Muslim Groups
May Gain Strength
From French Riots
Islamists Try to Mediate Peace
But Encourage Isolation
From Secular Society
A Minister 'Plays Rambo'
By JOHN CARREYROU
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 7, 2005; Page A1
CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France -- Every night, Magid and fellow members of the Tabligh sect of Islam fan out across the grim projects of this poor, immigrant suburb of Paris and try to talk some sense into the angry young men who have been setting it ablaze.
"We tell them: 'if you're violent, you're no longer a Muslim. Islam is moving away from you,' " says Magid, who sports a skullcap and a long, curly red beard. The 31-year-old declines to give his last name for fear of drawing government scrutiny. "When they hear that, they usually feel alone and they calm down."
As France enters its 12th night of rioting, Islamic organizations like the Tabligh, which originated in the 1920s in India, stand to benefit from the unrest and emerge strengthened from it. The Tabligh advocates a strict adherence to Islam but also a disengagement from society.
While gangs of disaffected youths, mostly from Muslim families, continue to rampage, burning thousands of cars and ransacking entire neighborhoods, some of these organizations are positioning themselves as mediators who can bring back the order the government has been unable to restore.
These groups don't preach violence, but they do advocate something that is troubling Europe's secular democracies: that Muslims should identify themselves with their religion rather than as citizens. Effectively, they are promoting a separate society within society and that brand of Islamist philosophy is seeping into many parts of Western Europe. Countries from France and Germany to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands haven't succeeded in integrating their Muslim minorities -- and Islamic organizations have carefully positioned themselves to fill the breach.
The riots "are a blessing for them because it gives them the role of intermediary," says Gilles Kepel, a scholar who has studied and written extensively about the rise of Islam in France. That, in turn, puts them in a stronger position "to force concessions from the state," such as demanding a repeal of the law France passed last year banning headscarves from public schools, he says.
The past year is proving to be a watershed in modern Europe's encounter with Islam. As a number of events have shown -- including last year's assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim radical and the bombing of the London Tube by home-grown terrorists this summer -- Europe has failed to cope with the Muslims within its borders.
In France, legions of North African immigrants were taken in amid the post-World War II economic boom to fill low-skilled jobs. But the country did little to integrate these newcomers, neglecting to ensure they received language training, for instance. Authorities assumed they eventually would leave. They didn't. By the 1990s, many factory jobs were moving to cheaper countries, and joblessness soared in immigrant communities.
As France has failed to integrate these immigrants, Islam has filled the void. In many Paris suburbs, women now wear headscarves. Those who don't are often harassed. At school, Muslim boys increasingly refuse to mix with girls during sports activities or on field trips. Hospitals are under pressure not to have male and female patients in the same wards. Such disagreements are walling off Muslims from France's staunchly secular society and creating a ripe environment for radical Islamic groups.
The violence in France is a stark reminder that reaching an accommodation with Islam is one of the Continent's most pressing problems. Low birth rates and Europe's geographic position just north of the Muslim world means that increasing numbers of its citizens will be Muslim in the future. Muslims account for an estimated 5% or more of the populations of France, the Netherlands and the U.K., and are heavily concentrated in and around big cities.
The rioting began on Oct. 27 in this impoverished town of 28,000 residents 10 miles northeast of Paris, after two local teenagers who thought they were being chased by policemen hid in a power substation and were accidentally electrocuted. The two boys died.
The unrest quickly spread to other Paris suburbs and gained new momentum when interior minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy called the rioters "thugs" in a TV appearance. Feelings toward Mr. Sarkozy were already raw after an incident on Oct. 25 when he called youths who threw rocks at him "scum."
Nearly 3,300 cars have been torched and scores of public buildings have been vandalized, as the riots have spread from the outskirts of Paris to other cities. On Thursday, a handicapped woman was trapped in a bus that was set on fire. (She survived; the death toll so far is limited to the two teenage boys.) On Friday night, bands of youths burned a nursery school, torched an ambulance and stoned medical workers coming to the aid of a sick person.
For the first time, on Saturday night the arson spread to Paris proper, where 35 vehicles were burned. Police found a makeshift gasoline bomb-making factory in one suburb of the capital. It was filled with 150 bottles, gallons of fuel and hoods to hide rioters' faces. More than 800 people have been arrested across France since the unrest started.
There isn't anything inherently Muslim about the violence: Islamic groups appear to have played no part in stirring up the trouble, and few rioters seem to be using Islam to justify their attacks. On the contrary, many Islamic groups say they are trying to calm things down. But the bleak projects that ring Paris and France's other big cities have long been fertile recruiting grounds for Islamic groups that preach a fundamentalist form of the religion that is often hard to square with Europe's pluralistic societies.
While their mediation seems helpful in the short-term, these Islamic organizations end up further alienating Muslim youths from mainstream society because they teach an ideology that is in conflict with France's secular ideals, says Malek Boutih, a former head of human-rights group SOS Racism. "They recruit, they teach the Quran and they try to orient everything around the mosque," says Mr. Boutih. "That's it."
That is especially true of the Tabligh group here in Clichy. Founded in India in 1927, the Tabligh sends its missionaries to Islam's troubled frontiers: Central Asia, Africa and Europe. Although it preaches a peaceful brand of Islam, some of its former members have founded terrorist groups and been expelled from countries like Kazakhstan for engaging in radicalism. French intelligence officials say up to 80% of Islamic extremists in France were once Tabligh members and have dubbed the organization the "antechamber of fundamentalism."
[Fury in the Suburbs]
The group's influence has grown even as France has tried to integrate Islam by giving Muslims a political voice. In 2003, the government set up a body meant to represent the Muslim community to the state, called the French Council of the Muslim Faith, and held elections to it. The government hoped the council would be a moderating influence. Instead, it has been riven by divisions and has given official representation to some of the most radical Islamic groups in the country.
Home to large contingents of first- and second-generation North African immigrants, the "banlieues," as France's troubled suburbs are called, are rife with delinquency, drug-dealing and crime amid grinding poverty and double-digit unemployment. In Clichy-sous-Bois, nearly 50% of the population are immigrants. France's 9.8% jobless rate is even worse in places like Clichy; by one estimate, unemployment is 40% among foreign-born residents of France aged 15 to 29.
Islamic organizations like the Tabligh and others have thrived on the accompanying despair. On Saturday afternoon, Magid and fellow members of the Tabligh wearing robes, skullcaps and long beards were milling about on the edges of Clichy-sous-Bois's projects -- decrepit towers that are sometimes referred to as "chicken coops."
The Tabligh has been active in Clichy-sous-Bois for about 15 years. Its power center is the local mosque, a huge brick hangar-like building that welcomes hundreds of worshipers each day. Nothing on the outside suggests a place of worship, but a metal door opens onto a vast carpeted room where people kneel and pray.
Magid, who earns his living as a judo instructor, says he has stepped up his proselytizing since the rioting began.
"We do rounds every night and talk to these kids. We bring them the good word, we take them to the mosque, and some of them go from being bad to good," he says. "That's something the republic doesn't do."
On the night of Oct. 30, a rioter who was being chased by policemen sought refuge in the mosque. One of the policemen fired a tear-gas grenade inside, according to people who witnessed the incident. It was prayer time and 800 worshipers had to evacuate the building, further enflaming the neighborhood.
Jamal Rmini, a 48-year-old France Telecom technician who preaches at the mosque, says Magid and other younger members of the Tabligh played a crucial pacifying role in the ensuing days and succeeded in preventing retaliatory attacks against the police.
"For two or three days, they were mediating between these angry kids and the cops and they managed to bring back the peace," Mr. Rmini says.
But, the government's handling of the tear-gas incident has fueled resentment among Islamic groups. Mr. Sarkozy's first reaction was to hint that the grenade might not have been fired into the mosque by police, according to Agence France-Presse. Then, no government official issued an apology.
Mohammed Ajir, an activist with the Jeunes Musulmans de France, or JMF, an Islamic organization that works with young Muslims in difficult neighborhoods across France, says the government missed a crucial opportunity to show the Muslim community some respect and empathy. "I'm sure that, if it had been a synagogue or a church, it would have been handled differently. They would have gone directly to the site shortly after it happened to show their support," he says.
Like the Tabligh, the JMF has been playing a mediating role since the violence began. Abdel Wahab Bakli, the organization's president, says his activists successfully restored calm to restive neighborhoods of Nice where the rioting threatened to spread on Saturday night. There has been no acknowledgment by public officials so far of the mediation role played by the JMF or other Muslim organizations.
Mr. Ajir, a 29-year-old social worker, lives in La Courneuve, a suburb north of Paris where an 11-year-old boy was killed by a stray bullet earlier this year. During a visit to the projects where the boy was shot, Mr. Sarkozy vowed to clean them with "a Karcher," the brand of a German-made high-powered hose. Some observers say that comment, which got widespread coverage in the French media, planted the seeds of the current violence.
Mr. Ajir, who sits on the JMF's board, says the organization encourages the discontented youths of the banlieues "to think of themselves as Muslim and French." For the most part, he says, these youths "are sensitive and respectful of the message carried by Islam. We're very well-perceived in these neighborhoods."
But, Mr. Ajir adds that it "bothers people that the JMF and other similar associations are able to intervene" with youths, while the government remains helpless.
El Mostafa Ramsi, who emigrated to France from Morocco in his mid-20s and now serves as the local representative of a center-left political party in the nearby suburb of Saint-Denis, is suspicious that organizations like the JMF are using the crisis to bolster their influence. "They're saying to the government: 'See, without us, your republic is in danger of falling apart,' " says Mr. Ramsi, who supports France's strong secular tradition.
The JMF's Mr. Ajir cites Hassan Iquioussen as a major influence. Mr. Iquioussen is one of France's most popular -- and controversial -- Muslim preachers. An Algerian immigrant, he preaches to mostly young men, holding out Islam as an antidote to the banlieue ghettos where they live.
"I help them realize an equilibrium, a balance between being a citizen and being a Muslim," Mr. Iquioussen said in an interview last year. He preaches a stripped-down creed that teaches a strict adherence to basic rules of Islam, including solidarity with other Muslims around the world. He is critical of Israel and in one recorded speech slurred Jews, though he said his words were taken out of context.
Islam and mainstream France are often at odds because French society is built on a strict separation of state and religion, he argued, which doesn't fly in the banlieues. "In France, secularism means you have to fit in or you're not French. They are always telling us: 'You Muslims are strangers,' " he said. This feeling of rejection has angered young men, Mr. Iquioussen said, stirring a desire to shut out French society.
Mr. Ajir says Mr. Iquioussen helped found the JMF and remains in close touch with the organization. He sometimes attends the preacher's sermons and asks him for his advice on theological questions. Reached last night, Mr. Iquioussen confirmed his central role in the JMF.
The French government has tried to counter the influence of organizations like the JMF and the Tabligh by creating the French Council of the Muslim Faith. The government hoped to use the council to engage the Islamic organizations and soften their ideological edges.
But that strategy has failed. The council has been riven by disagreements between its various factions and has lost some of its credibility among the Muslim community because the state has insisted on promoting Dalil Boubakeur, an Algerian civil servant who heads the Paris Mosque, as its president to counter the influence of other more radical groups. Mr. Boubakeur is perceived by rivals as too accommodating toward the government and as advocating a soft brand of Islam.
When Mr. Boubakeur paid a visit to the mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois last week in a show of support after the tear-gas incident, his car was pelted with rocks. On Thursday, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin met Mr. Boubakeur for a half-hour in what was intended as a gesture toward the Muslim community. But the move was greeted with deep skepticism by members of the mosque itself.
The JMF's Mr. Ajir says the government doesn't have a good strategy to deal with the banlieues. "Sarkozy plays Rambo," he says. Organizations like the JMF, on the other hand, are out in the streets, talking to youths, reasoning with them and helping improve their daily lives, he says.
"We're not going to solve all the problems," he says. "But a lot of these kids have stopped being delinquents after meeting us." |
