Chirac's Narrow Path
VALLS-RUSSELL, JANICE
France and the Muslim World Chirac's Narrow Path By Janice Valls-Russell Paris There are times when politicians and their constituents seem to take pains to outdo their own...
...They represent the main movements of French Islam: The National Federation of Muslims in France (which has ties to Morocco) obtained 20 of the Council's 58 seats...
...Over the years, the French President has developed a knack for being in step with public moods...
...and Britain as to permanently damage relations with them...
...The four remaining seats are held by government appointees, who include a woman (the only one on the Council) and a representative of secular French Muslims...
...This is "a priority," he declared, "France's young Muslims need imams who can understand them, who speak their language, who are steeped in French culture, society and traditions...
...and 15 to the reputedly moderate Muslim Institute of the Great Mosque of Paris...
...The assertiveness of Iraq's Shi'ite community since Saddam's ouster is, here as elsewhere, a source of concern...
...The relatively few times I heard the subject being broached, it was usually by antiwar Britons and Americans who felt a need to convince their French friends that not everyone in their countries endorsed their leaders' decisions...
...In the case of Iraq, he again proved to be intimately attuned to the public's sentiment—even more so than a year ago, when he routed National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the runoff for the presidency by capturing 82.2 per cent of the votes...
...France provided a striking example in the lead-up to the war against Iraq...
...bid for Security Council support...
...Given those circumstances, one might think Iraq was the main topic of everyday conversation here...
...Still, like Muslims elsewhere, they are grateful to Chirac for his firm opposition to the war in Iraq...
...At the same meeting the Interior Minister was booed when he said that it was unthinkable to allow Muslim women to wear headdresses for their identity card photos...
...do the "dirty work" for it and everyone else...
...Borrowing a script from General Charles de Gaulle, President Jacques Chirac seemed bent on assuming the role of the righteous international figure opposing the pugnacious unilateralist American President George W. Bush...
...It urges them to infiltrate civil service and university circles, and to model their lobbying techniques on those of the Jewish community...
...On May 3, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy officially convened the new French Council for the Muslim Religion, whose members were elected in mosques nationwide on April 6 and 13...
...But he did not take sides in the ongoing controversy over whether girls should be permitted to attend school in headdresses...
...At protest meetings and marches politicians across the spectrum —from Chirac's dominant Center-Right coalition to the Socialists, Greens, Trotskyites, and far-Right formations—railed against the conflict...
...Secularism is highly valued in France...
...By threatening to use its veto in the United Nations Security Council, and trying to establish an antiwar front with Russia and Germany, it revived American and British memories of uneasy relations with their prickly ally during World War II and the decades that followed...
...It also claims, accurately or not, that 10 deputies of the Center-Right were elected thanks to Muslim votes, and that the Union is responsible for a petition advocating a boycott of Israeli universities by French academics, which has been endorsed by at least one Paris university...
...Many do not speak French and have no knowledge of the country's institutions...
...So they see the French President not as someone replaying Gaullist stereotypes, but as a leader attuned to his country's ethnic and religious complexities...
...Of course, antipathy to the war did not mean support for Saddam...
...France does not accept that for Catholic nuns, he pointed out...
...A newspaper I picked up in a cafe had the following scribbled on a page by a previous reader: "Good for Bush, shame on Chirac...
...If Islam is to be fully integrated in the French Republic, its ministers must themselves be fully integrated in our Republic, and therefore trained in France...
...Here and there, though, you can hear some saying that France played tough in the Iraqi "game" and lost...
...A man who enjoys wading through crowds while shaking hands and kissing girls, he has built his popularity on his responsiveness to a broad range of concerns...
...and he warned of a split between the West and the Muslim world (echoing admonishments made during the 1991 Gulf War and the recent U.S...
...In particular, the emergence of a strong Muslim community in France contributed to Chirac's posture...
...Several Center-Rightists have signaled their regret that he waited almost 24 hours before publicly "rejoicing" at the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime...
...They also highlight the colossal cost of the operation, the breakdown of Iraq's infrastructure, and the difficulty of establishing a democratic government in Baghdad...
...a young man wearing a kippa is viewed as a Jew before being viewed as a young man...
...But at some antiwar demonstrations a number of Muslims harassed Jewish marchers, even though they happened to favor creating a Palestinian state...
...Most people simply avoided the topic, especially once the news shifted to revelations of Iraqi military incompetence and the overall reluctance of civilians to risk death for Saddam Hussein...
...their emotional ties to their native countries would have made it difficult for them to support a Western nation's attack on an Arab country...
...The rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, who was named chairman of the Council, has sounded a different note: "The time has come for us to behave responsibly," he says...
...And a gathering on May 5 in support of France's secularism was marred when young Jewish extremists started insulting a group of young Muslim women...
...Surprisingly, it was not...
...Unlike the Jewish and mainstream Christian constituencies, France's 5 million Muslims had no official representatives until this spring...
...he decried the human cost of what he believed would be a drawn-out struggle...
...One Socialist deputy made the case for a ban in stark terms: "A young woman wearing a veil is viewed as a Muslim before being viewed as a young woman...
...The domestic context, though, was quite different from the one de Gaulle knew...
...Sarkozy is criticized in some quarters as having leaned rather too heavily on the Union of Islamic Organizations...
...Indeed, in the wake of the Iraqi war politicians and intellectuals have recently been debating whether France's commitment to secular principles should be reinforced...
...It is considered a vital component of the country's republican ethos, and is seen as the best way to counter religious and ethnic intolerance...
...In April, while addressing the annual congress of the Union of Islamic Organizations, Sarkozy made it clear that he thought one of the new Council's first tasks should be training the imams...
...Interestingly, the comparative handful of politicians who cautiously distanced themselves from the near-unanimous endorsement of Chirac's stance came from his own camp...
...The major reasons for that were their internal divisions, plus the economic and political grip of their countries of origin, largely Algeria and Morocco—who with Saudi Arabia finance most of the mosques and imams here...
...Another deputy in the governing majority, Axel Poniatowski, who is chairman of the France-United States Friendship Association, has lamented France's "diplomatic fiasco": "By threatening to use our veto, I'm afraid we got our enemies wrong: The enemy was Saddam Hussein, not America...
...France and the Muslim World Chirac's Narrow Path By Janice Valls-Russell Paris There are times when politicians and their constituents seem to take pains to outdo their own stereotypical image...
...19 went to the Union of Islamic Organizations in France, a group closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and considered to be fundamentalist...
...The selection of both was strongly contested by the two leading groups...
...Another aspect of the effort to bolster secularism is the government's encouraging the Muslim community to become part of the French institutional scene...
...Posters of him were occasionally brandished at antiwar marches, but generally they were swiftly removed...
...Others posit that France was happy to let the U.S...
...The weekly L'Express, respected for the quality of its investigative journalism, has gained access to an encrypted CDROM circulated among the Union's elites...
...The efficiency is precisely what worries some observers...
...Center-Right deputies Claude Goasguen and Pierre Lellouche early on warned Chirac not to go so far in his condemnation of the U.S...
...Of the rest, 40 per cent are Moroccan, 24 per cent Algerian, 15 per cent Turkish, 6 per cent Tunisian, and 5 percent come from various other African and Middle Eastern countries...
...Essentially, his resistance was a five pronged affair: He refused to condone a war he considered unnecessary...
...he insisted on the need for a UN mandate (while determinedly blocking every U.S...
...They attend high school to learn to live together, as young men and women, and fellow citizens, not to emphasize their religious differences...
...One problem area is the tension between the Jewish and Muslim communities that has been exacerbated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...
...A poll taken in the first days of the war found that a staggering 92 per cent of those questioned opposed it, and 87 per cent approved Chirac's handling of the matter...
...The Interior Ministry estimates that only 10 per cent of the imams active in France are French...
...Persistent opponents of the invasion now focus on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, President Bush's main argument for the war...
...He counters that it is efficient and exists in several regions of France...
...In fact, many immigrants from North Africa simply aspire to get on with their lives here, and to be free to choose for themselves how to dress and whether to worship ornot...
...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...
...Some saw his government as a distasteful yet necessary bulwark against Iran's ayatollahs...
...military action in Afghanistan...
...Others are more concerned by Muslim youths refusing to take orders from women teachers...
...Fearing the situation could become explosive during the fighting in Iraq, Education Minister Luc Ferry instructed principals to make sure any such violence was not re-enacted in school playgrounds...
...Whatever reluctant sympathy his regime received was due in part to its supposedly secular nature...
Vol. 86 • May 2003 • No. 3
