John Lichfield is a former foreign editor of the Independent and was the newspaper’s Paris correspondent for 20 years.
Emmanuel Macron got it right the first time.
In a speech last month, the French president promised a new law against what he called “Islamist separatism.” There must be, he said, stronger rules to defend France’s secular and democratic values and to stop radical Islamism from splitting France’s 5 million Muslims from the rest of the country.
That draft law, which has been leaked to the press, will be presented at the French Cabinet meeting on December 9. But what it won’t address is another problem Macron identified in his speech: the social marginalization of young Muslims. “We have created our own form of separatism,” Macron said in his speech at Les Mureaux west of Paris on October 2. “We have created districts where the promises of the Republic (ie liberty, fraternity, equality) are no longer kept.”
The president was talking about the 1,500 public housing estates in the inner suburbs of Paris and other French cities — often known generically as “les banlieues” — where the rate of youth unemployment can be up to 40 percent.
Since the banlieues riots of 2005, economic conditions in these places have worsened — especially so after the coronovirus epidemic destroyed or suspended many casual, low-paid jobs. Not all the inhabitants of such places are Muslims, but many of the 5 million French Muslims live in such places.
In his speech at Les Mureaux, Macron promised a plan of action this fall to bring “profound changes” to the inner suburbs — especially for younger Muslims. Without such action he said, the banlieues would remain a “fertile soil” in which extremist, Islamist propaganda would grow.
He also announced the creation of a new French “institute of Islam” to promote understanding in France of the Islamic world’s contributions to science, philosophy, art and literature.
Nothing much has been heard of either promise since.
‘Republican values’
Much blood, and many angry words, have been spilled since the Les Mureaux speech. Two weeks after Macron spoke, a history teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded close to his school in the western Paris suburbs. Paty had shown controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammed to a civics class on freedom of expression and the secular French state. Less than two weeks after his murder, a young Tunisian migrant killed three people inside a church in Nice.
Macron’s promised draft law on “separatism” has generated enormous controversy on social media — largely based on willful misrepresentation.
To be sure, the proposed law “to strengthen Republican values” is clumsily worded in places. Parts of it may yet be struck out by France’s constitutional watchdog, the Constitutional Council. But the draft is certainly not the “attack on Islam” portrayed by some reporting in U.S. media and commentary online.
Home-schooling for children over 3 years old will be banned with some very targeted exceptions. The educational registration numbers already given to most children in France will be extended to those who go to unlicensed, private schools.
But the aim is not to restrict Muslim access to education as some inflammatory tweets suggested at the weekend. It is to make sure Muslim girls and boys aren’t vanishing from the system into schools which preach an extremist version of Islam.
In addition to these measures, religious or other associations that receive public subsidies would have to sign a charter on respect for “Republican values.” The charter is being drawn up by the main French Muslim umbrella group, representing nine organizations. It will state, inter alia, that Islam is a “religion, not a political movement.”
Separately from the new law, Macron has also asked French Muslim leaders to agree to incentives and guidelines for the training and nationwide recognition of French imams. There are 2,500 mosques or Muslim prayer rooms in France but only 800 imams recognized by the main Muslim associations — 300 of them foreign, some unable to speak French.
These proposals were drawn up in consultation with “moderate” or “mainstream” imams and other Muslim leaders and intellectuals. (There is, of course, no easy definition of what is moderate or mainstream, because there is no universally accepted structure for Islam in France. This is part of the problem which Macron seeks to address.)
‘Equality of opportunity’
The draft law is necessary. There have been 30 serious Islamist terror attacks in France in eight years. France has five million people of Muslim faith or from Muslim backgrounds — more, proportionally, than any other EU country. A growing number of younger Muslims say that they view France’s laws and secular principles as inferior and contrary to the laws of Islam.
But a majority of French Muslims — two-thirds — are non-practicing or rarely practicing. More than 70 percent see no threat to their religious freedom from the French secular state.
In other words, Macron is trying to create new rules to defend France’s secular and democratic values — but also to defend the right of the great majority of French Muslims to live and worship free from foreign-subsidized radical propaganda.
And yet, on its own — and by Macron’s own admission — the proposed new law is lame and incomplete. As he recognized in his speech last month, France needs to do more to make its Muslim citizens feel fully part of France. Radical propaganda and social marginalization were twin problems, he said, which must be “tackled in parallel …over years and years.”
He promised new efforts on “equality of opportunity” and to combat discrimination in the jobs and housing markets. He pledged that “part of French youth would no longer be treated as an expendable commodity.”
But while we have seen the proposals combatting radical Islam, what of the promises on equality of opportunity and the struggles of the multi-racial banlieues?
At the request of 100 disadvantaged suburban towns, the French government pledged this week that €1 billion of France’s €100-billion, two-year, post-epidemic “relaunch” program would be “ring-fenced” for them. This is not, however, a special effort or the promised long-term plan. It is money which, pro rata, the struggling suburbs could have expected in any case.
What of Macron’s “profound changes” in France’s approach to housing, jobs and les banlieues? Be patient. They are coming, French officials say. That’s not what Macron promised in his Les Mureaux speech.
He said poverty and marginalization do not explain or justify violent extremism but they are inextricably linked and must be tackled together. He said that extremism and the soil in which it grows must be “addressed in parallel …over years and years.”
He was right on all these counts. Macron should reread his own speech. Were he to forget, or indefinitely postpone, his promises to Muslim France, it would be making a terrible blunder.