France: The threats facing Jews

A few months ago I wrote an opinion article about the threats to Jews and Judaism in Europe today. I pointed out that while the ‘anti-Jihadists’ focus on the ‘new’ Islamic antisemitism and expect Jews to join them, there are several reasons why it’s not a Jewish interest to do so. First, the Muslims are not the only ones who hate the Jews. And second, they cannot support efforts to assimilate minorities and join the fight against religious laws since assimilation and anti-religion laws could also lead to the decimation of the European Jewish community.

The Jerusalem Post interviewed two French Jewish leaders, and though they differ on which threat is worse, they basically say the same thing.

They might support a ban on burkas, but their reasons for doing so are not because they’re anti-Islamization.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

What’s the single most important issue affecting the Jews of France, Europe’s biggest Jewish community and the third largest in the world? Ask two Jews and you’ll get three opinions, right? Well, not quite.

Joel Mergui, president of the Consistoire Central, the body charged by the government with organizing the community’s religious affairs, and Richard Prasquier, the president of CRIF, the umbrella organization for Jewish advocacy groups, agree on the big issues but disagree over their order of importance – just as you’d expect from a leader who heads a religious organization and one helming a nonreligious political organization.

In separate interviews with The Jerusalem Post on Monday at their offices on opposite sides of the French capital, the leaders of the French Jewish establishment outlined the challenges, fears and hopes of the community as they see them.

Mergui believes assimilation is the biggest problem French Jewry has to take on.

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Prasquier, too, believes assimilation is an important issue worth reckoning with.

However, he believes the main problem facing the Jewish community is the unholy marriage of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism by extreme leftists, rightists and Islamists.

“My predecessor called it the Red-Green Alliance,” he said. “Some on the left don’t mind being allied with Islamic extremists like those who were on the Mavi Marmara [Gaza protest ship]. And many people in the center are being influenced by their views of Israel, so much so that they question their own policy toward it.”

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Mergui and Prasquier agree that Islamic veils completely or mostly covering women’s faces are contrary to the notion of being French and support the bill that would ban them in public. Yes, they both worry government interference over Jewish issues like shehita ritual slaughter, which some animal rights groups want to ban citing cruelty. But burqas are a another matter, they say.

“A majority of Muslims in France say these veils have nothing to do with Islam,” Mergui said.

“To me it is a breach of the social contract,” Prasquier said. “Women are separated from society in such a way that you cannot even see their faces.”

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Book Review: Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century by Eric Kaufmann

Via The Observer, Kenan Malik’s review:

Europe, 2020. The Islamists have stormed to power across the continent. Every French woman is forced to be veiled. Holland’s gay clubs have been relocated to San Francisco.

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This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

Kaufmann is sceptical of the idea that Europe will soon become a Muslim continent. He accepts that Muslims are predominantly young, have a higher fertility rate, are more devout than other groups and rarely marry out. But while Muslim fertility rates may be relatively high, they are plummeting. In Britain, for instance, the fertility rates of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis have fallen from almost 10 children per couple to under three in 40 years. The drop is partly the result of fertility rates falling in immigrants’ home countries, and partly the result of assimilation to local norms. By 2030, the fertility rates of European Muslims are expected to resemble those of the majority population. By the start of the next century, he expects around a fifth of Europeans to be Muslim.

But there is a kicker in his argument. The real problem is an “emerging ‘culture war’ between fundamentalists of all faiths and those who back the secular status quo” in which Islamists, Christian fundamentalists and orthodox Jews join forces to establish a “new era of religious politics” and “an unprecedented European desecularisation”. Since “fertility differences based on theology do not fade like those based on ethnicity”, fundamentalist victory is assured. For Kaufmann, Europe appears doomed because fundamentalists of every kind are multiplying far more than their liberal cousins while secularists are failing even to replace their numbers. Is this any more plausible than the arguments of the fantasists of Eurabia?

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Kaufmann recognises this distinction between peoples and values. His Europe will be convulsed not by a clash of civilisations between the west and Islam but by a war of values between secularists and fundamentalists.

Nevertheless, he still makes his argument on the terrain of demography. And therein lies the problem. Secularism and fundamentalism are not ideas stitched into people’s DNA. They are, like all values, absorbed, accepted, rejected. A generation ago, there were strong secular movements in Muslim communities and fundamentalism was a marginal force. Today secularism is much weaker, and Islamism much stronger. This shift has been propelled not by demographic changes but by political developments.

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Whether or not the religious will triumph, no one can say. What is certain is that if they do, it will not be because secularists have been out-bred, but because they have been out-thought. The real challenge they face is not in bed but in the public square.

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France: Muslims feel sting of discrimination

In a related story: Two Muslim women marched out of swimming pool in French holiday village because they were wearing burkinis

Via LA Times:

Be patient. This is just a phase. It will all blow over eventually. That’s what Abdel Basset Zitouni tells the young people who come seeking his advice on getting a job or starting a business.

But Zitouni’s counsel isn’t just in response to questions about finding work in a depressed economy.

Many of the people who knock on his office door are Muslims from the housing projects in this city west of Paris who have felt the sting of discrimination.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

They tell of an unwelcoming professional world, with regular bank rejections for business loans, or months without a callback for an interview.

Zitouni, who presides over the nonprofit National Assn. for Young Entrepreneurs here, says it is common to hear of employers asking new hires to change their names to something more “French-sounding” and less Muslim, apparently to appease touchy customers.

Others climb the sparse stairway to Zitouni’s single-room office with fists still clenched, mulling over a snide look after handing in a resume.

Zitouni reassures, and listens to their troubles.

Still, the 49-year-old prefers not to focus on the negative. If clients complain of discrimination, Zitouni stops them short.

“Serious and honest work will always bear fruit at the end,” he tells them.

But not all of France’s roughly 6 million Muslims are in the mood to be patient.

Muslim organizations and some critics of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government have condemned a cocktail of events that have made this a particularly tense time for Muslims in France, with violence against them rising sharply in the last year.

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France: Doctors have difficulties dealing with burka

While the French National Assembly is debating the law banning the burka in public, doctors are testifying of their difficulties in providing the necessary care to women wearing the full veil.

Since the law of religious symbols passed in 2004, doctors and nurses have seen an increase in the number of women wearing the burka. With this veil it is impossible to verify the identity of the patient, her state of health and during surgery or birth, the situation becomes even more delicate.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

Agnès, a nurse in the delivery room at the Poissy hospital, tells of one case in which a woman wanted to give birth in her burka at any price. The medical staff had to negotiate with her so she would agree to give birth without it.

After giving birth, Agnès says that women wearing a burka are put in a single room. There’s the problem of modesty, but in particular the husband’s influence. Isabelle Lévy, author of La religion à l’hôpital (Religion on the hospital) says that most of the time it’s the husband who opposes a cesarean, a procedure conducted by a man.

The result: the burka makes the relationship between the patient and doctor more tense. Paul Atlan is a gynecologist at the hospital in Clamart, the only surgery where patients come to talk of their religious dilemmas

Difficult to discuss sometimes in an emergency. (audio at link)

And in recent years, the hospital staff has been victims of violence by patients or their relatives for religious reasons.

Source: Europe1 (French)

France: Businessman to pay burka fines

Via Reuters:

A French businessman is offering to sell properties to help Muslim women pay any fines that they may receive for wearing the full veil in public if a law is voted through France’s parliament.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

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In a statement published in several newspapers, Rachid Nekkaz, who tried to stand in the presidential elections in 2007, said he would use proceeds from property sales for a 1 million euro ($1.26 million) fund to help women pay any fines.

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Nekkaz is setting up an association, ‘Hands off my Constitution’, which he said viewed banning the veil in the street as unconstitutional.

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EU: Wide Islamic perception ‘key to Muslim integration’

EU academics have identified that understanding different Islamic cultures, based on perceptions of regional identity, is pivotal to the successful integration of Muslim communities in Europe.

Their research was presented alongside Indonesian experts at a seminar last Wednesday, organized by the European Union Delegation to Indonesia, to promote interfaith dialogue between Indonesia and the EU.

In a keynote presentation, Agata Nalborczyk from the University of Warsaw, Poland, stated that there was “no single [Islamic] situation in Europe” stressing the existence of “different levels of religious and nationalistic identity”.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

She highlighted that “British Muslims from Pakistan held different religious beliefs to Tatar Muslims from Poland”, concluding that Islamic values often depend on individuals’ backgrounds and communities, rather than a universal mindset. Agata represents a group of European scholars who approach Islamic studies from a scientific, sociological level. Her work primarily attempts to analyze the role of the state and its effect on religious immigrant groups in Europe, noting governments should focus on integration over assimilation.

“The main problem Europe faces is citizenship and confessional laws. The French government relies on assimilation — immigrants are encouraged to think ‘I’m French’. The UK has a much better policy, it permits immigrants to remember their origins, such as British-Muslims or British-Pakistanis.”

The architecture of mosques in Europe also shows how different Islamic groups have integrated into European communities, she said, giving examples of mosques in Birmingham, the UK, made from local red bricks that attempt to blend in with the surrounding landscape.

In referring to recent protests that erupted in Cologne, Germany, when a new-age mosque’s minaret was planned to rise higher than the city cathedral’s, she emphasized the acceptance of mosques in Europe was an increasing problem.

“Many people see mosques as a threat, but they should see them as meeting places for interfaith discussions and a step toward integration for Muslim communities”.

This research was presented as part of broader dialogue the EU is initiating with Indonesia over Islamic integration in Europe. The discussions hope to draw upon Indonesia’s experience as the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy.

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Source: Jakarta Post

France: Riding the countryside in the Jewish-Muslim friendship bus

On a hot afternoon in early June, an unusual looking bus is parked in the central square of this historic city in eastern France.

Passers-by cast sidelong glances at the brightly colored portraits on its side accompanied by such slogans as “Jews and Muslims say no to discrimination” and “We are more alike than you think.”

It is the friendship bus, a project of the French Jewish-Muslim Friendship group, known by the acronym AJMF.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

Led by a rabbi and imam, the bus and its team spend five weeks every summer traveling through the French countryside hosting panel discussions, chatting with pedestrians, promoting dialogue, and holding out the hope of mutual respect and cooperation between two communities more often found at odds.

“This is our sixth summer touring France,” said Rabbi Michel Serfaty, AJMF’s founder and co-leader of the bus project with Imam Mohamed Azizi. “We fight discrimination and stereotypes, and try to break down the walls between our young people.”

Tensions run high between France’s estimated 6 million Muslims and 600,000 Jews. In addition to reverberations from the Israeli-Arab conflict, the relationship between the two communities in France has been exacerbated by a rise in religious extremism among its Muslims and their poor economic status. Many French Muslims, particularly the young people, are unemployed or working menial jobs. They are living in crowded suburbs like the one where a 23-year-old French Jew, Ilan Halimi, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a gang of young Muslims in 2006.

“We have done a bad job teaching our children the importance of getting along with each other while maintaining their own identities,” said Morgi Madini, a Muslim and linguistics professor in Besancon who showed up for an AJMF discussion of Jewish and Muslim dietary practices. “We need this kind of rapprochement; we need to listen to each other.”

Few such initiatives exist in France; none besides this one is led by a rabbi and imam. Their partnering, and the fact that the work takes place on the streets and in schools, gives the AJMF project great access to France’s Muslim population, say Serfaty and Azizi. AJMF works with the Grand Mosque of Paris and the CRIF, the French Jewish umbrella organization.

Most Jews and Muslims in France have roots in the same region: the former French colonies of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. They share a similar culture and history, and many speak the same language, Arabic. That helps launch the dialogue, although it does not guarantee accord.

“There is a rupture between the third and fourth generations,” said Serfaty, who grew up in pre-independence Morocco speaking French and Arabic and interacting with his Muslim neighbors — something few young Jews and Muslims in France do today. “Jews have left the suburbs, and this young generation of Muslims doesn’t know any Jews. They have forgotten that their grandparents used to live together.”

“We do this work because no one else dares,” said Algerian-born Marc Dahan, a professor of applied mechanics and volunteer director of the AJMF branch in Besancon.

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After three summers, Serfaty and Azizi decided to limit the summer tour to adults while continuing to work with troubled Parisian youths the rest of the year. The boys, Serfaty said, were a bit “unpredictable” on the road.

Serfaty says his goal is to create a cadre of young Muslim activists committed to peaceful relations who are not afraid to reach out to the AJMF when problems arise.

That has already happened.

Last November in Evry, a volatile Paris suburb, a Muslim activist who runs an afterschool program for underachieving Muslim children invited Serfaty to speak to her charges.

“She told me, ‘These children stink of Jew hatred,’ ” Serfaty said. “I told her that’s true everywhere, but I was glad to work with her.”

A Muslim community center in another Paris suburb invited him to talk to a group of Muslim women who wanted a Jewish perspective on the violence in Gaza.

“I went because this is what we want, the Muslim base reaching out to us,” Serfaty said. “It’s not the mayor calling us in.”

But it’s slow going. Elia Ktourza, AMJF’s program director, says some French towns don’t want to work with them.

“They’re afraid, they’d rather hide their problems,” she said.

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Source: JTA (English)

World Cup: French team goes home

BAFFLED, shaken and finally repelled, the French have watched aghast at the existential drama that unfolded this week in South Africa, on the pitch and off it. World Cup winners in 1998, France were eliminated from this year’s tournament without winning a single game, and flew home in disgrace. But it was the team’s performance off the pitch that so appalled the French, described by the sports minister, Roselyne Bachelot, as a “moral disaster” that had “tarnished the image of France”.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

The fiasco began with a dressing-room row, in which a star player, Nicolas Anelka, yelled insults at Raymond Domenech, the coach. The French Football Federation sent Mr Anelka home, prompting a mutiny by the players, who refused to train for the next match. As recriminations flew, the captain, Patrice Evra, said that the problem was not Mr Anelka but the mole who leaked the row. The unloved Mr Domenech called the players “imbeciles”. Players and staff rowed in front of the cameras. President Nicolas Sarkozy even held a crisis meeting in response.

The affair has provoked much agonised introspection. Aime Jacquet, the victorious 1998 coach, said he was “ashamed”, describing the team as “the laughing stock of the world”. Le Monde, the bible of the Paris intellectual, described the team as “a mirror of French society today. Dominated by tormented egos and star salaries, cut off from the reality of the country and their fans, split into clans”. Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister, called it “an appalling soap opera”. Jacques Attali, an economic adviser to the president, hoped that the affair would “act as a wake-up call” and show the French they could no longer “be satisfied with past glories…glory is the worst enemy of power, and nostalgia the worst poison for the future.”

The debacle, and the reaction to it, says as much about French neuroses as it does about football. First, there is the prickly matter of race and religion. Most of the French squad are black, and many are Muslim, including Mr Anelka, who is a convert to Islam, as is Franck Ribery, who is white. The 1998 triumph was hailed at the time as a turning point: the country finally recognising, and celebrating, its multicultural make-up. Since then, between banlieue riots and talk of burqa bans, France has struggled to integrate its minorities. (Of the 23-man Algerian squad, 17 are French-born.) The team seems to reflect these tensions, with rumours of tribal divisions. Sensitivities are so acute that to criticise the players’ values, discipline or team spirit—one philosopher called them “a gang of yobs with the morals of the mafia”—is to be accused of racism.

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Source: The Economist

Paris: Chinese protest against lack of security

On Sunday Thousands of Chinese immigrants in Paris took to the streets to protest their lack of security. They say they are being mugged and robbed by gangs of ‘youth’ and that the police aren’t doing anything against it. The protest slogan was “Security for all, solidarity with the Chinese of Paris”. Signs with the slogans and “I love Belleville” shirts were handed out in advance by the organizers.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

Prior to the protest, I got notice from a reader that the Chinese were going to protest because of Muslim attacks against them. I couldn’t find much information about that. One reason is that the Chinese aren’t interested in doing so. The protest itself did not focus on any specific ethnic group. In fact, the Chinese immigrants are making an effort not to turn this into an ‘inter-ethnic’ issue.

This might be due to the fact that they have a common interest with other groups of illegals in France. They all fight for ‘regularization’ together.

The second is that their lack of insecurity isn’t due to one ethnic group. I found one discussion in a forum where one poster claimed that all attacks came from ‘Arabs and Blacks’. This claim was challenged by another poster who said that he’d been attacked twice, both times by Whites.

What is uncontroversial is that the Chinese immigrants live in the eastern neighborhoods of Paris, alongside large communities of North-Africans and Black Africans, and that many of the muggings are committed by youths from those two groups.

The Chinese suffer most from muggings by gangs of youth, some are very young teens. The French-Chinese organization Huiji, which was not one of the organizers, published the results of an internet survey they conducted (PDF, FR). According to that survey, about half of the perpetrators of such attacks are described as “North-African” or “Black” and several more are described as “foreigners”. The survey also has a special section about police harassment.

The Chinese are vulnerable because many of them are illegal immigrants who don’t speak French that well.

In addition, the neighborhood of Belleville, where the protest was held, is spread over 4 arrondissements, and therefore also suffers from lack of a unified approach to deal with the problem.

Romain Guillonnet, president of Hed (living differently), an association which does rehabilitation work, mostly in Belleville, says that the attacks by bands of youths, who spend their time hanging out and mucking about, are caused by the misconceptions they have about the Chinese. They think that the Chinese carry a lot of cash on them, and that illegal immigrants won’t go to the police when they’re attacked.

Frédérique Calandra, the Socialist Party mayor of the 20th arrondissement agrees. The illegal immigrants don’t have a bank account and the money is all in cash. This attracted the attention of criminals, who according to Guillonnet ‘target those who have money, or those who they think have it. [The victims] could just as well have been Blacks or Arabs. It’s a question of money, not of racism.”

Taki Zhang, spokesperson for the 40 organizations behind the protest, repeats this sentiment. It’s not due to racism. The attackers are stealing because they want the money, and not because it’s from a certain group of people.

The protest was organized after a Chinese man was arrested for shooting a mugger. The AFP reports about the protest as follows:

Paris police tear-gassed demonstrators from the city’s Chinese community Sunday when a march to protest a spate of violent robberies descended into scuffles after a demonstrator’s bag was stolen.

Police said some 8,500 demonstrators turned out onto the streets of city’s eastern Belleville district, where they called for “coordinated and concerted” action by the authorities against the growing number of attacks.

Trouble broke out as the demonstration was breaking up with scuffles erupting between a group of around a dozen youths and 50 young demonstrators, police sources told AFP.

According to multiple witnesses, the trouble started when a bag belonging to one of the demonstrators was stolen. Police were forced to intervene and three people were arrested, said the police source.

Police tear-gassed the crowd after objects were thrown at them, prompting demonstrators to overturn cars and block traffic in the area for several hours.

Belleville is an ethnically diverse district of the French capital that has seen an influx of Asian immigrants in the last 10 years.

According to organisers from French-Chinese organisations, who distributed 5,000 T-shirts and stickers saying “Security For All”, it was the largest demonstration by the Chinese community on record in France.

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According to the French media, the protest ended with scuffles between Chinese youth and North African/African youth. The riots started not just because a bag was stolen, but because the Chinese protesters caught the perpetrator and then the police let him go. This was “too much”, according to one protester.

According to French reports, they turned against the police, threw objects and bottles at them and overturned cars.

Let’s summarize: A community of immigrants, quite a few of them in the country illegally, march for their community rights, waving flags of the dictatorship they’ve run away from. The protest ends with riots due to anger at the police. It’s not exactly clear who organized the protests, either. If they wouldn’t have been Chinese, I wonder how this would have been reported.

Huong Tan, the head of one of the organizations behind the protest says that there are rogue elements on both sides. They regret that the police did not stop the fighting, but they see the protest as a big success.

Some in the neighborhood of Belleville didn’t like the fact that it was so Chinese oriented. The owner of the Zorba cafe says that it would have been nice if the Chinese would have told others about it. “Me, I’m Arab, but the lack of security concerns me too! In the evening, I never leave my bar all on my own. We could have protested by their side, it’s a subject which concerns everybody.”

A neighbor shares that sentiment: “It’s not just the Chinese who are attacked, you don’t need to exaggerate!” Next to him a friend adds: “For years we know that the Chinese often walk with cash on them. That makes them easy targets, especially since they’re known never to go to the police.”

Sitting in a cafe, several neighborhood residents have their own explanation: It’s a struggle for territory. Today Belleville is becoming the Chinatown of Paris. Seeing them take over the shops, cafes, betting shops creates tensions with other communities. It’s taken them years until they’ve integrated and found internal balance.

In order to avoid the prospect of having the neighborhood disintegrate into conflicting communities, local officials decided not to let the situation continue. The mayors of the 10th, 11th, 19th and 20th arrondisement decided to create a steering committee on this issue.

Anh Dao Traxel, the Vietnamese born adopted daughter of Bernadette and Jacques Chirac, meanwhile said that the government should respond immediately to attacks on Chinese, in the same way that they react to attacks on people of Jewish, Arab, African and European origin.

Sources: Le Monde, L’Express, Rue89 1, 2, Liberation, Le Parisien (French)

Paris: Police bans ‘anti-Islamisation’ pork-and-wine street party

Paris police on Tuesday banned a controversial “pork sausage and wine” street party planned by extremist groups to combat what they saw as the “Islamisation” of a city neighbourhood.

The event was planned for Friday evening at a time when the district’s streets are usually jammed with Muslims coming out of mosques and just before Algeria were due to play England in the football World Cup.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

But police banned the event and any rival gatherings in the Goutte d’Or area of northern Paris’ 18th arrondissement, or district, saying in a statement that it was likely to cause “serious risks to public order.”

The plan had sparked outrage from politicians and anti-racism groups who said it was blatantly racist and could lead to violence on the streets.

The controversy comes after a government-sponsored debate on national identity earlier this year spotlighted anxieties about the integration of France’s five to six million Muslims.

The Goutte d’Or party, or “apero geant” as it was called in French, was a new and politically-charged take on a growing trend in France for huge open-air drinks parties organised on the social networking site Facebook.

Many of them have been banned because authorities fear mass drunkenness.

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The street party, whose two main components of pork and alcohol are forbidden by Islamic teaching, was scheduled to be held on Rue Myrha, where there is a mosque.

A French government minister of Algerian descent, Fadela Amara, on Tuesday condemned the planned party as “hateful, racist and xenophobic.”

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe for his part voiced concern that the drinks party could turn violent, while the head of the main Paris mosque located in another area invited the faithful to attend prayers there to avoid clashes.

A rival group on Facebook had set up a “halal and mint tea” party in response to the pork and wine event.

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Source: AFP