France’s Self-Constructed Abyss

By Tarek A. Ghanem
Contemporary Issues Editor

10/03/2004

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Muslim and non-Muslim voices opposing the hijab ban in French public schools will be more and more proven right. Two assaults on a mosque in Seynod and a mosque's annex in Annecy, both in southern France, took place last week. The first burned the entire praying area and the second was less damaging. Where do we go from there?

It is not an issue of actively seeking condemnation and sympathy. Both President Chirac and the Mayor of Paris have already granted that. It is not a time to cry for equal sentiment against anti-Semitic attacks. Although we appreciate the official promise to guard Muslim sites and mosques, this is not the point.

First, it is no solution for French security to watch over all Muslim centers and mosques. Such would be like fighting the symptom, not the actual disease. Although one of France’s main objections to America’s “War on Terror” was the lack of consideration to the ailment rather than the symptom, it appears that France fell in the same trap. Will French Security forces be around all mosques and Islamic centers, and in addition to the already safeguarded Synagogues? One sincerely prays that Churches, with their bigger number, will not meet the same fate.

Doing rituals under police protection: religiousness under laicite.

Second, sadly, is the sociological confirmation that as the French officialdom, or any other, subjugates a faction, Muslim or otherwise, this reflects on the socio-political map by indirectly legitimizing the actions of another faction. One cannot solely blame the extremist right wingers. If the state subordinates a certain religious faction, it would come as no surprise when extremists burn down its houses of worship. The rising number of attacks on Muslim sites since March 2003 is enough of an evidence.

The more the French government’s version of secularism is proven wrong, the higher the moral ground of the religious mainstream. And both secularism and right-wing extremism may go down their own abyss.

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