After
Paris Attacks, a Darker Mood Toward Islam Emerges in France
PARIS — November is not
January. That thought has been filtering through the statements of most French
politicians and the news media, and most people seem to understand.
Unlike the response in January after
attacks at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and elsewhere left 17
dead, there were no grand public appeals for solidarity with Muslims after the
Friday attacks that left 129 dead in Paris. There were no marches, few pleas
not to confuse practitioners of Islam with those who preach jihad.
Instead, there was a palpable fear, even anger, as President François Hollande asked Parliament
to extend a state of emergency and called for changing the Constitution to deal
with terrorism. It was largely unspoken but nevertheless clear: Secular France always had a complicated
relationship with its Muslim community, but now it was tipping toward outright
distrust, even hostility.
The
shift could be all the more tempting because the government is struggling to
find its footing politically as it is threatened on its far right by the
anti-immigrant National Front party
Already, tough talk from officials in the government shows them
shifting rightward, calling for new scrutiny of mosques, extending the state of
emergency and possibly placing restrictions on the 10,000 or more people
loosely indexed as possible threats to the state. France needs to “expel all these radicalized imams,” Prime Minister Manuel
Valls declared Saturday.
France had already been expelling
handfuls of imams in recent years. But the attacks have not ceased, and experts
point out that the paths to radicalization more typically run through the
prisons or the war in Syria, not the mosques. At the same time, there are
whiffs of hardening feelings — mosque
desecrations over the weekend, and harsh words between non-Muslims and Muslims
in the crowds mourning.
The concern among Muslims in France is
palpable. “We’re already feeling
the backlash. It started right away,” said Latetia
Syed, 17, whose family gathered on Sunday near the Bataclan concert hall, where
89 people were killed on Friday, to pay respect to the victims. “There was a flood of violent language on Facebook to kill
Muslims.”
France’s
imams “are all worried,” said Hassen Farsadou, the head of a group of Muslim
associations in the Paris suburbs. “We are trying to
figure out how to handle this.”
Fear and suspicion are pervasive. “Today, I went to the gym, and I was wearing my helmet,” said Aykut Kasaroglu, a shop worker in the immigrant-rich
Montreuil district. “The policeman stopped me and told me to
take it off so they could see me. Everyone is suspicious.”
The grim public mood, with hardened jaws
and frowns on the emptied streets, is bubbling up. Deep shades of distinction
that previously separated France’s political
groupings — left, right and far right — on how to handle the terrorist threat, or even how to deal
with France’s large Muslim community, are blurring.
“We know, and it is cruel to say it, that on Friday it was
French who killed other French,” Mr. Hollande told a rare joint emergency
session of Parliament on Monday. “There are, living on our soil, individuals
who from delinquency go on to radicalization and then to terrorist
criminality.”
Similar words, references to France’s “enemy within,” recently have provoked an uproar, particularly on the
left. But this time Mr. Hollande’s speech was met
with universal applause, a singing of the national anthem and some rare praise
from the far-right National Front leader, Marine Le Pen.
As for the audience newly receptive to
Ms. Le Pen, “certainly it will grow,” said Bernard Godard, a leading French expert on
Franco-Muslim relations and former Interior Ministry official.
Anti-Muslim
feelings that had been kept under wraps may no longer be so discreet, Mr.
Godard suggested. On Sunday, tensions flared when a Frenchman, approaching a
group of Muslim women in head scarves who were paying homage to the Bataclan
victims at a makeshift shrine, began inveighing against the Quran as a source
of inspiration for extremists.
“The Quran says that nobody can take a life,” said one of the women, Abiba Trabacke, who was wearing a
blue head scarf. She likened the killers to Nazis, adding: “They have nothing to do with us.”
But the man persisted, and several women
in the entourage burst into tears. “We are calling for
peace and love,” one said.
“Shut up!” a bystander
yelled at them. “This is not the time to get into this.”
Mrs. Trabacke turned to the growing
crowd. “You see this head scarf that I’m wearing?” she asked. “This is my conviction; it comes from God.”
How this might play out in coming weeks
is hinted at in rapidly evolving propositions for how best to use the notorious
“S files,”
an index of thousands of people considered possible threats to the state — on the basis of dubious associations, for instance, or
even online threats? At least one of the attackers at the Bataclan, Ismaël Omar
Mostefaï, was on the S list; so were the two brothers who shot up Charlie Hebdo
in January and a train attacker thwarted by three Americans in August.
Each
time, there has been an outcry in France over why a dangerous individual known
to the state was not stopped beforehand. Each time officials have explained
that a place in the S files is not the basis for an arrest.
Since Friday, there have been the
customary calls from the right and far right for crackdowns on the lists’s members, with a top National Front functionary on
television Monday seeming to call for imprisoning all of them. The former
President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested electronic monitoring. But this time the
left-wing government was careful not to dismiss a heightened role for the S
files.
“You can’t dismiss any
tool,” Mr. Valls, the prime minister, said on
radio about the files. “We are not setting
aside any solutions.” As his boss, Mr. Hollande, put it to
lawmakers on Monday, “With the acts of war of Nov. 13, the
enemy has crossed a new line.”
The
question, rights advocates say, is how far the government can go in restricting
the rights of a mostly law-abiding minority without further alienating its more
marginal members and driving them to the militants.
The
Socialist government, with its intensified bombing campaign in Syria and its
promises of an internal crackdown, is trying to stay ahead of a deeply uneasy
public. But experts say its efforts may not be enough
.
.
Ms. Le Pen’s
criticism of Mr. Hollande on Monday may be more significant than her unusual
praise. The president had failed to mention the “fight
against Islamism” or the “indispensable
cleaning out of the cellars and suburbs gangrened by criminality,” she said. In the National Front lexicon, Ms. Le Pen’s words — “suburbs” and “criminality” — are often code for Islam and Muslims.
“There is a serious risk, in public opinion, that people
will become more radical,” Mr. Godard said. “Maybe people will now say, ‘No,
no, no Islam in the public space, not anymore.’”
Nossiter, Adam and Alderman, Liz.
"After Paris Attacks, a Darker Mood Toward Islam Emerges in France."
16 Nov. 2015. The New York Times.
17 Nov. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/europe/after-paris-attacks-a-darker-mood-toward-islam-emerges-in-france.html?_r=0 >.
Comment:
The
article is about the public reaction to the attacks at Paris that killed 129
people and many more injured. The Public reaction seems to tilt towards
hostility and distrust towards the Muslim residents in France. Both political
and public reactions towards the terrorism is bitter and suspicious about
everyone. The hostility of many French people towards Muslims also seems to
affect the overall mood and tension between the French and Muslims. The author
does not seem to provide biased information about the issue but rather presents
both sides in an informative way, using quotes from multiple people. The
further reaction and happenings in France will definitely be interesting and
bringing changes to the international relations that France has with other
countries as well. Meanwhile, something must be done about the attacks that
doesn't cease to happen.
