PARIS — In France, where terrorists tied to the Islamic State have launched three deadly strikes in less than two years, an informal ritual has developed after each attack: Threats are made against French Muslims followed by reports of discrimination and even assaults against Muslims. The Collective Against Islamophobia in France has reported dozens of such incidents within weeks after last year’s two attacks in Paris and the attack in Nice this past summer.
The rift between some citizens and the country’s second-largest religious group crystallized this summer on the country’s beaches. In late August, police surrounded one woman and forced her to remove her burkini, a swimsuit that covers a woman’s body except for the face, hands and feet, The Daily Telegraph reported. Another woman was fined for wearing a headscarf, tunic and leggings.
The post-attacks public mood in France is posing a test for the long-held French value of “laïcité,” the secular separation of church and state, which has been written into law since 1905. On the political far right, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, a national conservative party that has seen its support grow in recent years, said the “soul of France” was at stake in the debate on whether to allow wearing burkinis.
To improve relations with its Muslim communities, the government announced in August that it will re-activate and revitalize its Foundation for Islam in France, an organization aimed at promoting Islamic culture in the country and centralizing funding for building mosques and training imams.
In so doing, the government has drawn criticism. It named non-Muslim politician Jean-Pierre Chevènement to lead the organization, a move that has sparked criticism from Muslims. Critics of Chevènement, a 77-year-old politician who served as minister in national governments in the 1980s and ’90s, have pointed to his comments for calling Muslims to use “discretion” in the context of wearing burkinis, as a disqualifier.
For Marwan Muhammad, director of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, the appointment of Chevènement speaks to a greater tone deafness behind the initiative to restore the Foundation.
READ: [In France, Anxiety Deepens After Attack]
“There is no Islam of France. There is only Islam as a religion and a spirituality,” Muhammad says. “Speaking of reforming the Islam of France after each terrorist attack is making Muslims bear the responsibility for the government’s failures on the security front.”
The debate over the country’s relationship with its Muslim population follows three traumatizing attacks that began in January 2015 when two brothers forced their way into the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris and killed 12 people. Last November, a series of coordinated bombings and attacks across the capital claimed at least 130 more lives. This past summer in the Mediterranean coastal city of Nice, more than 80 people died after a cargo truck was deliberately driven into crowds celebrating Bastille Day.
The government’s more than century-old adherence to secularism prohibits it from meddling in groups’ religious affairs, nor can it finance them. As a result, the country’s Muslim population, a body whose numbers are only matched by Germany in Europe, according to Pew Research, has relied on international assistance to help fund mosques and private schools.
Algeria and Morocco, as well as Turkey, send substantial amounts of support to France. More than 300 imams in France are employed by their foreign home states. In total, only 20 percent to 30 percent of imams in France are French. This might be partly due to the fact that there is no centralized training to become an imam in France.
In its determination to create an Islam of France, moderate and in accordance to its Republican values, the French government will have to strictly comply with the subtleties of laïcité, rather than distorting it to advance a political project.
“The law of 1905 imposes neutrality on the State, not on society,” Olivier Roy, a famous Islamologist, said in an interview with the French financial newspaper Les Échos.
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