A Maze of Identities for the Muslims of France

To enter the Rue du Bon Pasteur in the heart of this Mediterranean port is to leave France. Or rather, it is to leave a France still fixed in the imagination of many, a land where French is spoken and the traditions of a secular society are enforced.

The Rue du Bon Pasteur — the Street of the Good Shepherd — is a haven owned, operated and populated by Arab Muslims. Arabic is spoken here. All the women cover their hair with scarves. Men in robes and sandals sit together in cafes where they reach out to Arabia via satellite television.

The kiosk on the corner sells a score of newspapers and magazines flown in daily from the Arab world. The Attaqwa mosque in the middle of the street calls so many worshipers to prayer every Friday that dozens of them are forced to lay out their prayer rugs on the street.

That street reflects the political and social reality facing France. Demography has transformed the country, whose population is about 7 percent Arab and Muslim, the highest percentage in Western Europe.

The figures are more striking in Marseille, where about 10 percent is Arab and about 17 percent Muslim, a figure that is elevated by immigrants from the African former French colony of the Comoros.

"We are no longer a France of baguettes and berets, but a France of `Allah-u akbar' and mosques," said Mustapha Zergour, the director of Radio Gazelle, a station geared to the Arab community.

Complicating its troublesome place in society is that much of the Arab-Muslim population in France not only feels alienated from mainstream France but also split within itself — by ethnicity, history, religiosity, politics and class.

Muslims have lived here since the colonization of Algeria in the 1830's, and many have been integrated into middle-class life for decades. But with the Arab population surging in recent decades, France faces twin identity crises: that of the nation itself and that of its Muslims.

These show themselves in many of the same symptoms that can be found among challenged minorities anywhere — in lawlessness and joblessness, in broken families and in the abuse of women impossibly trying to appease the demands of competing cultures.

"I don't feel French," said Jamila Laaliou, 24, an employee of the Marché du Soleil, a covered food market by the mosque. "I have never felt French. Here I feel safe, because everyone is Arab. But the France outside is a France of racism, and the racism has gotten worse since Sept. 11."

Born in France of Moroccan parents, the young woman said she obeyed the French law that required her to go bareheaded when she attended public schools. But the dress she now chooses is telling of the line she walks as a Muslim women living in a Muslim community in a Western country. She wears what she calls a "half-veil," a black scarf tied behind her neck that is less than the full head covering that might provoke French sensibilities yet symbolizes her commitment to Islam and shields her from the advances of men in the rough northern suburb where she lives.

"If you dress with a veil no one here bothers you," she said. "But the French, when they see a woman who wears the veil they think `terrorist.' "

President Jacques Chirac has insisted that his stance against the war in Iraq was based on moral principles. But polls show that it has won overwhelming support among France's restive Arab-Muslim population, which has praised him as "king of the Beurs," the name given to North African immigrants.

To help integrate Arabs and Muslims into French society, the center-right government has embarked on an ambitious project to create an official Islam for France.

Last Sunday, half of France's Muslim population went to the polls to elect representatives to a national Muslim council that will address issues like education, dress and work. The other half will vote next Sunday. Similar councils have long existed for Catholics, Protestants and Jews.

But the Arab-Muslim leadership in Marseille is so divided that a "grand mosque" like ones in cities like Paris and Lyon cannot be built, because there is no agreement on what its purpose would be or who would head it. A sprawling building that once served as a slaughterhouse and was designated by the city as a suitable site years ago sits empty.

One of the city's main cheerleaders for the grand mosque is Soheib Bencheikh, an Algerian cleric who is cleanshaven and wears a suit and tie.

He wants a big, beautiful mosque that will teach what he calls "true Islam," not radicalism. Alongside would be a cultural center to show "the beautiful face of Islam" via poetry readings, concerts and dance performances.

In recent years, though, Marseille has witnessed a surge in fundamentalist clerics who preach a strict interpretation of the Koran that opposes activities like music and dancing. One increasingly popular movement is led by Mourad Zerfaoui, a bearded Algerian biologist who wears clerical garb when he preaches and lay clothes when he teaches.

At Al Islah mosque last Friday, Mr. Zerfaoui alternated between Arabic and French to appeal to an increasingly young congregation that does not understand Arabic.

Branding Arab leaders as "far from God," he said, "They are humiliated, these puppets who move in the hands of the West and America."

His message is particularly appealing to a vast underclass of young people who live in crime-ridden high-rise buildings in isolated wastelands. It is there that Mr. Zarfaoui's followers try to lure teenage boys toward the cause of conservative Islam, and according to his followers, they are making headway as tutors and even informal surrogate fathers.

Police investigators are also seeing a new trend: crimes committed in the name of Islam. "It used to be the case that when one became a religious Muslim one obeyed the law," said one veteran investigator. "That's no longer the case."

More often than not it is poverty, not ideology, that breeds crime. The Bellevue Pyat high-rise slum in central Marseille, for example, inhabited mostly by Muslims from more than half a dozen countries, is littered with garbage and infested with rats, roaches and scorpions. It is so dangerous, the police investigator said, that many officers refuse to enter the complex.

"Whoever is the strongest rules here," said Sid-Ahmed Minouni, who trains teenage boys at a boxing school just outside. "For many young people the only language is the language of force."

The violence of the streets has penetrated the schools as well. Last month at the Edgard Quinet school, whose student body is 95 percent Muslim, three North African teenagers tied the hands and feet of a 14-year-old girl from Algeria named Naima. They put her into a garbage pail and threw lighted cigarette butts into it before they closed the lid. She was rescued by classmates and took refuge in the school.

After Jean Pellegrini, the principal, filed a complaint with the police, the mother and brother of one of the boys demanded that he withdraw it. "The brother told me his mother was suffering and we had shamed the family," Mr. Pellegrini said. "I said, `I understand the shame, but a young girl has been attacked.' When he tried to hit me and threatened to kill me, I called the police."

Although the incident could have happened in any inner-city school, the prejudices in traditional societies that devalue women made the event more difficult to deal with, teachers and students said. "If you dare to wear tight pants or a short skirt, the boys will call you `easy,' `a dog,' `a whore,' " said one 15-year-old girl.

For Mr. Pellegrini, the problem is larger: a feeling of alienation from French society. "The kids feel that somehow integration doesn't work," he said. "They know that doors will remain shut not because of their religion, but because of the way they talk, the places they come from and sometimes the color of their skin."

France is Not a Western Country Anymore

By Guy Milliere

FrontPageMagazine.com | March 31, 2003

French-bashing is everywhere in the American media. I am French, and I must say
if Americans knew completely what's happening in France, the French-bashing
would be far harsher.

Jacques Chirac has been a friend of Saddam Hussein for more than thirty years.
He allowed the sale of nuclear facilities to Iraq that were destroyed just in
time by Israël. He sold Iraq the planes that were been used to gas thousands of
Kurds. And Saddam is not the only friend Chirac has. Chirac has never met a
ruthless dictator he did not like. Worse, Chirac is unprincipled and greedy. It
is common knowledge in France that he stole a lot of money when he was the mayor
of Paris, and everyone knows that if he had not been re-elected in May 2002, he
would be in jail now. To hear him speaking about morality or international law
nauseates every decent Frenchman.

And Chirac is not the only politician of this stripe in France. These days, it
is becoming hard to find a French politician ready to speak about human rights,
freedom or democracy. All of them seem to have the same speechwriter or to
belong to the same totalitarian political party; all of them are anti-American,
anti-Israeli and "pacifists." They regard Western civilization as something
filthy and abhorrent.

If you read the newspapers, it's the same. At times it seems the only
difference between the Soviet Union twenty years ago and France today is that in
Soviet Union you had only one Pravda, and in France you now have at least ten
such propaganda outlets: Different titles, same content. Their party line is
clear in reporting on the personalities found in the present Middle Eastern
crisis. Saddam Hussein, the "President of Iraq"? Well, maybe he has been brutal,
but you know, in "those" countries... George W. Bush? He 's a "moron" - a former
alcoholic, who has become a crazy fanatic, in fact the most dangerous man on the
face of earth. Ariel Sharon? A fascist who loves to kill Arabs. Arafat? A great
freedom fighter. When an American general speaks, it is merely propaganda, but
when Tariq Aziz pontificates, it is pure truth. Almost everyday you hear
anti-Semitic remarks, to boot.

The anti-Semitism has created a threat to the physical safety for French Jews.
Almost every week, some Jews get mugged, simply for being Jews. Almost nobody
pays attention to it. When an anti-Semitic act is so disgusting it is impossible
to hide it, journalists will speak of "confrontation between communities." When
confronted with the reality that these "confrontations" are always Muslims
attacking Jews, the editorial response: "Just because

there has yet to be a single documented case of a Jew attacking a Muslim yet
doesn't mean it will never happen. . . ."

And Jews are not the only victims of France's new identification with radical
Islam. In many French cities with a growing radical Islamist population, no
teenage girl can go out in the evening, at least not without a full burqa. If
she does, it will mean that "she is for everybody": in short, a whore. In the
same cities, every teenage girl - regardless of religion - has to wear the
Muslim veil if she does not want to be harassed or killed. Almost every month, a
young woman is mugged and raped in a suburb of a big city. Gang rape has become
so frequent that a new word, used by the rapists themselves to define their
hideous actions, is used by everybody:

tournantes (revolving). To the rapists, the woman is nothing, a mere object to
be thrown away after use. The people who speak about "revolving" seem to forget
a human being is involved as the victim. Policemen do nothing. Every decent
person knows the problem is Islam, but no one dares to say it. It could be
dangerous. The streets are not safe.

One year ago, a French Muslim decided to create a new business: he was tired of
seeing people drinking Coca-Cola - all this money going to Americans! He found a
factory and started to produce Mecca Cola. On the label, he put a picture of the
Al Aqsa mosque, with a large part of his profits would help to support the
Palestinian cause. In some suburbs of Paris, Coca-Cola has disappeared; Mecca
Cola has replaced it. A few days ago, another Muslim

businessman announced he will start to sell Muslim-Up. It will have the taste of
Sprite or Seven-Up, but it will be a Muslim drink - and naturally the profits
will go to the Palestinian jihad, as well.

Three radio stations in France are Muslim radio stations, and if you listen to
them, dedicated to broadcasting the voice of hate and racism all day long. One
radio station belongs to a friend of the rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen, and
curiously, if you listen to it, you will hear the same voice of hate and racism.
Rightists and radical Muslims have discovered they have many things in common.

If you want to understand why all this is happening, you have to understand one
thing: thirty years ago, French governments started to have a new foreign
policy. They called this new policy, "Arabian Policy." France became closer to
Arab countries - all of them disgusting dictatorships. France "benefited" by
doing business easily in these countries. In exchange, France had to push Europe
to unknot its ties with Israël and the United States. In

exchange too, "professors" came from the Arabian dictatorships to teach the
Arabic language to the young Arabs living in France. The only book they used to
teach the Arabic language was THE book, Al Kuran.

Now comes the time to pay the check: six million Muslims live in France, at
least ten per cent of them are radical Islamists poised on the edge of violence.
And these radical Muslims have allies on both the extreme Left and the extreme
Right. France is not a Western country anymore, it is now the leader of the
Arab/Muslim world. Israel has to know France is its main enemy. The United
States has to understand they have nothing to expect from today's France except
nastiness, treason, and cheating.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6976

"A terrible chasm has opened up in French society, dramatically exemplified by a story that an acquaintance told me. He was driving along a six-lane highway with housing projects on both sides, when a man tried to dash across the road. My acquaintance hit him at high speed and killed him instantly.

According to French law, the participants in a fatal accident must stay as near as possible to the scene, until officials have elucidated all the circumstances. The police therefore took my informant to a kind of hotel nearby, where there was no staff, and the door could be opened only by inserting a credit card into an automatic billing terminal. Reaching his room, he discovered that all the furniture was of concrete, including the bed and washbasin, and attached either to the floor or walls.

The following morning, the police came to collect him, and he asked them what kind of place this was. Why was everything made of concrete?

“But don’t you know where you are, monsieur?” they asked. “C’est la Zone, c’est la Zone.”

La Zone is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

Theodore Dalrymple - The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris.

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