A “Je Suis Charlie” candle at a vigil to commemorate the Paris terror attack victims. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Contributors to the Monkey Cage recently debated whether the situation is improving for Muslims in France. The Charlie Hebdo attacks of this past January, of course, raise new questions and concerns. I recently asked five respected scholars to reflect on the meaning and significance of these attacks for an academic symposium. Perhaps the two most striking conclusions that can be drawn from these reflections are that a common narrative about Muslim “isolationism” misses the mark, and that “Je suis Charlie” was not as unifying in France as social media made it appear.
We are sometimes told that Muslims in the West choose to segregate themselves within no-go zones where they gather to reject the values of the nation. Abdellali Hajjat (Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre) points out, however, that the radicalization of the Charlie Hebdo attackers actually tracks with their withdrawal from most other Muslims. They met as a small group with a self-styled imam who had actually been kicked out of a local mosque for his radical views. Similarly, youths who are going to Syria to fight for ISIS are being recruited online, not in their local mosques or community centers — and their radicalization is a surprise to their distraught parents. Isolationism is real, but it is exceptional, and it does not happen among imagined, tight-knit, Muslim-only neighborhoods; in these instances, isolationism has meant separation from both the national community and other Muslims.
“Je suis Charlie” became an international success, but it found some resistance at home. As Jean Beaman (Purdue University) notes, there was an alternative hashtag: “Je suis Ahmed” honored French police officer Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim with Algerian parents, who was shot by the attackers after pursuing them outside the Charlie Hebdo offices. Some people were using this hashtag to express a faith in the values of France, and their openness to people of all backgrounds, without having to identify with Charlie Hebdo. Why this careful sidestep away from “Je suis Charlie”?
Charlie Hebdo sees itself as a champion of the political values of free speech and secularism. That does not mean that everyone admires how it has advanced these causes, however. This does not just include some of France’s Muslims. As Philippe Marlière (University College London) notes, some French leftists have long been uncomfortable with the magazine, even while supporting its right to free speech and the cause of secularism. While some Americans think they have the message of the magazine all figured out, Charlie Hebdo is actually part of a very French tradition (no, we do not have an equivalent) of anticlerical humor that seeks to prevent the sacred from infringing, unchecked, on the secular. Charlie Hebdo is also anti-establishment, subjecting all figures of authority to mockery in what could be read as an attempt to level the sociopolitical playing field. But does Islam in France today enjoy the kind of authority and reverence that would require such a dressing-down? It is hard to believe that it is anti-establishment to mock a religion with such a low approval rating, and whose adherents already suffer from widespread suspicion and discrimination.
Nor is it clear that secularism, even French secularism, requires what has been said of it lately. As Amélie Barras (York University) notes, the French model of laïcité, a secularism far stronger than that found in the United States, has shifted from the requirement for state neutrality regarding religion into a requirement that users of public services present a religiously neutral appearance. And as I’ve found in my own fieldwork, in the eyes of some French Muslims, laïcité has come to mean a license to intolerance. Charlie Hebdo’s mockery of religion is made possible by secularism, and that is a protected aspect of the freedom of conscience; but secularism does not require that one share that attitude. “Je suis Charlie” was unlikely to be a truly unifying rally cry, for multiple, complicated reasons.
Perhaps the aspect of the symposium I was most surprised by was Françoise Lorcerie’s (CNRS, IREMAM-Aix-Marseille University) discussion of the Tuot Report, a document requested by the government that challenges the notion that French republican secularism must be difference-blind and that urges the state to stop thinking in terms of a “Muslim problem.” Just as it is easy to presume the Muslim population in France forms a monolithic entity (which it does not) it can be easy to miss those voices of contention within French politics that are calling for a new approach to questions of diversity and difference. They certainly face opposition, however — and the perhaps more formidable challenge of finding a narrative that unifies more than it divides. Yet they need not struggle alone to find that narrative. Many French Muslims who are opposed to strict interpretations of laïcité still believe in and speak the language of French rights and values. Perhaps opening up more space in the public dialogue for their voices, even if that means accepting that there will be some contestation over the meaning of laïcité, will produce the kind of conversation that can build toward fraternité: that most elusive value of France’s earliest motto, and better than any hashtag.
Jennifer Fredette is an assistant professor of political science at Ohio University. Her book, “Constructing Muslims in France,” was published by Temple University Press in 2014. She thanks the American Political Science Association’s Migration and Citizenship section for the opportunity to prepare the symposium for their newsletter, and her colleague James Terry for his excellent translation of the Hajjat essay.
