The report says these suburbs could already be called ghettos as their inhabitants felt rejected by mainstream French society

By Hadi Yahmid, IOL Correspondent

PARIS, July 7 (IslamOnline.net) - Many French city suburbs mostly populated by Muslims are becoming "ethnic ghettos", a report by the French intelligence has claimed.

But a French sociology professor rejected the findings, saying the report does not convey the true image of Muslims, whom he said are already melted away into the crucible of the rigidly-secular country.

Leaked to Le Monde newspaper, the domestic intelligence services report said at least half of the 630 suburbs on study had already become separate ethnic communities.

The report set out eight points as a criteria for defining the extent of sectarianism in the suburbs, including the number of immigrant families living in one district and how prevalent polygamy is in these areas.

The growing number of mosques, wearing traditional clothes, frequency of anti-western graffiti as well as presence of clubs and nurseries earmarked for Muslim children are also used in the judgment.

Many families of immigrant origin, the report said, were rejecting French values and even the French language, following instead more traditional ways of life associated with their ethnic origin.

The intelligence service report also referred to just how bad the sense of alienation has become in the suburbs among the French-born children of north African immigrant background.

It found that nurseries were constructed to teach Muslim children ranging in age between four and six years Qur’an and Arabic language in Haute Seine suburb of Paris. The report said these nurseries were shut down by the authorities for being "illegal".

The spread of the traditional dress code in schools and claims by students that the syllabuses are in violation of the Muslim scriptures is another evidence, the report claimed.

The report - given to Dominique de Villepin, the interior minister - concluded that the situation is actually worse than previously thought.

It added that better-off families, mainly those of white European origin, were leaving such suburbs, creating an even greater sense of isolation, BBC News Online said.

Radicalism  

The report warned that the ghetto-lifestyle, which cut off whole suburbs from mainstream French society, could encourage "radical Islam" to take root.

The report claimed that there is a growing influence of groups of Da'wah (call to Islam) and others of the Salafist trend in these areas.

Thus, the report said, these suburbs could already be called ghettos, whose inhabitants felt rejected by, and were in turn rejecting, mainstream French society.

These areas, inhabitant by high proportion of immigrant families, have problems with unemployment, crime and violence.

Rejected

But the findings were rejected by some French analysts as unfairly shedding a bad light on Muslims.

"The use of the 'ghetto' in the report is meaningless, as the term has been long associated with isolated communities far from any interaction with the society – which is not the case of French Muslims who are already a part of the social fabric here," said Didier Lapeyronnie, a sociology professor at Bardeaux University.

In an interview with Le Monde, Lapeyronnie dismissed claims that Muslim groups in the suburbs studied by the report are stocking up feelings of radicalization and isolation.

"They rather play an important role to save young Muslims of violence, perversion and drug addiction in these marginalized suburbs."

"For whom interest the image of those groups is besmirched as sectarian and radical?"

Not Limited

The French scholar rather stressed that the move towards finding a sectarian or religious identity is not limited to Muslims, but it is rather a part of an international trend first appeared 15 years ago.

The report came after France's lower house of parliament adopted in February 2004 with an overwhelming majority a controversial bill that would ban hijab and religious insignia in state schools, despite fierce opposition from the country’s sizable Muslim minority and international rights groups.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) dismissed the French legislation as "discriminatory".

Islam sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations – unlike the symbolic Christian crucifixes or Jewish Kappas.

The law has provoked a national debate on integration of the six million Muslims, or 10 percent of the overall population, whose origins are from 53 countries.

The number of the community is expected to triple to 20 million by 2020, given the community's high fertility and birth rate as well as the flow of Muslim immigrants and conversion of French citizens to Islam.