Bigotry, Intolerance, and Revenge: the vicious cycle of Islamophobia and radicalisation in France
The spectre of Islamism and the challenges it poses for French secularism are back in the headlines. Laïcité is seen to be under threat, but what does this mean for French Muslims and questions of countering violent extremism. In this piece, I trace the recent events and explore the impact they are having on the discussion of what it means to be French and Muslims in today’s world.
On 1 September, the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, republished the Prophet Muhammad caricature cartoons that caused so much controversy in 2005. The publication was a day before the trial of 14 people on charges of supporting the gunmen who attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices in 2015, killing 12. Just over three weeks later, on 25 September, a knife attack occurred outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Two people were wounded in front of the building. A total of seven were arrested, but the main perpetrator was said to be an 18-year old with Pakistani heritage. Three days later, on 2 October, President Macron made a speech contending that ‘Islam is in crisis globally’. He stated that there would be ‘no concessions’ to push religion out of education. Two weeks after his speech, on 16 October, an 18-year old with Chechen heritage beheaded Samuel Paty, a 47-year old schoolteacher, who was making his way home after work at his school in the north-west of Paris. On 20 October, the Paris Mosque was shut down because it had on its Facebook page a post stating that it did not support the use of the cartoons of the Prophet as a lesson in freedom of religion. On 21 October, two Arab Muslim women were stabbed repeatedly and called ‘dirty Arabs’ under the Eiffel Tower. Two French women were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.
On 22 October, Macron made another muscular secular speech, stating that ‘we will not give up the cartoons’. He added, ‘He [Paty] was killed because Islamists want our future — they will never have it’. On 24 October, President Erdoğan stated that ‘Macron needs a mental check’, and social media was full of notices encouraging people to boycott French goods. Four days later, on 28 October, Charlie Hebdo published a cartoon of President Erdoğan of Turkey, to which Turkish official responded by calling it a ‘disgusting effort [to] spread its cultural racism and hatred’. Erdoğan added later in the day that western countries mocking Islam wanted to ‘relaunch the Crusades’, adding that the ongoing against attacks on the Prophet were ‘an issue of honour for us’. A few days later, on 29 October, a Tunisian origin 21-year old killed three worshipers in a Catholic Church in Nice. On the same day, police killed a young man who pulled a gun on members of the public in the city of Avignon and, in Saudi Arabia, a Saudi national was arrested for attacking and injuring a guard outside the French consulate in Jeddah.
Just days before the ghastly murder of Samuel Paty, in his speech, President Macron was pivoting to the right, almost certainly thinking through possible electoral scenarios ahead. It sits alongside President Macron making a further attempt to make France ‘great again’ within a much more prominent position within the EU, now that the UK has effectively abandoned the project. It was once a major player. The decline in domestic popularity experienced by Angela Merkel, and the fact that there has been an increasing tilt to the right in Germany, suggests that Marcon has his sights set on capturing a right of the centre political gap that seems to be opening up and potentially a major position within the EU, too. However, France has been maintaining a weak position on how it sees the problem of racism within society whilst, at the same time, keeping up various ramped-up neo-colonial efforts in francophone Africa, especially in places like Mali.
As such, therefore, there is a neo-colonial logic in much of what has been stated and enacted by the French discourse that continues to see Muslims at home as second class citizens and Muslims in once-colonised lands still ripe for de-radicalisation through military interventions. These events suggest an escalation of the grandiloquence of President Macron who is seen to be defending state neutrality towards belief with the likes of President Erdoğan seen to be shielding the Sunni Muslim world from perennial cultural attack from the west. This tit-for-tat cycle of rhetoric and counter-rhetoric masks the fact that neither France nor Turkey is confident concerning concerns around national identity. Indeed, there is an identity crisis in France, where Laïcité has transformed from a liberal concept and turned into a weapon to target Muslims with its disproportionate focus — which, ironically, goes again the very principles of laïcité.
The dominant connotation is that Muslims in France are not accepting French values, which is to be united in protecting liberté, égalité, and fraternité. However, this discourse rarely takes into consideration the many numerous challenges that French Muslims have in integrating into society as equal citizens with equal opportunities. Discrimination and exclusion are rife, not just for pious Muslims but also secular Muslims in France. With a population of over six million French Muslims, the vast majority continue to experience social exclusion as the norm. Days after the Paty murder, two Muslim wome at the Eiffel Tower were attacked by two strangers whose motives could only have been driven by racism. This is the new reality of reciprocal radicalisation; one entirely consistent with the wider political polarisation and structural inequalities that define our epoch, in particular concerning Muslim-non-Muslim relations in Western Europe.
There is no accepted wisdom in Islam that legitimises the actions of these so-called Muslims in killing innocent members of the public due to a sense of humiliation from having the Prophet Muhammad lampooned. As was the case in 2005, and ever since then when they have continued to re-emerge, numerous Muslim voices have repeatedly stated that there is no legitimation in targeting innocents. It has no place in Islam. However, the young people implicated in these recent terrorist attacks, all in their late teens and very early twenties, do not have the knowledge or appreciation of this wider understanding of Islam. There are primarily two reasons for this and they act simultaneously. Internally, there is capacity, resource, and empowerment concern among French Muslims who continue to suffer alienation, marginalisation, and exclusion as the norm. This impacts on the psychological makeup of already vulnerable young men who feel a further sense of shame and humiliation when a central tenet of their faith, that is emulating the life and sayings of the Prophet, is ridiculed. When it occurs, it adds to the individual shame that these young men feel, and in a society that sees no place for them, even though they speak the language, obey the laws, and uphold the legitimacy of the state despite structural and cultural exclusion. Externally, President Macron has taken a muscular secular approach only to see it unravelling. It also reflects a political drift to the right as France attempts to obtain a firmer foothold in leadership structures of the EU. Structural and cultural racism permeates all aspects of French society and its institutions, leaving the possibility of French Muslims feeling they are both accepted as French and as Muslims a distant reality.
France is in crisis. The impact of Covid-19 has been disastrous for the economy. Yet the country is positioning itself in a new EU once Brexit is complete. For the 6m Muslims in the country, the state continues to do very little for them. Assimilation is demanded but discrimination remains firmly in place. Secularism is insisted upon but intolerance towards Muslims based on name or appearance only, generalising and gesticulating in the process, is ubiquitous. The integration of the poor through the education system remains limited. As polarisation rises in France, is the country attempting to capitalise on it, running in the same direction as the UK and the US in terms of authoritarian populism and majoritarian nationalism? Perhaps it was a matter of time.
My research on the topic of what causes Islamist extremism over the last two decades or so invariably concentrates on the sociological factors that affect individuals and communities in particular local area settings, with the importance of social exclusion remaining paramount in determining the experiences of not just Islamist extremists but most extremism today. There are far more structural and cultural issues to consider than anything that might be regarded as important in the religion or ideology itself. Almost always, those who are radicalised emanate from underprivileged backgrounds, experience various realities of exclusion, and ultimately feel the need to express themselves through these kinds of violent acts to feel a sense of belonging that has otherwise been denied to them as part of their existence as citizens in their country of birth. It is a tragic reality of the situation that there are far too many people, individuals and organisations, who are quick to emphasise ideological pull factors but rarely address deep-seated historical and contemporary structural push factors that are central to the experiences of almost all Islamist extremists emanating from western Europe. Islamist terrorism in western Europe is a function of society, in particular racism, discrimination, exclusion, and othering. The pull of ideology has always been there in Islam but the willingness of vulnerable young people to engage with it cannot be addressed if the deeper and wider structural and ethnic inequalities persist.
In talking to terrorists, the radicalised, and the vulnerable over many years of research, the one thing that is repeatedly stated is the question of belonging. This combined with opportunity, acceptance, and the need for policy to tackle longstanding issues of racism and the neo-colonial logic, at home and abroad, will go a long way. All of this will help to build confidence, resilience, and self-esteem among a beleaguered segment of the population. It will help tackle the vulnerabilities faced by providing young minds the confidence and resilience to remain steadfast in the face of external threats. Be sure, Islamism is external to Muslims in France but becomes appealing when the state cannot provide. French Muslims are vulnerable and need support — not the strong arm of the state combined with polarising language, a lack of nuance, or a blame-the-victim pathology that is writ large in aspects of French and western European society.
