony.
The constant increase in mixed marriages, which today concerns one in three couples in the Muslim community, is the most glaring illustration of this. It is striking proof that the principles of equality, individual freedom and emancipation carried by the Enlightenment have taken root deep in hearts and minds.
Likewise, numerous paths to social ascension and professional success bear witness to this virtuous French-style integration. Some of the most accomplished doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, engineers, athletes and artists come from these families who are regularly singled out.
It is this silent majority, in love with the same ideals as all of their compatriots, which constitutes the crucible of living together and the best guarantee against communitarian excesses or xenophobic rejections. A majority which shows every day that one can be fully Muslim and fully French, serenely reconciling their multiple heritages in the same attachment to universal values.
Denial of historical reality
Beyond this historical inequity, the uninhibited Islamophobia that is spreading represents an even more scathing denial of the very roots of Western humanism. Because let us never forget that it is to Islamic civilization, heir to ancient enlightenment, that Europe owes its ability to emerge from the darkness of the Middle Ages.
In Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and Cordoba, intellectual, artistic and scientific centers of unsuspected richness have flourished. Algebra, arithmetic, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, architecture... Muslim scholars and thinkers not only preserved and enriched the treasures of Hellenic and Oriental knowledge, but laid the foundations for the Renaissance.
It is this Arab-Muslim matrix which transmitted to the West the founding works of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Euclid and other builders of universal reason. And who bequeathed him his own jewels, from the love poetry of Rumi to the treatises of Avicenna, from Al-Khwarizmî to Averroes via Avicenna.
This creative abundance, this passion for the arts, sciences and knowledge, Europe would not have been able to absorb it without the opening to the Arab-Muslim world made possible by the Spain of convivencia and by the vectors that were Sicily and the Italian trading cities.
By giving in to the temptation of Islamophobic anathema, France and all of Europe would therefore be turning their backs on an essential part of their intellectual and humanist genealogy. They would deny this shared heritage of a common matrix, which irrigated their Renaissance before spreading its Enlightenment throughout the world.
Call for action
Faced with the continued disintegration of the French republican pact, which fuels the darkest forces of hatred and extremism. It is high time to ward off this dangerous drift by forcefully denouncing it and stemming it with the utmost energy, before it destroys the promise of the Enlightenment.
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On the history of secularism and the principle of freedom of religion in France:
- “History of secularism” by Jacqueline Lalouette (2016)
On the after-effects of the Algerian war and colonization:
- “The Algerian Syndrome” by Raphael Delpard (2002)
On the discrimination suffered by Muslims in France:
- CNCDH annual reports on racism and xenophobia
- INSEE demographic statistical studies, SOS Racisme reports
On the rise of Islamophobic discourse in public speeches:
- “The new strategy of stigmatizing Islam” - Le Monde Diplomatique, 09/2022
- “What is Islamophobia?” - L’Humanité, 04/22/2021
- “Why Islamophobia is progressing in France” - Libération, 11/15/2020
- File “Uninhibited Islamophobia” - Politis, 04/2019
On the flight of Muslim elites from France:
- “French entrepreneurs with immigrant backgrounds are leaving France” - Le Monde, 02/18/2022
- “They chose exile” - L’Obs, 03/10/2021
- “Part of the Muslim elites are leaving France” - Marianne, 05/27/2020
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