It is unlikely that Muslims in France share this view. Half of France’s 4 million Muslims are French nationals, but very many are North African immigrants or their descendants. Muslim immigrants have long suffered under the secular French state. They have been driven from their homelands by a combination of political oppression and economic deprivation that France played no small part in causing or at least aggravating, through a history of colonisation, economic exploitation and post-colonial political interference.

The racism of the Nazis’ puppets in World War II France — the Vichy — is well known. Less well known outside France is that racist atrocities continued after the war in France. Maurice Papon, an official in Vichy France, rounded-up Jews and sent them to the gas chambers. For decades he escaped any retribution for this after the fall of Vichy France and went on to become Prefect of Police in Paris after the war. In 1961, during Algeria’s war of liberation from France, Papon ordered Algerians living in Paris to observe an 8.30 pm curfew. About 100 Algerians who defied this order were found floating in the Seine river, their hands tied behind their backs.

This was sheer naked terror. Papon was a monster, and he is nothing but a product of French official racism, (although his crimes were not emulated by all French officials). But state racism directed against the North Africans was initiated by the Gaullists in the late 1970s, when Lionel Stoleru, then the Secretary of State for Immigrant Workers, opened a xenophobic campaign to begin reducing immigration. Stoleru and his government blamed immigrants for rising unemployment. The previous year, the then Prime Minister, Jacques Chirac, had stated: ‘A country with 900,000 unemployed and 2,000,000 immigrants should be able to solve its unemployment problem’.

But, if the right wing Gaullists made the bullets, it was the parliamentary Left in power which fired them; for the worst examples of consistent official racism on a truly mass scale in postwar France, we must jump a few years to the 1981-1986 coalition government of Mitterrand (Socialist Party — SP), Mauroy (French Communist Party — PCF) and Fiterman (of the centrist Radical Party). It was this ‘Union of the Left’ which instigated the construction in the 1980s of concentration camps for so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ — whom it began deporting without allowing them the recourse to appeal. Several hundred immigrants were deported. It was this government which began limiting the right of immigrants to family reunions and which began to curtail family allowance payments to immigrants. And it was Mitterrand and Co. who obstructed the process then in place to regularise the status of ‘illegals’.

All sections of mainstream politics in France have participated in the dirty game of baiting North African Arabs in France. In the early 1980s, the large and very influential Communist Party led racist demonstrations to physically attack districts in which North African Arabs and other African immigrants lived. In the most outrageous of these incidents, in 1983 a Parisian PCF mayor personally drove a bulldozer into a building housing immigrant workers from Mali. The PCF supported the French state against Muslim Algeria, when the latter was fighting for its independence. Today, the PCF opposes all new immigration, and approves of the state’s witchhunt of so-called ‘illegal’ immigrants. When it was in government again in the 1990s, the Socialist Party enforced a tough immigration policy.

Subsequent Gaullist governments have only been more openly racist than the Left. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that the racist policies of left wing parties in power have very much prepared the way for the witchhunt being conducted by the present Gaullist administration.

Despite this persecution of North African immigrants, the ongoing imperialist plunder of their homelands has continued to force large numbers of these Muslims to flee to ‘Mother France’, in search of a future. Very many of these Muslim immigrants are still forced to enter France illegally, often at great personal risk. Once in France, they soon discover that their troubles are only beginning. In 1997, the Interior Minister called for the finger-printing of all non-EU nationals entering France. And, under an operation code-named ‘Vigipirate’, immigrants – especially those not of European appearance – have been systematically harassed by police ever since, on the pretext of combating terrorism. As one immigrant puts it: ‘Whenever we go out to work we are hunted down like animals and denied our dignity; we are stopped by police, often simply for the colour of our face, although we have committed no crime’ (Diop, 1997).

In October 1999, French newspapers carried the text of a supposed ‘leak’ – a memo from the Interior Minister to certain key bureaucrats, berating them for the ‘abnormally low level’ of expulsions of ‘illegal’ immigrants and ordering them to achieve a ‘significant increase’ in such expulsions in the final months of the year. The Minister had earlier made much ado about ‘regularising’ the status of illegal immigrant workers in France. Indeed some 90,000 did receive authority to stay legally – but only for one year. Most of those who stepped forward to take advantage of this scheme were deported. Certain sectors of French industry have long employed many of these so called sans papiers (‘undocumented’ persons), whose cheap labour is now vital for profitability in the construction, textile and confectionery industries in particular. In large part, France’s cheap labour comes from the Maghreb — the former French North African colonies of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The Interior Minister also ensured that the price of this regularisation was that these workers must ‘accept without complaint the [working] conditions laid down by their employers. If the employee whines, we shall quickly remind him that there are sufficient illegals to replace him’ (Le Monde, 20 January 1999).

In late September 1989 at a school in Creil, in the northern suburbs of Paris, the headmaster suspended three North African Muslim girls who refused to remove their headscarves. Angered by this, Muslim girls in Avignon and Marseilles began wearing headscarves to school and were themselves excluded.

The Education Minister at that time, Lionel Jospin of the Socialist Party, tried to have it both ways — arguing that veiled students be not allowed to attend class, but also asserting that veiling was not grounds for exclusion from school. (Presumably this means that veiled students could enter school grounds but not actually sit in class!) The French high court subsequently decided that so-called ‘discreet’ veiling was permissible in schools. Veiled students could still be excluded, therefore.

We have already seen how such demagogic campaigns have a sordid history in France. It is not surprising therefore, that the headmaster of Creil sparked a national outpouring of racism and chauvinism. From the mainstream Gaullist right wing (newspapers like the daily Le Figaro) through to the openly fascistic Front National, the headmaster’s stand gave new opportunities to spew out their filth. Le Figaro complained that the schoolgirls were ‘dupes’ of the Lebanese Hezbollah.

In the wake of the Creil incident, the Front National scored two sensational by-election victories. In both constituencies, the fascists used the hijab issue to curry support for their racist message of repatriating all Arab immigrants. Marie-France Stirbois, one of the successful candidates, asserted that ‘a climate of fear’ was reigning in rural France because of illegal immigration. Then, in an unprecedented move, hundreds of works of art, and manuscripts and books on Islamic culture and civilisation were destroyed by government officials at the Cultural Centre Library in Paris.

Ever since France’s anti-feudal revolution of 1789, this country has institutionalised a determined separation between the state and religion. This does not mean that the state has been unwilling to call upon the services of the Catholic Church hierarchy (which in France is very conservative) when it needs its help to garner political support. But it has meant the cultivation of an official cult of atheism and irreligion (‘secularism’) by the state, which has ensured that religious concerns about morality and ethics are kept out of state affairs. These trends have only strengthened with time — especially since the late-1960s. A French scholar Yves Lambert (2001) observes: "Many practising Catholics stopped going to church and some lost their religion. In turn, they passed on their lack of belief to their children. Given that only half of children with church-going parents retain their religion, it’s easy to see why secularisation advances so rapidly."

This is not to say that people in France are completely irreligious. The reality is more complex, as Lambert also explains: "All certainty is gone too: 42% of irreligious young people, compared with 36% of their religious counterparts, think it is important to explore the teachings of other religions." Nevertheless, he admits that — while once ‘most people were practising believers’ — the situation now is ‘that the majority has no religion’, even though most people are not atheists (Lambert, 2001).

France’s secular tradition, and its shocking, racist treatment of Muslim immigrants, have allowed the state to seek support among ordinary Frenchmen by a new ‘secularisation’ drive. The aim of this campaign, it must be stressed, is not to put down any sort of religiously-driven movement that challenges the secular character of modern France, or mobilises against its racist and imperialist practices. Sadly, no such mass religious movement by Muslims or other people of good will exists. Instead, it must be said bluntly, Frances ‘new secularism’ is nothing less than a demagogic attempt to mobilise ordinary Frenchmen behind the shameful local and international schemes of the French state.

If ordinary Frenchmen are preoccupied by the ‘threat’ to their children from Muslim hijabis at their local school, these Frenchmen will be less likely to mobilise against attempts to cut their pay, speed up production or institute mass sackings. After all, the main thing is for all Frenchmen to stick together and defend the republic against the Muslim terrorists — teenage girls in headscarves! And it is more likely, if such demagogy is successfully cultivated and maintained, that the state will be able to secure support for its dream of replacing the creeping US occupation of the Middle East with … occupation by the secular troops of Mother France!

In July 2003 Jacques Chirac (now President of the Republic) announced the formation of a Secularisation Commission,1 affirming that secularism was a duty: ‘There are no laws in France higher than the laws of the republic’, he declared. Public opinion had been prepared for this move by a new orchestrated tide of mass media and state hysteria against girls wearing headscarves in public schools over the preceding 12 months.

The Secularisation Commission includes three government Ministers, including the Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy (the boss of law and order in the government), as well as the leftist pin-up boy Régis Debray and — to ‘prove’ that it is not malicious in its intent — some specialists in Islam. President Chirac has stressed that the aim of the Commission is to ensure a framework for all religious beliefs to function freely. It was ‘in no sense the expression of anti-religious feeling’, he claims (Le Monde, 3 July 2003). Using a very similar rhetoric to US Neo-conservatives such as Daniel Pipes, Chirac and other French politicians of the Left, Right and Centre assure us that they only want to protect ‘moderate Muslims’ from ‘fundamentalists’.

One legislator on the Commission, Nelly Olin, has already alleged that one-third of girls wearing hijab in schools do so because they are ‘forced’ to do so, a further third do so merely out of ‘community feeling’, while the remainder do it as a deliberate act of ‘provocation’. Several other Commission members and President Chirac have indicated that it will be necessary to ‘clarify’ existing regulations, ‘which do not always give teachers the framework necessary’ to deal with hijabis. A strong possibility exists that the Commission will recommend new legislation to outlaw against the wearing of hijab in French schools (Le Monde, 3 July 2003).

In addition, France’s parliament, the Assemblée Nationale, has formed a ‘Committee of Inquiry on the Question of Religious Symbols in Schools’ (Mission d’information sur la question des signes religieux à l’école). A member of this body, Eric Raoult, has admitted that a majority of its members favours such a step, although there is some hesitancy about actually legislating to this effect at present. Jean Glavany explained: ‘We are all against wearing the veil in school… [But if this is made illegal] Where will the girls who are expelled from school study? In the Islamic centres?’ We can be sure that such a prospect fills this good MP with utter horror! SP leader François Hollande, who is part of the Secularisation Commission agrees, warning: ‘the Pandora’s Box is in front of us’ (Le Monde, 10 September 2003).

The state has combined these moves with the creation of the Conseil français du culte musulman (French Council of the Muslim Religion). This is a council of so called ‘moderate Muslims’, headed by the Interior Minister. Sarkozy reassures French Muslims that the creation of this Council ‘marks the recognition of their place in the Republic’ and there will be no constraints on Muslim religious observance. However, the Council will attempt to extend the control of the state over all aspects of Islamic life in the country. These include, in Sarkozy’s own words: ‘the date of Eid al-Adha, cemetery plots, places of worship, the designation of prison chaplains…’ Sarkozy added: ‘I am convinced that it will be an imperious necessity to organise Islam in France’ (Le Monde, 4 July 2003).

The state has also announced its ambition to take over the training of imams, through providing the necessary funding for the provision of Faculties of Muslim Theology. An academic ‘expert’ in the Maghreb, Daniel Rivet, was commissioned to prepare a report on Islamic education for the government. No less a person than the Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, addressed the new French Council of the Muslim Religion on 3 May, stressing the necessity for state-controlled imams: ‘It is important that the imams exercise their ministry on our territory having a full knowledge of French society… The state, within the laws of secularism, contributes fully to this requirement…’ (Le Monde, 30 June 2003).

According to Le Monde’s account of Rivet’s report, he stressed the importance of the state ensuring what this newspaper called ‘the better taking into account of philosophy and of Islamic theology (kalam) in the training of future imams…’ (Le Monde, 30 June 2003). This control will be exercised via the new French Council of the Muslim Religion (Le Monde, 30 June 2003). Le Monde concedes that what lies behind all this is a scheme to create a (state-controlled) ‘French Islam’ (Le Monde, 30 June 2003).

Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu has hailed this project, saying that he has discussed France’s scheme with Sarkozy and announcing that Italy is also considering the creation of a council of so called ‘moderate Muslims’. Perhaps Pisanu showed the real logic behind this scheme, when he threatened in the newspaper Corriere della Sera (25 September 2003): ‘either mosques respect the law or they close’. He added that he would deport so called ‘Muslim radicals’. Denmark’s right wing government has announced similar policies and requires that imams ‘respect Western values’ (IslamOnline.net, 27 September 2003).

Muslims in Australia would do well to reflect soberly on these disturbing developments. First and foremost, we need to be extremely wary of any attempt to counterpose so called ‘moderate Muslims’ to so called ‘fundamentalists’. This false dichotomy feeds off the fear and defensive moods generated by the attacks on Muslims everywhere. It appears so reasonable — after all, who supports terrorism? Certainly not the overwhelming majority of Muslims, who know that it runs counter to our beautiful religion. As European developments have shown, however, we should be on guard. This counterposition is the siren song of our oppressors: ‘moderate Islam’ equals imperialist state-controlled Islam — and imperialist state-controlled Islam means an ‘Islam’ gutted of the solemn obligation of all Muslims to oppose oppression in all its forms.

1: The full name of this commission is the Commission de réflexion sur l’application du principe de lacité (Commission of Reflection on the Application of the Principle of Secularism). Unfortunately for the boss of this commission (but perhaps appropriately) it is headed by a man — Bernard Stasi — whose surname is identical to the name of the notorious secret police of East Germany!

1. Corriere della Sera, 25 September 2003.

2. Diop, Ababacar (1997) ‘The Struggle of the "Sans Papiers": Realities and Perspectives’, at the Sans Papiers Web site : http://bok.net/pajol

3. IslamOnline.net, 27 September 2003

4. Lambert, Yves (2001) cited in Dominique Vidal, ‘A Secular Society: France: True Unbelievers’, in Le Monde diplomatique, November 2001.

5. Le Monde, various issues.