A French Requiem
A French Requiem
On January 7, the literary event everyone was expecting did not occur. Indeed, the long-awaited publication of Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel, Soumission—which envisions, in 2022, the second round of a French presidential election opposing Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, and Mohammed Ben Abbès, head of the Muslim Brotherhood—was overshadowed by the attack on the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Instead of the fictional “civil war between Muslim immigrants and Western Europe natives” imagined in Houellebecq’s novel, two jihadists affiliated with Al Qaeda had killed twelve people including five famous cartoonists.
While the controversial novelist swiftly left the capital, renouncing the promotion of his book in the media, several commentators including experts and politicians saw in the attack the realization of his fictional scenario and anticipated a real confrontation between the far right and Muslim fundamentalists. It did not take place—at least in the short term. Four days after the attacks, an estimated 4 million people took to the streets across the country carrying signs with the words “Je suis Charlie,” in the largest and most consensual demonstration since the Second World War.
However, the apparent unanimity soon collapsed. Although the government insisted that a distinction had to be made between jihadists and Muslims, the latter felt they were regarded with widespread suspicion, being constantly required to express not only their absolute rejection of violence but also their allegiance to a form of radical secularism that implied identification with those who derided their religion. “Why can’t you say: ‘I am Charlie?’” they were repeatedly asked, as if it were necessary for them to adhere to the values of a magazine which, after more than one thousand Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood supporters were gunned down at a protest in Cairo, published a cartoon showing a Muslim being shot down, his sacred book in his hands, with the caption: “The Quran is bullshit! It isn’t bulletproof!” Although the French authorities promised to send law enforcement agents to guard places of worship, only synagogues were benefiting from the presence of police, while mosques were left unprotected, even as more shootings, arsons, and threats on mosques were carried out in the twelve days following the Charlie Hebdo attacks than in the entire preceding year.
But the supposed national unity confronted its most disturbing challenge when it emerged that many students in schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods had refused to observe the moment of silence for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack and, in the ensuing discussions with their teachers, had contested the cartoonists’ right to mock the Prophet or simply wondered why certain deaths deserved collective mourning while others did not. The Ministry of Education reported 200 such incidents, which were greatly scrutinized in the media for the next few days, despite the fact that they only affected 0.3 percent of schools and an even lower proportion of classes. Punishment of the young dissidents was extremely harsh, including expulsions from schools, court summonses, and arrests—most notably that of an eight-year-old boy. Elsewhere, several frenzied and in some cases intoxicated or even psychologically disturbed men publicly rejoiced at the deaths of the cartoonists: they were immediately put on trial and sentenced to up to eighteen months of prison for justification of terrorism. For many, these various incidents, abundantly commented on in the press, contributed to a sense that France’s Muslims were not loyal to the values of the Republic. Meanwhile, it took some time to publicly acknowledge that one of the three officers killed by the murderers was Arab and that the man who had hidden several of the hostages in the kosher store’s cold room was Malian, both Muslims; the latter ended up being naturalized as a French citizen in the presence of prominent members of the government.
For decades, France has rejected and belittled its immigrants and their children, especially those from its former colonies or protectorates in North and sub-Saharan Africa. They have been concentrated in housing projects, discriminated against on the job market, and repeatedly stigmatized by political leaders, including former presidents Jacques Chirac, who spoke of their “noise and smell,” and Nicolas Sarkozy, who called them “scum.” Among Muslims more specifically, who form the majority of this population, those practicing their religion often pray in the basements of apartment buildings or in prefabs nearby because they do not have municipal authorization to erect mosques. They constantly have to justify their adherence to the principles of secularism and equality whereas these principles are much more loosely implemented for other groups, who have private religious schools, for instance. They are expected to accept the desecration and denigration of their most revered leader in the name of free speech while those who contest of or even show irreverence toward crimes against humanity are punished. The veil worn by a small minority of women became the object of a heated national debate while other communities’ conspicuous symbols had never been regarded as a problem.
The research I have conducted over the past ten years on the French police, justice, and prison systems shows that ethnic minorities living in disadvantaged neighborhoods are disproportionately subject to being stopped and frisked in the street, more severely punished in court cases, and overrepresented in jails for minor offenses. Quantitative studies show that Arab and black men are, respectively, eight and six times more likely to have their identities checked in the metro than their white counterparts; that they face twice as many prison sentences for similar offenses; and that they represent two-thirds of all inmates in correctional facilities. For them, the state stands for oppression and unfairness. Although most of them are French, they generally use that word to designate white citizens, as if they understood they were rejected from the national community.
Yet, contrary to Fox News’s ludicrous depiction of a country in chaos on par with Afghanistan, the great majority of young people in the banlieues silently endure this situation. They do not reject the values of the Republic—simply request that these values be extended to them. With the support of local organizations and committed professionals, they patiently try to overcome their social lot. Some successfully achieve upward social mobility. A few, however, are tempted by religious radicalization, sometimes while incarcerated for petty crime, whereas others merely express their resentment by verbally supporting what they see as a form of resistance to their collective victimization.
To condemn such practices is necessary. To understand their causes is no less crucial. But ever since Prime Minister Lionel Jospin famously dismissed all explanation of social causes as “sociological excuses,” interpretations of the roots and processes of the profound disparities within French society have been regarded as illegitimate, the emphasis being put exclusively on individual responsibility.
The risk in France is not that the National Front or the Muslim Brotherhood will win a presidential election, as Houellebecq has provocatively predicted. The real danger for contemporary democracies is what Tzvetan Todorov calls their “inner enemies.” The French problem does not reside in political extremists or a religious minority. It lies in the mainstream and the majority, in their reflexive capacity, and ultimately in what Michel Foucault names “the courage of truth.” The danger is that national unity will be realized at the expense of those who are denied full citizenship because of their origin, color, religion, and social class. It is that the government and the population will continue to ignore the increasing inequalities and growing gap within French society. The optimistic alternative to such a dark scenario is that people take stock of this danger and realistically confront the challenge it represents. If this alternative becomes reality, the heartening cry of the millions of marchers will not have been lost in the cold air of a January afternoon and the silence of those who did not march will have been respected.
Didier Fassin is the James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is the author of Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing (Polity) and L’Ombre du monde: Une anthropologie de la condition carcérale (Seuil).
