Author: Barbara Amiel
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: January 26, 2004
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/01/26/do2601.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/01/26/ixportal.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=146067
France, wrote Luigi Barzini, wouldn't
be the great and endearing country that it is, la lumière du monde,
if its quarrelsome people had not been "moulded down the centuries by antagonisms
and tensions between tribes, clans, cliques, classes, coteries, guilds,
camarillas, sects, parties, factions, regions..." The French are ever at
the barricades.
Last week the barricades were at
the prime minister's office, the Matignon, where the government was discussing
the awkward business of France's proposed new law designed to ban the Muslim
headscarf from schools. The Bill, portentously named "Application of the
Principle of Secularity", will go to the National Assembly on Wednesday,
with a peppy addition to ban beards from schools as well.
Dominique de Villepin, the foreign
minister, gravely explained that the law is not aimed at any particular
minority, community or religion, though there is, he said, some difficulty
in making the essential tolerance of it clear to Arab countries.
Domenica Perben, the justice minister,
felt the whole thrust of the issue revolved around the equality of men
and women - which clears up why the French may be forcibly shaving prematurely
mature Sikh schoolboys: they are a gender offset for de-scarfed female
Muslims.
France is facing the problem that
dare not speak its name. Though French law prohibits the census from any
reference to ethnic background or religion, many demographers estimate
that as much as 20-30 per cent of the population under 25 is now Muslim.
The streets, the traditional haunt of younger people, now belong to Muslim
youths. In France, the phrase "les jeunes" is a politically correct way
of referring to young Muslims.
Given current birth rates, it is
not impossible that in 25 years France will have a Muslim majority. The
consequences are dynamic: is it possible that secular France might become
an Islamic state?
The situation is not dissimilar
elsewhere in the EU. Europeans may at some young point in the 21st century
have to decide whether they wish to retain the diluted but traditional
Judaeo-Christian culture of their minority or have it replaced by the Islamic
culture of the majority.
In theory, the cultural and legal
assimilation of Europe's Muslims would be the ideal. This was supposed
to be the notion behind the vision of the French interior minister, Nicolas
Sarkozy, of a "French church of Islam" with homegrown imams.
But knowledgeable observers say
his "moderate" Council of Muslims has made radical Islam the government-sanctioned
norm for all Muslims.
For Islamists, assimilation is contamination
since, in Professor Bernard Lewis's words, "Muslims must not sojourn in
the land of the infidel". Intermarriage should be another route to assimilation,
though in France this usually involves an Islamic male and often the wife
converts to Islam.
Meanwhile, the state of Christendom
in France is perilous. Catholics may not have reached the secular nirvana
of the Church of England's working party that declared the Sunday Sabbath
redundant, but French Catholicism, except for little pools of the faithful,
is taken with the notion that their Church will be borne forward only if
the next Pope is ready to "dialogue" with Islam - a code word that augurs
dilution of the faith.
Currently, Islamists are only a
fraction of France's Muslim population. In last week's demonstrations against
the headscarf law, only 20,000 people turned out. But as in all radical
movements, the young are the driving force. As their numbers increase,
the militancy of Islam is likely to increase as well.
Europe's chickens are coming home
to roost. The Great Powers used the Commonwealth or La Francophonie to
continue the fiction of Empire. Large numbers of people were admitted mainly
from North Africa.
The borders of mainland France seemed
extended to include Algeria. Guest workers arrived to satisfy needs for
cheap labour. Unloved by their host country, they were marginalised in
shabby living conditions, with no attempt made to assimilate them. Political
refugees and asylum seekers moved in.
Early arrivals, such as the White
Russians or the Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters, never intended to
assimilate. They were sitting out bad weather before returning home. More
recent ones, who arrived because of Nato policies in the Balkans, have
been greeted with hostility and distrust.
European countries are not organically
immigrant societies. The groups that went to America in the 18th, 19th
and 20th centuries did so specifically to become Americans. They wanted
to shed their past and, within a generation, they did. America's emphasis
today on faith and God is just an echo of the founding Pilgrims for whom
Christianity was central.
Their beliefs were reinforced by
many Christian groups, from Baptists to Mennonites, all in search of religious
freedom. These founding fathers decreed separation of church and state,
not to make sure the nation was secular, as in France, but to make sure
no state religion could interfere with religious freedom.
European countries have none of
this melting-pot principle. You cannot become German or Italian with the
same ease with which you become American. Also, into this very different
European environment came a very different sort of immigrant - people who
had no interest in assimilation at all.
They came as settlers, wanting to
establish their own communities; at best they favoured a merger - at worst,
a takeover. Their approach was nurtured by notions of multiculturalism,
a creed appealing to intellectuals, administrators and enforcers, but having
almost zero appeal to the home population.
The cultural abrasions that developed,
especially between the rapidly growing Muslim community and the French,
became the problem that could not be talked about. All respectable political
parties, journalists and academics felt it too volatile and far too politically
incorrect. The field was abandoned to extreme Right-wingers and nativists
who, by default, established the unpleasant tone of the debate and became
exclusive owners of a subject affecting the whole nation.
In the absence of openness, the
government's response was a cover-up - or, rather, an uncovering: to outlaw
Muslim headscarves, shave beards worn for reasons of faith, or ban crucifixes
if too large. In Britain, some school Nativity plays were forbidden.
There seemed to be a genuine belief
among governments that they could solve this problem by violating Western
traditions of religious freedom and by outlawing their own cultural traditions.
Far from alleviating the situation, this only aggravated it. Worse, it
gave fodder to the extreme Right.
Tribal friction has only two solutions:
groups will either unite in the manner of Normans and Saxons, melding into
a society that may have different religious practices but subscribes to
the same laws and values - in which case headscarves, beards and demographics
don't matter a fig. Or they will follow the pattern of warring tribes throughout
history.
The question is not whether French
and Muslims can co-exist with each other so long as Muslim schoolgirls
are bareheaded. Rather, it is the fundamental question of whether Muslim
groups will become part of the French nation. This is not one of those
old "querelles gauloises" that Barzini so loved. It is the fundamental
dilemma of the new century.