The large numbers of children in mainly Muslim areas of France who refused to observe a minute’s silence for the victims of the Paris terror attacks shows that the country has “serious work to do to avoid a catastrophe”, warns Laurent Cantet, director of an award-winning film set in a multi-ethnic Paris school.
Cantet, who won the Palme d’Or at the 2008 Cannes film festival for The Class – which starred real pupils and staff from a secondary school in the capital’s 20th arrondissement – said he was “not surprised” at the reaction of some young Muslims to the murders of 17 people by three Islamist gunmen, who also died.
“There is such a huge social gulf now between these young people and the rest of society,” he said. “It can’t be bridged in a minute’s silence.” Cantet said France had to “look at what’s behind that reaction – at the ghettoes we’ve created, the contempt we’ve instilled.
For some of these young people, the only path we’ve left open is a kind of horribly deformed version of their religion they see as a kind of identity card.” [The Observer] Read more
