A recent incident at a lingerie-shop in Montpellier, where a hijabbed woman was at first denied employment as long as she insisted on wearing the hijab, highlights a frequent debate in French politics and society: Can French Muslims ever be just French?
French Muslims can be “just French” if they are willing to adopt to, rather than resist, the laws, customs, and understandings of French society, beginning with the principle of “laicite” (the laic state), enshrined in French law since 1905.
Every effort has been made by the French state to support Muslim migrants, who have had many benefits lavished upon them: free or highly subsidized housing, free education, free medical care, family allowances. Yet we see that French Muslims have segregated themselves, creating neighborhoods that in some cases have become distinctly unwelcome to the French.
These are the “No Go” areas where non-Muslims fear to tread. Then there are the hundreds of French Muslims who have enthusiastically gone off to join ISIS; the tens of thousands of Muslims who without official permission aggressively take over French city streets for mass prayers; there are Muslim students who refuse to study the history of the Crusades, or the history of the French kings, seeing these subjects as irrelevant or offensive to them; some have objected to studying the Holocaust, also on the national history syllabus, because it creates “too much sympathy” for Jews. [New English Review] Read more
