c. 2005 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Paris, vous avez un probleme!
In three weeks of rioting, thousands were arrested. Vehicles were burned along with many schools, community centers, businesses and government offices.
Although the unrest that began Oct. 27 has eased, the riots stunned French political leaders. Their surprise speaks volumes about the demographic changes, some of them religious, within today’s France.
While much of Europe’s population continues to decline in size and grow older in average age, that is not true of France. In recent years, the nation, which has the world’s fifth largest economy, experienced a surge in population, most of it coming from the Arab/black African/Islamic communities that now constitute about 10 percent of France’s 60 million people.
It is estimated that by 2050 France will number 75 million residents, making it the largest European country outside of Russia. Many Americans are unaware that France is already the most ethnically diverse country in Europe.
But incredibly, not one French parliament member comes from that 10 percent, and the economic factors are as dismal as the political situation. Arab/black African/Islamic unemployment is much higher than the rest of France, even though many members of those communities were born in France and speak excellent French.
Minority education and housing run behind France’s usual standards, and there are complaints French police employ racial profiling when dealing with minority groups.
Critics charge that Jacques Chirac, the aging and ailing French president, was nearly silent as the burnings intensified. His brief 12-minute speech came 18 days after the riots began, and the president’s only new plan, a job program for 50,000 low-income youth, will not start until 2007.
Chirac’s heir apparent, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, also has been criticized for an inadequate response. However, Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, a child of Hungarian immigrants and a forceful foe of anti-Semitism, has taken a vigorous position against the young rioters. Curfews and a state of emergency were imposed.
As often has happened in history, the Jewish community experienced the violence earlier than the rest of the country. For years, synagogues and cemeteries serving France’s 600,000 Jews have been desecrated by anti-Semitic Muslims, and Jews have been physically attacked in French cities.
In addition to these ugly acts, Israel has been a perennial whipping boy for some French public officials, including Daniel Bernard, the former French ambassador to Britain. He will always be remembered for his obscene quote when he described Israel as “that sh–y little country.” Some French leaders have accused Israel of overreacting to Palestinian acts of violence such as suicide bombings that killed innocent civilians.
The deteriorating situation in France has led some French Jews to move to Israel. However, French Jewish leaders have expressed confidence in their government, believing the anti-Jewish violence and unfair official criticism of Israel will abate in the face of the new realities created by the rioting.
But France’s “probleme” remains, and it will take far more than improving housing, employment and education for the 10 percent minority that is so angry. The troubles go to the heart of what it means to be “French” today.
Ten years ago, I attended a Ditchley Foundation conference in England that drew political leaders, scholars and clergy from the United States and Europe. The participants explored relations between majority and minority populations in Europe, the concept of pluralism, the dangers of racism and anti-Semitism, and the changing demography of Europe.
Many Europeans repeatedly turned to the Americans, seeking guidance _ as if we had somehow solved our own bitter problems of racism and prejudice! I remember that only the French delegates “had all the answers” to the conference’s concerns.
Their response was one word: assimilation. The French, oozing hauteur, were certain every newcomer to France would welcome the opportunity to totally assimilate into French society and civilization. They angrily rejected the possibility that cultural and religious pluralism might be an appropriate alternative to coercive and destructive assimilation.
It was clear then, and it is painfully clearer today, that assimilation is not working in France.
Now that three weeks of rioting and burnings have abated, perhaps the French population groups can jointly explore responsible and constructive ways of being “French” in an increasingly multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-racial nation-state.
MO/RB END RNS
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is a distinguished visiting professor at Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Fla.)
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