Growing Up Muslim in France

...Montpellier's skating rink shows only part of the picture...

...So far that has been ruled out by the government...

...Information collated by her office indicates that minors ofNorth African descent are the most likely victims of forced marriages...

...The day before it went into effect two major newspapers received a letter from an unknown terrorist outfit threatening attacks over the new law...

...more than half of them said they used no contraception...

...Like members of other immigrant communities, such as the Portuguese, many North Africans work hard year-round to save money and buy consumer goods for their families back home...

...Several joined the social workers in creating self-help groups to reach out to other women...

...and to allow women to unburden themselves in weekly discussion sessions over a sevenweek period...

...Ties to relatives left behind remain strong...

...In a book she has written, Le voile islamique, she compares veils to traditional Muslim architecture...

...Worryingly, an underlying current of brutality is evident among young males— against whom the headscarf provides girls some form ofprotection...

...Quite a few would have preferred a total ban on all visible religious symbols—a view supported by 72 per cent of the French population, according to another opinion poll...

...The baby is relinquished at birth, and the young mother often refuses to reveal her identity, because she is afraid of being haunted by this later in life if she marries (some request hymen restoration) and ashamed of handing down the patronym she received from her father to an illegitimate child...

...A majority of France's 5 million inhabitants of North African descent describe themselves as Muslim, but the way they relate to their religion differs widely...

...My sister was a universal woman, not a Muslim woman...

...This feminist ("not sexist," she stresses) self-help group for women of sub-Saharan and North African background is active in SaintDenis, a town on the outskirts of Paris...

...In her view, a public refusal to accommodate cultural sensitivities will further isolate Muslim women from the rest of society...

...Martine Aubry, the Mayor of Lille in the North, is a Socialist like Frèche, but the integration policies of the two are as divergent as their cities are geographically distant...

...It is a national community united in the respect of its diverse origins...

...Irritated by the way public opinion equates them with Islam, some refuse to discuss their religious faith, or lack thereof, calling it a private matter...

...A 170page report by Janine Mossuz-Lavau includes large extracts of what was said during those sessions...

...Their ignorance is compounded by inhibiting cultural patterns...

...His attitude, shared by others of his age, is grounded in tradition...

...Women of North African background formed the largest single group (27 per cent) in the study...

...Acculturation is resisted, and some fathers try to send their daughters back to be married...

...The Republican ideal, handed down by the Revolution and still cherished by the nation's teachers, promotes homo laicus, a secular citizen who is first and foremost loyal to his French identity and the Revolution's trinity—liberté, égalité, fraternit...

...Entering their homes is like stepping into a house in Casablanca or Algiers: oriental furniture, cushions, tiled floors, and no paintings on the walls, which instead display framed verses from the Koran penned in beautifully elaborate calligraphy...

...The scarf is associated with propriety and humility," says Farida...

...Inevitably, though, even those who remain deeply attached to their roots must come to terms with their new environment...

...The Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), which cultivates a cool, articulate profile, opposed the law by discreetly encouraging people to attend pro-headscarf rallies...

...The crowd was ethnically and socially mixed, with a large proportion possessing North African features...

...The commission also recommended that employees be allowed to exchange an existing Christian public holiday for a non-Christian holiday, such as the Jewish Yom Kippur or Muslim Aid-el Kebir...

...In October 2002 in the Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine, 17-year - old Sohane Benziane was doused with petrol and burned alive by an 18-year-old youth whose advances she had rejected...

...Every summer thousands return to Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia in heavily loaded cars...

...She wore a long, dark skirt and dons a headscarf when she steps outdoors...

...In some parts of Algeria, the best way to pass unnoticed is still to wear a veil, which is why I tend to wear one over there, when I visit my parents...

...Roof racks creak under the weight of refrigerators or cookers...

...With their headscarves and mobile phones, they project a paradoxical blend of tradition and outspoken modernity...

...Two days earlier, on March 3, the French Senate passed a law banning Muslim headscarves and other overt religious insignia (such as Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses) in state schools...

...Previously approved in the National Assembly, the measure was supported by an ovenvhelming majority across the political spectrum...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...If only the scarves were attractive and colorful," sighs Fawzia Zouari, a Tunisianborn writer and journalist living in Paris...

...Visiting a Muslim home in a Lyons suburb recently, I was served mint tea by the eldest daughter, a teenage high school student...

...It was the first proposal put forward by a commission on integration that France's ombudsman, Bernard Stasi, chaired...

...To avoid the wrath of fathers or brothers, girls try to hide the pregnancy and give birth alone, in bathrooms or basements, leaving the baby behind...

...A Community Divided Growing Up Muslim in France By Janice Valls-Russell Montpellier Video screens, disco music, colored lights—Montpellier's skating rink was a throng of teenagers, except for a few mothers like myself...

...A group of boys stood watching...

...France is not a collection of juxtaposed, fragmented communities, closed in on themselves," former Education Minister Luc Ferry explained...

...Not one intervened to save her...

...Thanks to generous subsidies, the rink has become an accessible, low-cost attraction where young people can socialize...

...Her six-year-old sister wears long sleeves and tights, even in summer...

...This uniform garb, Zouari says, is destroying the regional diversities and subtleties of headscarves...

...The demonstrations were orchestrated mainly by the small but vociferous Party of French Muslims (PMF), considered a radical Islamist organization...

...The price paid by a large number proved high: They broke with their families only to encounter xenophobia in the workplace or in their social life...

...they are viewed by their perpetrators as "punitive raids" against "whores...

...At a recent workshop, social workers in the south of France showed that the epithets "gypsy" and "Arab" carry the most negative connotations...

...Although most French public holidays are Christian in origin, they are not perceived as such: The religious significance of Whitsun or Ascension Day is lost to all but a few...

...Those whose names or features suggest they are of North African origin face difficulties seeking work and housing...

...On its website, it urged people to refrain from "provocation that could undo our noble cause: the defense of fundamental liberties, and more especially religious freedom...

...Their father, who left Algeria 18 years ago, complained about co-educational schools...

...In her 2003 report on children's rights, France's ombudswoman for children, Claire Brisset, urged making the minimum legal marriage age in France—at present 15 for girls—18 for boys and girls alike...

...Trailers are packed with television sets and computers...

...he flies...

...Luckier ones turn to organizations that provide shelter under cover of atrainingscheme...

...Paintings may be kept off the walls and the television may usually be tuned to Moroccan, Algerian or Arab channels, but whenever teenage children get the chance, they click over to French pop shows and American thrillers...

...One woman, who understood little French, thought her doctor told her she would give birth to a monkey...

...France's highly visible North African community has long suffered general prejudice, and the events of September 11 compounded that mistrust...

...Sohane's older sister, Kahine, was questioned by a parliamentary committee several months ago...

...But there was not a headscarf in sight, neither on the ice nor among the mothers watching from the perimeter...

...The women polled represent many more than the few thousand who attended the demonstrations in February that advocated the right to wear the headscarf in schools...

...I may be of North African descent but I could be a Buddhist," says Sarah Oussekine, chairperson of Voix d'Elles-Rebelles...

...To show the longstanding unhappiness with such coverings, she cites the story of an Egyptian feminist who famously cast her veil into the sea in the mid-1920s, and Ataturk's banning them in Turkey around the same time...

...The number of rapes among this group is on the rise...

...Of these, 62 per cent had only had one partner (against 20 per cent of Catholics and 15 per cent of those who said they belonged to no faith...

...Girls in college have been upbraided by those wearing headscarves and accused of turning their back on God and "going Western...

...But he no longer drives...

...For some this entails faithfulness to a lifestyle they carried across the Mediterranean...

...But I never wear one here...

...The fabric, color and styles of draping a veil all conveyed different meanings...

...Sarah, Malika and countless more dress in Western clothes with no scarf— at least not in France...

...In Morocco, following a reform of the Family Code, or Mudawana, that King Mohammed VI backed with the full weight of his authority, the legal age of marriage for girls has been raised to 18...

...They can come and go unaccompanied without being molested, whereas those in Western garb may be insulted or worse...

...Others have moved on, staying single or marrying—within their community or without...

...Sohane's death moved Kahine and other women to create an association, M Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissive), to help women in the suburbs resist what they describe as "patriarchal authority and the weight of tradition...

...It prevents the boys from concentrating on their studies...

...By endorsing the gatherings, the UOIF openly showed its disagreement with the restraint of Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), who, while voicing concern that the law "could stigmatize a whole community," urged Muslims not to take part in protests...

...Here it attracts attention...

...It is difficult to believe that they are forced by anyone into dressing as they do...

...Many wait to take action until it is too late to have an abortion...

...I recalled a rabbi explaining to a party of non-Jewish children visiting his synagogue that the women sat upstairs to avoid distracting the men from their prayers...

...The result was a feeling of isolation...

...Here we are free to lobby," says a member named Malika, "so we do it for our sisters over there...

...A generation ago most young North African women came to France dreaming of emancipation—of liberating themselves from the patriarchal authority of fathers and brothers, renouncing their mothers' submissiveness, dressing and living as they chose, and marrying whom they wished (if they decided to marry at all...

...Now the realities are less alluring...

...The computers they persuade their parents to buy to help with their studies deliver electronic games, the Internet and email into the home...

...Like Kahine, Farida and Malika resent the weight of machista attitudes, they find it even harder to come to terms with the pressure some Muslim women exert on others...

...Today, what troubles many who are of North African background, women especially, is less their treatment by others than the divisiveness within their own community...

...When Mayor Georges Frèche decided to link by tramline La Paillade, an ethnically mixed suburban high-rise community, and a new entertainment district at the opposite end of the city, middle-class citizens there had nightmare visions of "hordes" of youths converging and wrecking their neighborhood...

...The feeling among the older generations is that North Africa is where they really belong...

...Girls suspected of having a boyfriend and, worst of all, anon-Muslim one, have been harassed and assaulted...

...Which goes to show, say the women who prefer being bareheaded, that the scarf is more than a piece of cloth...

...Women end up going to work, which in turn means learning how to drive a car and owning a mobile phone...

...Parties of boys and girls swirled about on the ice...

...According to an opinion poll by the women's magazine Elle, 53 per cent of women ofNorth African background living in France are hostile to headscarves in schools, and 81 per cent claim never to wear a veil...

...The imperative that Muslim women wear uninspiring headscarves and overall gloomy apparel she traces to the fundamentalists in Iran...

...If no headscarves are visible there, it is because the Muslim girls living at La Paillade are not allowed out unless escorted by brothers or mothers and are forbidden to appear in the pants and jumpers worn by most of the skaters...

...In their culture, marital sex may be initiated only by the man, never by the woman—"we'd be treated as whores," one says in the report—who must submit...

...In my neighborhood, the manager of a café has purchased a flat in Tunis, where he still has relatives...

...Avoiding intercourse before marriage is considered essential if one "hopes to find a husband...

...Prospective adoptive parents confess to hesitating about taking in a child ofNorth African birth because they fear it is more likely to suffer discrimination than an Asian or sub-Saharan African child...

...Those who took part in these sessions welcomed the opportunity to share their trying experiences...

...Another group, Femmes Algériennes, speaks up about Algerian politics...

...Young girls and women in headscarves are a common sight on the streets of Lille...

...A former Labor and Social Affairs Minister, Aubry has set up separate hours for men and women in Lille's public swimming pools, in addition to nonsegregated hours...

...Panicstricken and ridden with guilt, she recalls living the remaining months of her pregnancy in secret terror...

...The response was so great that the initial study, planned for 1,000 women, was extended to 3,000...

...In the late '90s, concerned by the spread of AIDS among women in poor, predominantly immigrant communities, the French Ministry for Family Affairs launched a project with two goals: to train social workers to approach these women and talk about intercourse, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases...

...The UOIF courts the media, arranging interviews with assertive female students...

...Just as high, sunbaked walls conceal the shade and privacy of lush courtyards and patios, scarves set up a game of hide and seek between an austere outward demeanor and the hedonism that transpires in the home—or bedroom...

...They favor reforming Algeria's Family Code along the lines of Morocco's...

...Prosperity does not sever the family bond...

...Pregnancy out of wedlock is not tolerated, and must be secretly ended, or hidden...

...Clearly, he was proud of his daughter's academic achievements, but boys and girls attending the same schools, he said, is wrong...

...Asked what she thought about a law to restrict the wearing of religious insignia in schools, she replied that she, and other women she knew, considered it essential if all girls were to enjoy the same rights in France, whatever their religious or ethnic background: "I am sick of hearing boys tell me that if she had chosen to accept her Muslim status and worn a scarf, she would be alive today...