Talking about 9/11… as a Muslim

I remember that 9/11 was a Tuesday. I remember coming back home after spending the morning studying at the library. I remember my two parents on the couch, watching TV, my father turning his head to me and telling me “Look, look! Planes crashed into the two big buildings, you know the ones in New York, and they collapsed!“. I laughed; I was thinking it was one of those jokes of my dad, that he was trying to convince me that this Hollywood movie he was watching was real news. But common’, you can’t destroy iron and concrete buildings just like this, can you? “No, Look, look! Wallah it’s true news!“. I sat with them. It was true; the Twin Towers had collapsed.

Thinking back of this moment, I don’t think I realized then the event would become a turning point in the world History. Not that I was not ‘impressed’ by the death toll, the horror of the images or the amount of testimonies of the apocalyptical hours, but to be honest when you’re a 80′s kid, when you grew up watching on TV thousands of Bosniacs, Rwandese, Iraqis, Somalians, Palestinians, etc dying, you just end up believing blood is the new world currency countries give and take from each other. New deaths, old business.

Maybe it is horrible to say so, but if I was completely surprised and horrified by the method of the attacks, I was not shocked by the target (the United States). Yes, that particular event was unexpected, but all in all, we knew some attack will happen, sooner or later.We knew it; as well as alas we knew too the reponse of the United States: a blood bath that would make tens of thousands more victims than the 9/11.

This is not relativism. I feel really sorry for the human lives lost, for the 3000 victims, for the tragedy of the families. I admire the firemen that saved lives by losing theirs. I hope they rest in peace. But when among all the testimonies I heard hundreds of ‘We will never forget‘ and ‘Never again‘, I was thinking ‘Of course… but this does not apply only to you, it applies to us too. Don’t you understand we couldn’t forget?‘. Yes, 9/11 was barbary, but in a word ruled by a barbaric imperialism, violent responses sometimes hit back. In particular, the Arab and Muslim World, in the post-WWII and post-cold war period, paid the highest price for American appetite for conquest. Muslims, Arabs and non-Arabs, tried peace, tried indifference, tried diplomacy, tried cooperation, tried NGO’s, tried UN, tried it all. It was only a matter of time until some of them will try violence, whether they were right or wrong in taking that option in consideration.

Who are really Al-Qaeda and what do they really fight for? I don’t know, all I know is that what comes before and after Al-Qaeda did not start nor end with it; however, undoubtlessely, the only scar in the face of the American hegemonic Empire, at that time of History, only Al-Qaeda could do it, and for the world to evolve into a multipolar, fairest world, this first scar was a terrible mandatory step. A fairest world is probably not the ultimate goal of Al-Qaeda, sure, but here we are, one decade later, on our way into a multipolar fairest world.

9/11 impacted on the life of every Muslim, directly or indirectly. For us for example, Muslims in Europe, we had to face one decade of growing racism and islamophobia, partly due to 9/11. All of us, all, we had endlessly to justify ourselves for being Muslims, we had to ‘explain’ that violence was not implicit part of the religion, that extremism was not representative of all we are, that 9/11 and other attacks were not a religious phenomenon but merely a geopolitical phenomenon. As if we were all put on trial after 9/11. And even one decade later, we still have every couple of days a new person popping out of nowhere that knew nothing on Islam, on Muslims or on Muslim World, but confident enough to lecture us about what we are and what we should be.

In the words of those we had to confront, there was more than a naive fear of the unknown, there was too often a belief of being superior, civilized and in charge of civilizing. At the end we all got tired of explaining again and again and again; tired answering the same questions from the same people who knew our answers for having already heard them, but who chose to be deaf to them. Always the same topics, more or less in the same order: djihad, shariaa, burqa/niqab, excision. But for some reason, if we ended up hating the questions we didn’t hate the questioners, nor the very reason of them to question us: were they aware of the fact that it is because the Ummah is more than a vague theoretical concept they instinctively felt that world Muslims were an informal global community sharing the outcome of the good and bad experiences of its members?

One decade later, the world has changed: the bloody wars against terrorism, the global economical crisis, the Arab revolutions, the Oslo blast, Wikileaks. In all these, there is enough evidence for who is not blind to aknowledge the threat does not come from Islam and Muslims but from imperialism, materialism, greed, fierce capitalism and nihilistic hate. My own cure against the dark sides of my soul, I found it in the Quran. And  I don’t care if you find it in the Bible, in the Torah, in art or in the eyes of your child or if you are still looking for it, as long as you understood that life is about bringing light into the night, you are my brother (or sister!) in Humanity.

Comparing Obama’s speech on the Middle-East with his Cairo Speech

The communication with the Arab and/or Muslim World looks like being a conundrum for the Western World. The way George W. Bush adressed some issues related to the Arabs/Muslims is maybe the perfect example on what to not say to them. Obama speeches were always clean of the obvious mistakes of his predecessors and this 2011 speech on the Middle-East was even cleaner. The 2009 Cairo speech was actually so brillantly written that it really raised hopes in the Middle-East for a change. But alas, from 2009 to 2011, these high expectations were disappointed, not only because of Iraq and Afghanistan wars or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also because of the attitude towards the Arab dictators facing street protests: the support to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt came too late, only when it was clear to the US that they can dump their dear allies (Mubarak, Ben Ali, Gaddafi,…) because they were already almost toppled.

Thus, it is in this mindframe of scepticism that most of us, Arabs, listened to this Middle-East Speech. We kind of all had our “checklist”: some were waiting how Obama will mention Bahrain, some others how is he to address about Israel and Palestine, etc. None of us was really waiting for anything interesting and special to be said, most of us were just looking for a renewed confirmation of a new form of the good old hypocrisy: same old routine, only covered with more elegant words than his predecessors would have used.

What I was personnally interested in was in fact the difference between the Cairo speech of 2009 and this speech of 2011 on Middle-East, not in terms of the content itself, but in terms of the form, the strategy of communication. Although the latter was pronounced from the White House, it is quite obvious that it was prepared with the intention to address to the Arab World. The decision to not hold this speech in front of an Arab audiance in an Arab country proves there is a hesitation to face directly Arabs, as there is no certainty on the welcoming it would have had (after all Clinton was boycotted in Egypt by youth and hooted by Tunisians to the point she had to cancell her speach in Tunis). As the changes go in the North African and Middle Eastern region, the”West” adapts its communication.They are totally aware the Arab revolutions were the occasion of multiple  failures in communication and decisions, and that this caused a great damage on the trust the Arab and Muslim World have on them. Not only they want to restore that trust (surprisingly they seem to think that regaining it needs only to adapt the way of speaking, instead of admitting it needs a complete change of policy, what will apparently never happen), but also they are in high need of understanding the new Arab references.

The main differences between the two speeches are:

1. The Storytelling: in Obama 2009 speech, there were very few of the “storytelling” US rethoric is normally full of (emphazing arguments with an example of a person’s life story), besides the very brief mention to his own story linking him to Africa, while in the 2011 Speech, many mentions were done: Rosa Parks, Muhammad Bouazizi, Wael Ghonim (indirectly, by mentionning his position at Google), some Israeli father whose son was killed by Hamas starting a peace NGO. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions certainly made realize to Obama, Clinton and their team how important will be now the ordinary people of the Arab World. Instead of talking about elites, refering to great places or figures of History, the ‘normal’ people (including women) that achieved great things with almost nothing were mentioned. The storytelling, that ensured Ronald Reagan with a great popularity in his country as a president and was so to say the standard of communication of George W. Bush (and Nicolas Sarkozy), is a very classical technique to reach the very general audiances: (over)simplifying in talking with images instead of building a consistant chain of arguments.
2. Erasing American references: only with the “told stories” one can see that they refer all but one (Rosa Parks) to Arabs. But the shift goes beyond this. In 2009 speech, there was a point about stressing on the fact that Islam was part of American History, about the fight for civic rights of African Americans, about the Cold War, etc, while in 2011 speech the direct references to American History are completely erased (except for the reference to the American Revolution where Patriots refused to pay taxes to a king). Even the cited locations were chosen to fit to the Arab perspective (Cairo, Benghazi, Sanaa). In two words, we are moving here from speeches where we talk about “American values to export” to speeches where we talk about “universal values”, that happen to be shared by America as well as by other parts of the world, worth fighting for, although America didn’t create these values. US want to give a more “modest” image of themselves, they don’t  anymore commit the mistake to pretend they are  bringing democracy/peace/hope as global leader (although Hillary Clinton in the few words preceding Obama speech expressed her views about the need of an American strong “leadership”). On the contrary they emphazise on the fact that these values are wanted and activelly won by the Arabs themselves. Americans want now to endorse the more “neutral” role (in surface only of course) of those who will just propose help (economical, G20, technological, etc) and let free the Arabs to decide if they want that help or not (of course it is just a very hypocrit way of presenting things).
3. Avoiding religious references: of course, 2009 was technically a speech to the Muslim World, while 2011 is a speech on the Middle-East, but no one will deny how much entangled are Middle-East and Islam. 2009 was not only refering to Al-Azhar, the Quran or Obama’s own Christianity, it was also speaking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of Jews and Shoah, Muslims and Christians. In the 2011 speech, he prefered to talk Israel-Palestine in terms of frontiers, security and official mutual recognition, Bahrain in terms of Iranian strategic political interest, and Arab revolutions in general in mentionning freedom, economy, technology, information. The only explicit references were made were the “region that was the birthplace of three world religions” and the Muslim/Copt violence in Egypt and the offered solution to take the Iraqi “multi-ethnic multi-sectarian democracy” as an example (what a strange idea by the way to take this as an example). In erasing the reference to religion and particularely to Islam, it is quite clear that the United States want to enter in a new phase of their relation with Arabs where they can close the Islamism/extremism/Al-Qaeda chapter. In a way, by saying that Al-Qaeda was against democracy, that it lost its revelancy in the region, that more has been done in six months of civil unrest  than in decades by terrorists, but also by not referring to the recent choice  of a new head for Al-Qaeda and denying the Ossama Ben Laden’s posthume message praising Arab revolutions, US call for having the right to “move to something else”: US wants to make known that they want to make politics, business (a lot of business in fact), partnerships; they don’t want anymore to be seen as the oppressor of Muslims around the World. As if there was any chance that Arabs could forget the military support of Israel anyway (clearly mentionned in the 2011 speech).
4. Adopting Arabic rethoric: the only concession done to arabic language in 2009 speech was the opening “Salam Aleikom“. In 2011, there is a will to “speak the way Arabs speak”. Some linguistic specifities of the Arabic language are adopted. For example, the repetition of terms, very classic in arabic, but avoided as much as possible in english is clear in a sentence like “Square by square, town by town, country by country” (unfortunately for Obama, his advisors do not seem to have noticed the similarity that each Arab will notice with Gaddafi murderous speech “Zenga zenga, bit bit, dar dar“, meaning “street by street, house by house, room by room“). Another flagrant example is the sentence (actually the answer to the non-asked question) where he says: “Bin Laden was no martyr“, the word martyr being extremely often used not only in Islamic lexical field, but also in general Arab’s (for example, the people killed on Tahrir Square, regardless of their religion, are referred as martyrs by Egyptians), while it is totally absent from previous American official speeches. Adapting arabic rethoric is a way of looking “more familiar”, or “more comprehensive”.

I see the 2011 speech on the Middle-East as being a “grammatical contortion”: US diplomacy makes moves that are unnatural to them, not because they are taking a new orientation with us, Arabs, but because they think that if they want to continue to pursue the goals they always pursued in the region (oil, Israel and capitalism), they just have to make it a bit more subtly. With this Obama speech we officially entered in the era where the United States understand Arabs are not just parameters to adjust and fine tune, but a whole part of the world with 400 million people with real personal expectations and real intention to be sovereign. Let’s be clear: that’s only plastic surgery. If there was any real consideration to Arab aspirations, a word would have been adressed to the aspirations of the people living in the most repressive country of the region governed by a medieval feodal system, Saudi Arabia, and more firm positions would have been taken to condemn what happens in Syria and Bahrain.

Mimmicking our way of building sentences and arguments and using our own references is not enough and will never be; in fact it is even almost a bad idea from an American perspective for it makes it even easier for us  to detect where exactly there is hypocrisy,emptiness or offense. It is as if President Obama tried to cook for us a couscous or any other Arab dish and really thought we won’t be able to make the difference with our own cooking. The thing is, sadly for Americans and luckily for Arabs, very, very few of us were fooled by this new way of addressing us.

By dying, Ossama Ben Laden won his last battle

There is nearly nobody on the 7 billion people on our planet talking about anything else than Ben Laden’s death at the moment. When the American President Obama spoke late night, bringing the news that was already largely spread on all social networks and TV broadcasts of the killing of the most feared man on Earth after a hunt of nearly 10 years, he sounded victorious. “Justice has been done“, he argued. Really?

When one sticks to the facts, one is forced to conclude that:

1. Apparently Ossama Ben Laden was not hidden in mountains, under the ocean or on Planet Mars, but in a small cozy town of Pakistan, an ally nation of US. The trillions of dollars put in the wars against terrorism and the extravagant sums spent to supply the Intelligence failed to bring practical and efficient solutions to catch the most wanted man on the planet in a reasonable timing.
2. He was caught only after he clearly retired from his duties in Al-Qaeda. US totally failed at catching him while he was active, challenging the whole planet with his tapes recorded in Afghan mountains. Al-Qaeda legendary figure is dead, but Al-Qaeda works for now at least 3-4 years without Ossama Ben Laden. In a sense, he was more like a “Godfather”: highly valued and respected by his men for the “glorious” record, feared by his ennemies, but not being anymore the field guy.
3. The logistics and organization of the number 1 terrorist nebula won’t be affected by Ben Laden’s death. Ex-Number 2 who is now Number 1, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, is not a youngster anymore either and very unlikely to be technically leading Al-Qaeda; he’s just the other ‘Godfather’. The technical leadership, planning of operations, recruitment, are to find somewhere else. So to say, US have totally failed to disrupt Al-Qaeda as a criminal organization able to schedule operations and put them into practice.
4. Al-Qaeda’s emulators, such as Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb or Jamaat Ansar As-Sunna, are  deeply rooted everywhere and do not depend on Al-Qaeda itself to pursue their own goals: Al-Qaeda created a template and it was successfully used to spread terrorism.
5. The release of the Wikileaks Guantanamo Files (779 detainees files, with extensive individual description, charges, medical statements) a couple of days before the “arrest” of Ossama Ben Laden are nothing but a testimony of how far had Americans to go to get very few information, with an extremely weak “return on investment”. In other words, the enigma is still unsolved. Al-Qaeda succeeded to create the most opaque organization ever (the Wikipedia pages about Al-Qaeda are among the most poorly documented), almost impossible to stop but from the inside.
6. By killing Ossama Ben Laden, any hope of a trial/instruction/interrogation is automatically suppressed, depriving anti-terrorism strategists from a number one source to key information on Al-Qaeda and depriving victims from a real justice process.
7. The war on terrorism done in Afghanistan and Iraq ruined financially America, ruined its reputation worldwide, made about a thousands times more victims than the terrorist attacks themselves, planted the seeds of the dramatic collapse of the global influence the “American Empire”: US were weakened by this decade of “shock and awe” campaign. Al-Qaeda and Ossama Ben Laden made in less than 10 years what the USSR did not achieve in 30 years of Cold War.

When in 2008 Bush administration spokesman pronounced the simple sentence “Ladies and Gentlemen – We got him.” to announce the arrest of Saddam Hussein, it did not prevent G.W. Bush from the complete failure of his policy in Iraq. Today, Ossama Ben Laden death is certainly not a victory on the battlefield, where Amrican troops can surely already prepare for an intensification of terrorist acts against Amrican interests.

Indirect consequences of a decade of Al-Qaeda threat over the world would be interesting to study. A few can be already be named: Al-Jazeera was “made” by Ben Laden tapes the same way CNN was “made” by the Gulf wars, empowering the Arab region with its first subversive towards Arab regimes and the West TV channel; virtual activism and on-line recruitment, “headless” or “structure-less” political entities constitute the jist of the method mostly developped by Al-Qaeda (some used it for terrorism, others to ask for democracy); war on terrorism weakened enough US and allies for them to lose hand and perfect control on global geostrategy (they have hard time evaluating the dangers and the appropriate answers).

At the end, they offered Ossama Ben Laden what he always wanted: to die as a “martyr”. By his political criminal acts, as incredible as it appears, he created the “post-September 11th” world he wanted, where Western nations are terrorized and violently challenged for their imperialism and let a large “heritage”: a method to aggressive resistance.

Yes, definetly, by dying, Ossama Ben Laden won his last battle.

Sufi vs. Salafi: the Manichean Paradigm on Islam

As a Muslim, one of the questions my western friends always ask me – sooner or later – is “What current of Islam are you from?“. My answer, quite brief is always “sunni“. Mostly, they then ask what is the difference between sunni and shia (I prefer to ignore the ethnical part of the answer and focus on the theological difference between sunni and shia). As the conversation goes on, there is always a time when the various interpretations of Quran and Sunna and the various currents of thought of Islam we are discussing lead my friends to ask “And what about sufism?“. As an experience, I always ask what do they know about sufism. Basically, the answer can be summerized as follows: “Sufism is a peaceful current of Islam, focusing more on the inner faith and love than on the outer appearance. It is opposed to literalist and violent currents of Islam like Salafism that advocates Djihad, Sharia and Niqab.”.

Of course, this is a very schematic answer I give mixing all answers I got, but it represents pretty well what we could call the “Manichean Paradigm on Islam“: Sufi is seen as being the Islam of the “good guys”, Salafism as the Islam of the “evil guys”. Sufism would be apparently about whirling derviches, philosophy and Arabian Nights; Salafism about terrorists, politics and Middle-Age mentalities. Like any other Manichean representation, this paradigm on Islam is essentially wrong. It is driven not only by medias who give to western citizen a skewed image of Islam, but also was thought long ago as a solution by some think tanks (see for example the american neo-conservative  think tank RAND, endorsing sufism and secularism as a solution to counter the increasing influence of Islam as an opposing force to american imperialism).

The truth is totally different: Sufism, as a current that existed since almost the first years of Islam and that originated in Sunnism before to influence Shia doctrine, is far from being this “trendy New Age” Islam that is promoted nowadays. If it is true that Sufism fights ostentation in favor of a richer inner spiritual life, it was originally not opposed to outer signs of affiliation (like beard or veil), but to too visible wealth and pride about a high social level. Some early sufi were imprisoned for criticizing the excess of luxury goods acquired and ostensiously shown by princes. If it is true that Sufi have always given a high importance to mediation, ascetism and prayer, they yet were advocacing for applying sharia very strictly (meaning: without any dispensiation for the mighty people, but also without neglecting any aspect of sharia). Sufi are not “muslim buddhists” like people tend to think today, some where yet more peacefull than other (like in any current), but there is nothing in Sufism that intrinsically makes of the faithful person a “good guy” (nor a bad one). A lot of people nowadays self-proclamed Sufi are in fact very far from origins of Sufism, and should be considered like “Neo-Sufi“: an ideology not for a peaceful Islam, but rather for a weak Islam, an Islam of inaction. Islam is not making war, but Islam is not either looking at the state of the world and feel satisfied enough to call for no change. Of course this “Neo-Sufi” definition do not include the real Sufi of today, that still exist, especially in Pakistan and India.

On the other side, the mirrored misconceptions about Sufism are found in the modern image we have of Salafism; like Sufism, Salafism is rather a methodology of understanding the Holy Quran and Sunna than anything else. Salafism (from the arabic word Salaf referring to the Prophet Mohammad (SWS) and his companions) is based on the idea that studying the behaviour of the Prophet (SWS) and his companions in different situations give a pretty good idea on how a muslim “should” behave. A person keen to be gentle and peaceful in nature would find easily through the Salafi methodology proofs that the Prophet was a very soft and calm person, that even refused to harm beasts or trees during wars, while a tormented person would find their way through violence, the same way they could find it in reading the Communist manifesto by Marx or the newspaper in the morning. So no, Salafism is not Islam for “bad guys” (nor for good ones). To be noted that like the “Neo-Sufi”, there exists also a “Neo-Salafism“, represented by sectarian movements that aim in things that never even existed in Islam like racism and apology of suicide-djihad (which is totally unacceptable in “orthodox” Islam). Continuously referring to the West and non-Muslims, they show only how much they are obsessed by their hatred to the outer world.

Representing Islam in the globalized  21st century world as being binary (“moderate” soft Sufism vs. “integrist” hard Salafism) is thus a trickery: there is not really opposition between these two currents, nevertheless they are both incompatible with the “Neo-Sufism” and the “Neo-Salafism”, invented not really by Muslims themselves but rather shaped and promoted through a very efficient communication strategy for serving interests of limited groups. The existence of worldwide Neo-Sufi organizations (like the International Sufi Movement) and Neo-Salafi (like the Jaish Ansar As-Sunna) in itself totally strange in Islam, where the absence of religious institutionalized hierarchy is kind of a “trademark” of islamic philosophy. Another caracteristic of both movements is the existence of  highly mediatic Neo-Sufi and Neo-Salafi preachers (using the same technics than the evangelist TV-priests) that tend to attack verbally each other: as far as one can go in History of Islam, there always has been civilized debates and intellectual divergences of interpretation of texts between muslim true theologists that always respect each other’s points of view, but the mutual attempts to discredit others in order to gain more members in their own group that we are currently witnessing in the Neo-Sufi and the Neo-Salafi currents is clearly something out of the traditions of Islam.

Thankfully, the very majority of the 1.5billion Muslims worldwide are so far from being Neo-Sufi or Neo-Salafi, that the failure of these two artificial movements is only a matter of years; indeed, although the amount of investment for promoting these movements, they haven’t succeeded at all in gaining the heart of the Muslims. For Muslims themselves don’t want to be imprisoned inside this Manichean Paradigm on Islam.

France anti-burqa law comes into effect and unveils french hypocrisy

The anti-burqa law has been amongst the most debated measures voted by the French Parliament under the Sarkozy administration. Targeting less than 400 face-veiled women in France, the law acts more symbolically than anything else; it doesn’t solve any pragmatic problem. In my point of view, the ban of burqa in France has no real religious impact, since living in the western society is already conflicting with the islamic laws in many more revelant ways, strictly saying; if Muslims in Europe can live with paying taxes to governments sometimes at war against muslim-majority countries and contributing to a ribaa-based economy without getting where this is contradictory with Islam, it’s not the ban of burqa that should make them feel that they are stopped from fulfilling religious duties. Unlike some “moderated” personnalities say, face-veil exists in Islam (as proven by the biographies of the Prophet Muhammad (SWS) wives), but was is not clear is if it is mandatory or optional. Thus, the burqa ban in France do not put French Muslim women in a religious dilemna, it puts them at the centre of a symbolic battle, opposing a government that made of hypocrisy its trademark to the whole process of democracy.

The arguments used to justify the burqa ban are almost an insult, not only to veiled women or muslims, but to all French citizens, because they don’t speak the true motivation behind it. Not only it is technically limiting in terms of freedom of choice, but also it is a huge trickery: under the cover of fighting for women’s rights, it goes once again in limiting women’s concerns on what they wear – miniskirt or niqab? – instead of real and concrete measures to ensure their rights, let it be by helping single mothers, women forced into prostitution, labour market particularely unfriendly to women who didn’t renounce in having children or the increase of violence made to women (in France, on woman dies every 3 days after being beaten by her husband or boyfriend). It is simple to ban a burqa and stigmatize Muslim men to “submit” their wives, it is much more complicated to break the real chains than imprison French women, let them be muslim or not.

One of the “myths” exported by the government spokesmen and parliamentary groups presidents is that the anti-burqa law defends secularism (the so-called French laïcité), which is untrue given the fact that secularism is a strict separation between religion and institutions that never implied the ban of religious signs in the street, the streets being public but not institutional, and the citizens being representing only themselves and not any official or governmental function when out of duty. Moreover, the French government is commited in a few affairs out of the area defined by secularity: laws have lately been modified in order to allow Islamic finance in France (unlike muslim women, muslim money is always welcome; the ex French Minister of Economy Hervé de Charette is even president of the French Institute for Islamic Finance… secularim is far far away when there is benefit), Ministry of Education gives grants to private jewish schools and the agenda of holidays of all public services follow the christian calendar (traditions and History are absolutely not an excuse for that).

The French people should wonder what could have been their lives if the same amount of energy than what took to make an anti-burqa law accepted was spent on each project aiming in defending employment, housing or institutions for social insertion of mentally challenged people. If the same time spent to communicate and stress on the importance of the law was dedicated to each file concerning the huge lack of means in hospitals or the case of the thousands of homeless people that are refused a bed and a meal in overfull shelters. No, the French government did not vote a law to protect the people’s interest, although they pretend they did. This hyprocrisy about the true reasons behind the anti-burqa law is, technically speaking,  outside the rules of democracy: democracy is the governance of the people by the people itself, and an untruth on the state of the discussed topics equals to fool the people, hence to give choice between fake options, keeping them busy with choices relative to a virtual freedom, while actual freedom based on true facts and arguments stays out of scope. Indeed, instead of asking the right questions and anwering the right answers, the French people are arguing against each other about how awesome or awful is a life under a burqa or a niqab.

The right question here is then not if France has right or not to ban burqa but what are the real reasons that made it so important to the Sarkozy administration, when they always knew that it has no practical impact. Was it for opening a debate on Muslims in France to put them “under the spotlights” for electoral reasons? To provoke a reaction from their side to prove how ‘antidemocratic’ they are? To warn them of any attempt to become more visible on the public scene? To send a “muslim-unfriendly” clear message to discourage Muslim Africans to migrate to France? Or to veil the emptiness of mind of the rulers?

Debate on Islam and secularitm: After 19th century ‘France des Lumières’, welcome to 21st century ‘France des Ténèbres’

Today, April 5th, took place in France a National debate on Islam and its place in the secular french Republic – more precisely, the initial debate on Islam in France that was renamed debate on secularism, in order to not stigmatize Islam and Muslims so pointedly. As often pointed out, President Sarkozy attempts with this debate to focus on Muslims in France issues in order to gather voices in prevision of the coming presidential elections. The different institutions representing the six most important religions in France (Catholicism, Protestancism, Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaim, Buddhism) declared they won’t participate, so did left parties. Even inside the presidential party and the government, the debate do not seem to be popular. Result: the announced “natinal debate” was finally no more than a “team meeting” of 10 on 30 ministers.

Were discussed: food in school cafeterias, mixity in hospitals, funding by State for the building of places of worship. The topics mentionned are all related to Islam in France: hallal meat, veil, the lack of mosques forcing Muslims to pray on friday in the streets. Given the context of North African unrest and more particularely of Libyan civil war, the migration trends towards Europe have slightly increased these last months: nothing massive, but due to improper instrumentalisation of the difficult situation faced on the Island of Lampedusa in Italy, Europe and particularly France lives with an rising fear of an invasion coming from South of the Mediteranean Sea, bringing with them poverty, unrest… and Islam. Thus, the debate on secularism and Islam of today was no more a debate: it was almost the first act of a trial where European Muslims and Migrant Muslims were accused of troubling a country that is explicitely insinuating it would look better and more prosperous without all those foreigners or foreigners’ children and all their too much visible foreign habits.

French President Sarkozy has been using and misusing Islam and Muslims in France since the beginning of his political career for electoral reasons. Today, the complete fiasco of his debate on Islam – he certainly expected to see the whole nation participating and thus enhancing a ‘snowball effect’ of explicit hatred towards Muslims that would have been beneficial to him – clearly shows to the world his weak posture: boycotted even by his own Prime Minister. After 3 hours of debate and 26 propositions (including a law on the “interdiction of prevailing religious beliefs on common rules regulating intereactions of public communities and individuals”), what is the real outcome? A further step towards narrow-mindedness of a center-right government shifting dangerously to extremist right-wing.

Nevertheless, if Sarkozy’s aggressive communication style and political skulduggery might have killed any hope for him to win the 2012 elections, his philosophy was deeply implemented in France these last years and is shared, consciously or unconsciously, on the minds of the majority of the French people. The people might well be annoyed by the President’s trick of using secularism for political reasons, still, when asked directly the questions that will be debated, a high percentage of people stick to quite islamophobic points of view, behind that same excuse of “secularism”: 42% of French consider Islam as a threat and 55% think Muslims are too much visible in France. When the French Minister of interior newly appointed Claude Guéant (life long Sarkozy’s ‘âme damnée‘, like we say in french) says that “The increase of the number of Muslims in France [...] is a problem”, there is merely none but the Muslims themselves or some dedicated associations (SOS Racism, MRAP) seem to be shocked or even paying attention to what one or two decades ago would have caused a French Minister to resign due to popular pressure. Last time a French ruler was pronouncing similar words, it was the General Pétain under the Vichy regime, talking about the Jews.

Shame for a country that deteriorated from nineteenth century “France des Lumières” (France of Enlightment) to twenty-first century “France des Ténèbres” (France of Darkness).

The irrational Fear of Islamism in Europe

One of the most common fears in Europe and US towards Islam is islamism and particularely violent islamic terrorism. This fear is used by the right-winged parties to increase their popularity and their results. The descibed senario could have been written by Hollywood storytellers: angry red-eyed bearded men, women forced to wear a burqa, human bombs, non-muslims reduced to slavery, global war… the worst of it is that it works. When a majority of people actually fear islamism and terrorism, they are not faking it: they are really scared to be one day sweeped away by a Djihadist bombing or plane hijack. When in Septerber the 11th the Twin Towers collapsed, it was the beginning of a “War on Terror”. For both sides. Here you had people from Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq terrorized to be one of the “collateral” victims. There you had American too terrorized to take a plane if a brown skinned guy was in the same flight. “War on Terror” became a “Reign of Terror”. Nothing was better spread in the world than this feeling of terror, this panic growing from all sides. In Europe, seeing over streets veiled women became too scary, young suburbs offenders were not to help out of unemployment or boredom, they were to be recognized for what they were, fondamentalists sons of the muslim migrants, too angry to be grateful for what they were given in this civilized continent. Terror won. So from all sides people let the worst of them rule them to feel “protected”.

What is hard to understand is how this terror became so overwhelming in Europe or US. How to be that scared of terrorism, to the point of letting something 100 times worse take control of their lives . One has to go back to numbers. How many people died in September 11th? 2996 victims. In London? 56 victims. In Madrid? 200 victims. So in total 3252 victims. On the other hand the 2003 Gulf war has so far caused the death of 4759 US+Allies soldiers in Iraq and 2376 in Afghanistan. Without mentionning the number of deaths in the Iraqi and Afghan people, totalizing following estimations more than 300.000 victims (at the very least). So in order to prevent islamist terrorism we make at least 100 times more civil victims and at least twice military victims. Something here is terrifically wrong. Americans at least understood something was going wrong, so they turned their back to Bush and elected Barack Obama. President Obama is NOT a solution, and the 2 first years of his mandate show it clearly, but I have to say I really pay a tribute to American people to have been able to elect a man carrying for a second name the last name of the iraki dictator that has been their worst nightmare for years (due to Bush propaganda) and whose father is from the same religion than the one claimed by the terrorist organization that has attacked them. Half of this is not even thinkable today in Europe.

If we try to go a little more deeper into it: 10 years after September 11th, who is still scared of Islam? Europe. And, to break misconceptions, not only poor workers, uneducated, uninformed Europeans. Everyday a greater part of European citizens are more and more afraid of islamism, Islam, terrorism, migration, all in one. They fear it although they don’t see in their everyday life any consequece of this “threat” they were waiting for for now 10years. They don’t see Muslims taking power on Christians or Jews. They don’t see an increasing number of bearded men and veiled women angrily looking at them in streets. They don’t see mosques teaching djihad techniques. They don’t see all this but everytime they see something as neutral as a brown-skinned man crossing a border or an arab speaking family with 3-4kids at the street corner, they assume they are seeing all this. And at the end they really see all this in simple and normal human beings, who differ from them only in being muslim.

What is puzzling is that they are able to see great threat in tiny details but are unable to see what is really threatening them in their everyday life or even more, what is already killing them. Indeed it is totally irrational when you think of it that people are afraid of islamism that cannot reach their lives whatsoever, when so many things are making their lives terrible everyday. How aren’t they that much terrified by faithless capitalism, savage work conditions causing hundreds of people to commit suicide month after month all over Europe, so cruel society that third of the people will get depressed one day or the other and almost half of the women to scared to lose their job to have kids, so weak defense of consumers that they eat everyday food full of chemicals, pollution.

It seems to me sometimes that life in an European big city consists of waking up to a glass of milk full of artificial hormones, walking or driving to office filling their lungs with dirty particulates, sitting at office and taking orders and psychological harassement, eating a full plate of garbage reconstituted as fish nuggets at the cafeteria, coming back home to their children they see so little time a day that they already know that when they’ll get old they’ll just throw them over in a retirement house, watching news and GET SCARED about those islamists/terrorists and feel so damn secure in their own routine that they have to make everything for it to continue, to have those islamists as far from them as possible. “To make everything” includes voting for the people that will reinforce all makes their life miserable: slavery at work, poisonous chemichals in food for more cancers, nuclear energy policy that kills biodiversity and pollutes the planet with nuclear waste, less money for education, unemployment or social housing, more money and less tax for banksters, more delocalization for making more jobless. How can it be so irrational?

And by having this irrational fear of islamism, people tend to elect people that work in implementing such an unfair world, where South chokes to death and North prefer to waste away half of the planet to tranform it into transient goods, strategic weapons and public debts… what a wonderful world.

Muslims in Europe: more than 4 decades of democratic experience

Europe has always seen itself as the continent of origin of democracy. Because of the historical context in France at the time of the Revolution, democracy in Europe is deeply secular and rejects any intersection of religion and politics. So when Muslims in Europe bagan to participate on the political scene, there is only one concern that was expressed everywhere by European non-muslims: is democracy and Islam two compatible set of values? Can it be that one person claims at the same time being muslim (not only in the very private sphere but also publically) and democratic? Is the acceptance of Islam in the public sphere a danger for democracy?

The current events in the Arab World is a very clear proof that Islam and democracy are compatible. But there is also another proof: in analyzing the History of the last half century of Muslim migration waves in Europe, it is extremely clear that Muslims in Europe have always been dealing with the rest of the society through democratic means.

How have been Muslims in Europe acting democratic during the last half century?

During the second half of the twentieth century, Europe faced a major social change when, after decolonization, migrants arrived from Africa and Asia in waves. To each european country its specific history, hence its specific migrations. If we try to stay limited to muslim migrants (for the purpose of this article): Indian-Pakistanese in UK, Maghrebi-West and Central African in France, Moroccan in Spain, Tunisian in Italy, Turkish in Germany, etc. We can also add Bosniac and Albanese/Kosova migrants at the end of the twentieth century; for example Switzerland alone hosts third of the entire Kosova diaspora. Of course those are only basic trends and do not account of the full migration profiles. Each european country had its own policy in dealing with migration that evolved through decades, for better or worse. One has to distinguish here between two “extreme” cases:

• the British case : the State interfers as less as possible in internal affairs of the community, providing them even the option to solve certain type of conflicts in front of a Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT)
• the French case : the State wishes to merge as much as possible all communities into one unique entity, the Republic, bound by common values, summerized as follows: “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité“

Between these two extreme cases a significant number of variations are found. Anyway. What is interesting is that these migrants, that started more or less arriving in Europe in the 60′s, didn’t provide to the economy only labour vs. money: they established in Europe, got married (not necessarely with somebody from the same cultural background), raised children. If not the parents, the children, at least, acquired the citizenship of the “host” country, what enabled them, when reaching 18+, to vote and be actively part of the civil life. Having been in european schools, being introduced to european economy as workers and speaking in general the language of the host country (english, french, german, etc) much better than the language of the country of origin, it seemed to them very natural that they will build their life and career in Europe as fully Europeans.

What is interesting here is that muslim migrants children born in Europe remained quite attached to their roots and origins, although being fully conscious of being european. Many of them also kept a tight bound with Islam. Unlike the parents who felt they were whatsoever “from abroad”, their sons and daughters called for their rights to be guaranted. As the various constitutions were giving the same rights to all citizens, regardless of their religion, they asked for equality and for being given the opportunity to evolve through the civil life in a way that wouldn’t hurt their convictions. This covers topics as different as the end of discrimination in the labour market, authaurizations for building enough mosques for welcoming all the faithfuls, the availability at school restaurants of hallah meat for the children (basic “day-to-day life” rights) but also political rights through representation in classical political parties, visibility in the medias or recognition of colonial crimes (more or less: the right to be recognized as part of the identity of the country). On the other hand, the civil society/established powers asked to this European-Muslim generation to insert themselves as much as possible into the existing structures and follow as much as possible the existing laws, like for example accepting that the secularity of laws requires from them concessions on the dress code when working in public sector or sticking to the idea of the prevalence of the national laws on the Sharia. These two flows of demands meet in a point where they balance. The exact location of this balance point depends first on the integration policy the state applies (like the british case and french case seen above), but also of the socio-economical profile of the communities (number, cultral background, average education level, distribution over cities, etc). Generally the European-Muslims are represented by two main trends: those who believe only in assimilating totally in the “host” society by erasing all what makes them different and those who, although they want to be fully recognized as Europeans, do not want to be forced to let aside their religious and cultural specificity.

It is to notice that whatever the demands are, the European-Muslims, as citizens born in democratic countries and raised in the idea that their parents migrated to offer them an auspicious background for a better living, are claiming and asking for recognition of their rights following democratic procedures. They generally take form of:

• peaceful protests (for example La Marche des Beurs in France in 1983)
• intensive involvment in associations not specifically islamic (like for example SOS Racisme, Les Indigènes de la République, workers syndicates in UK, Turkish secular associations in Germany, political parties, etc)
• foundation of islamic institutions initiated by the community itself (Muslim Council of Britain, Islamic Council of Netherlands, etc) or initiated by the government (Conseil Français du Culte Musulman)
• active participation into the democratic debate through mediatic coverage (like the islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan or the antiracism activist Malek Boutih)
• petitions (against dismissal of employees for religious reasons)
• trials (asking for a space for prayer on the work place, recognition of a discrimination case, etc)
• boycott campaigns (brands not specifying clearly the use of prohibited food in some products)
• assiociative mutual help (when politics do not help): actions for homeless, youth educators to prevent violence, social integration through sports and art, etc
• providing private services in agreement with muslim values, with the agreement of european governments: hallal food providers, islamic banking, private schools, etc

There is also a unique but interesting case of a muslim political party in UK, Hizb et-Tahrir, clearly extremist in its points of view but in the same time “fairly” participating on the political scene by debating (the same way a right-winged political party is considered to be democratic because it accepts the “rules of the game”). All these democratic procedures have in common to be non-violent. Of course, there is also some rare cases of violent acts, although quite limited compared to the number of peaceful initiatives. These acts although restricted in number could be seen as the beginning of a breakdown between the European-Muslims  and the rest of the society: assassination of Theo Van Gogh in Netherlands, the Khaled Kelkal’s terrorist acts, London and Madrid bombings, french suburban areas unrest events of 2005, violent treats after the Muhammad (SWS) cartoons controversy. These violent acts are most of the time tightly entangled with the international context such as the Algerian civil war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Gulf Wars or of course the 11th of September. One has to not confuse between the violent political acts and the criminality and urban violence witnessed in poor stratum of the society and working-poor class, for the latter are not political movements; they might express loudly the despair of a community banned by the rest of the society and living difficult conditions (living in poor suburban areas, being jobless).

But whatsoever, besides those very rare examples, the European-Muslims mostly follow existing laws or fight within the democratic frame for their rights. Indeed, they are extremely present in the front line, and, it has to be pointed, if they are present through the activities listed above, they never pressured through powerful lobbies.

As a consequence, the long-debated question of the compatibility of democracy with Islam is quite non-revelant: European-Muslims have been, for now more than 4 decades, interacting with the European civil, economical, juridical and political society only through democratical means. All the rights debated, obtained or rejected have been issued by a democratic process.

Democratic European Muslims, what is their perspective?

It has to be noted also that other examples of civic causes in Europe have not always been as peaceful as the European Muslims have been: the left wing movements or the altermondialist movement for example have been into much more violent riots and acts (there is not any G8 or G20 meeting that has not been the occasion to massive vandalism), but as it is not “ethnically tagged”, it was always been much more accepted. The altermondialist leader José Bové, currently representing Europe Ecology in the European Parliament has started his political career in destroying a transgenic culture field and a McDonald’s. Such acts, labelled in Europe as “civic desobediance” seem to never be applied to European Muslims: if one of them would act like José Bové, he would be labelled as violent and retrograde; very aware of this, the huge majority of the Muslim community in Europe generally act extremely peacefully and carefully, to not harm the global cause. It is this concern of the global cause that opens the European Muslims to questions wider than their own personnal benefit in the present situation.

In some extent, the European-Muslims have influenced the generation of their parents, bringing them to the fight for their rights that have been denied to them. So is the case of the African Second World War veterans, without any official recognition nor descent wages until the young generation revealed their history on the screens and medias, or the ongoing case of the 50s-60s Moroccan railway workers underpayed and discriminated. This kind of “retroactive” democratic influence isn’t surprising: the generation of muslims born in Europe, in many aspects, acts like an interface between their parents and the host country, due to a better educational background, a better knowledge of the language and of political institutions, etc.

The current economical crisis also resulted in a rise of the right-wing parties all over Europe, achieving to reveal this growing rift between the European-Muslims, as descendants of migrants, and the non-muslim Europeans: the word islamophobia became unfortunately very common. The growing general islamophobic feeling results in a hardening in legislations: ban of minarets in Switzerland being only one example. In today’s Europe, where racist behaviours and opinions are becoming more and more normal (not only against muslims but also against other migrants, like the gipsies), the European-Muslims seem to be an isolated case of civic struggle through the decades for rights. Now, they are in a new unseen situation: they have to fight against the loss of the rights they won only years ago. For example, after making some progress in the fight against discriminations in the 80s and 90s, we see now a rise of openly discriminating behaviour. The fight for equality is never won for good; maybe it has only begun.

The North African and Middle East is living now a turn in its History: the Tunisian and Egyptian popular revolutions opened the path to democracy to the whole region. It might take years, but it is clear now that people are fighting for their rights and for the end of an unfair society. The parallel here is interesting: a Europe in loss of democracy, an Arab World in progress towards democracy. And as a link between them this generation of young European people from Arab migrant parents, and most specifically from Arab Muslim parents (as Muslims not only account for the huge majority of Arabs in Europe, especially because of the Maghrebi migration, but also they had to face much more discriminations due to their religion, giving them more expertise in the fight for justice). The Arab (Muslim) Europeans have been following with interest the events since the beginning. They felt extremely proud of the Arab youth fighting for their freedom. Amongst governments, the recent events in the Arab World were paid a high attention for geostrategic reasons, but also because of the repercussion it might have on those European Muslims: as an example, French President Sarkozy clearly avoided to welcome Ben Ali after his fall down, fearing to  ignite an unrest among the Muslim community in France.

The situation might evolve to a surprising scenario: if we reach a point where Europe offers less freedom and rights to their Muslim citizens than the Arab countries, they might massively  migrate back to Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, etc. Their parents came to Europe, they might go back to North Africa and Middle East. We are already witnessing for a couple of years now an increasing number of young European Muslims working in opening business in their country of origin, transfering their expertise into the local market, creating partnerships, bringing ideas not yet implemented in the Arab World. Many times we hear from young people, born in France, UK, Switzerland or Germany: “Why wouldn’t my arab country of origin benefit from all I can bring instead of Europe that day by day denies me the right to express my personnality, my culture, my religion?”.  The point here is to understand that they do not come back to the Arab World because they have no choice (having European citizenships protects them quite enough), but because they make the choice to give their added value to the country of origin. Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, Libyans, Egyptians, etc, that know the beginning will be difficult for them to adapt, but that want to make it. They know they are certainly going to earn less, but to live better, whilst they will participate in the local and global progress. Their parents were part of an economical migration wave, they are part of a ethical migration wave. Many of them, anyway, won’t migrate “physically” and will continue to live in Europe, but with a greatest concern of their civil role in Arab societies: most of this European Arabs carry european citizenships, but also arab citizenships, giving them the right to vote, to own in the country of origin or to represent it in International Organizations.

The European Arab (Muslim) youth and the Arab youth have many in common: education level, global awareness, similar values, similar goals and a great concern for democracy, human rights, civic rights. It would be interesting if they can benefit from each other’s experience and collaborate together to build a better and fair society, in Europe as well as in the Arab world. One one side they would fight corruption of the system, on the other side they would fight unethical exploitation of workers and ressources, in a situation that would guarantee a stable peaceful relation based on mutual benefit. They could meet in forums, establish partnerships, NGOs, transnational cooperations, exchange knowledge and open markets to each other, advise each other.

That would be a new nice kind of globalization.