Rage Against the Junkies

Two events this week were featuring famous “junkies”: the first one was the disastrous concert of Amy Winehouse where she appeared too drugged/drunk to perform and the second one was the trial of John Galliano in Paris, facing racism charges after a video showing him drugged/drunk making the apology of Hitler.

In a way, both cases are he same: some very talented artist, praised for their outstanding performances/creations for years, openly and publicly addicted to drugs until their addiction leads to their dramatic lowering; and thus inspiring the general audiance rejection and anger. As long as Amy Winehouse or John Galliano were lucid enough to be able to offer quality services, there was indulgence regarding to their addiction (indulgence and even sometimes something of a fascination! Isn’t Winehouse’s biggest tune a song saying “They tried to make me go to rehab, I said No, No, No“?), but once they became too weak to produce what was exactly expected from them, once they became targets easy to reach, why bother to treat them with the minimum respect due to any human being? Is that the new mainstrean philosophy: treat artists like gods when they are OK, throw them away like old dirty tissues when too wasted to entertain?

Would have Amy Winehouse or John Galliano not been drunk/drugged, their behaviour would be totally unacceptable. But as junkies, they should be treated as they are: people in suffering, in need of assistance and not fully accountable or responsible of what they do/say when they are put in a situation they did not really chose. Indeed, John Galliano has not uploaded the video himself and Amy Winehouse did certainly not arrange herself her tour. In both cases, we have here people suffering from a disease (drug addiction IS a disease), tricked into a public appearance that do not represent them as human beings and as artists.

As junkies, it is of course absolutely necessary that measures are taken to withdraw them from the public scene: they need help and rest to quit drugs, the quality of their work suffers from their addiction and their employers are playing their reputation as well. But the same way no one would consider hooting an athlet for not running well when injured or put charges on somebody talking during their sleep, shouldn’t the public have a much more consideration to these two people who are, after all, the victims of the situation? Why not keep the rage against those who exploit a junkie singer to make money on her past fame or exploit the image of a junkie fashion designer? Maybe because those who are responsible of these two disasters are certainly convenable businessmen, wearing nice suits and having a nice office and all, and above all because they are able to answer the insults, unlike those who are too wasted to react? Actually, I always found very strange how our societies are able to make gods/icons/myths of normal human beings, just because they are beautiful, rich or famous. All we see here with Winehouse and Galliano is the exact counterpart.

The way Amy Winehouse and John Galliano reached the very bottom after reaching the very top, actually, is a reminder: we live in a world were might is right.

White establishment feel threatened by equality

A recent study led by Harvard and Tuft universities  show that White Americans believe they are more discriminated against than black people. In their paper “Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing” , Norton and Sommers write that “Despite the rush in some quarters to anoint contemporary American society as ‘‘postracial’’ in the wake of Barack Obama’s election as president, a flurry of legal and cultural disputes over the past decade has revealed a new race-related controversy gaining traction: an emerging belief in anti-White prejudice.” The methodology or the survey is simple: researchers asked 209 white and 208 black men and women to rate on a scale on 0 to 10 the racist bias from 1950 to today. Thus each group had to rate the racism against their own ethnic group, as well as the racism against the other ethnic group. The results show that white and black people both perceive that the racism against Black Americans decreased since 1950. The curve of the perception of the black group about the anti-black bias is very similar to the percetpion of the white group of that same bias, only with a versical shift.

On the contrary, the difference in the perception of the anti-White bias by Black and White test groups is dramatic: if both groups consider that the anti-white racism has increased since 1950, the Black group consider it is still extremely low inside the American society today, the White group consider on the contrary that the anti-white bias is quite strong nowadays, and even consider it to be stronger  that the anti-black bias since about the 2000′s. The curves of the anti-black and anti-white bias as perceived by the white group are even anti-correlated: for them, every decrease in the anti-black racism equals directly and automatically to an anti-white racism (this mechanism is called a Zero Sum Game). In other words:   not only the White Americans believe that in today’s American society, a white person is a victim of racism more than a black person is (!), they also believe that the improvement  since the 50s in the fight against the discriminations against black people is in itself a discrimination against the American White people. 

All economical and social indicators show clearly that if black people are, its true, less discriminated than they were in the past, they are still far from receiving equal treatment with white people. Access to labour market, housing, education, healthcare, bank loans: very few are the black people who did not experience these forms of daily and ordinary discrimination. So do the White Americans really believe that in today’s America, being white is tougher than being Black? Norton and Summers study does not allow to answer to that question, but the “Zero Sum Game” that is absent from the Black group and present in the White group might well suggest that aquisition of rights is perceived by White people as being a competitive race (due to a confusion between a right and a privilege), while it isn’t for Black people, maybe because fighting discrimination made to ethnic minorities requires the destruction of the paradigms of the White superiority. All at once, White people who were living inside a system where only white values were ruling things find themselves confronted to the existence of other types of values, making theirs non-universal. The White people not having to follow the rules of the others is not even an issue here: nobody ever asked them to; it’s the simple idea that their own rules now apply only to themselves and don’t extend to other that bothers them, basically.

It would be interesting to see if the same “Zero Sum Game” is observed in other societies where the domination of a group on another one existed and was (or still is) progressively abolished. A few cases could be studied, like for example:

1. Men/Women: do men feel that there is a anti-men sexism?
2. Rich/poor: do rich feel poor people have more rights than them?
3. Nationals/foreigners: do nationals feel they are dominated by foreigners?

And the ultimate one combining all others: is the life tougher for a White Rich man than for a Black poor foreign woman? Who knows…

French Football officials want racial quotas for the National Team

July 1998: France wins for the first time of History the World Cup. The whole country celebrates for nights and days the new heroes, symbols of solidarity, excellence, courage. The leitmotiv of the popular jubilation is “La France Black-Blanc-Beur” (“The Black-White-Brown France“): the multiculturality of France is proudly claimed, and the 22 young men of different color skin (black, white and brown) united under the French flag become models.

July 2010: France ends its participation to the World Cup in South Africa in the most disastrous situation ever. Not only the performances on the field were extremely weak compared to the usual standards of the team, but also the internal tension between the coach Raymond Domenech and some of the players proved how much the group was unbound. The ‘World Cup Fiasco” could have been considered to be the result of the growing pressure on players, the bad management, or even the too strong and self-centred personnalities, but it seems that some of the French Football Federation (FFF) officials want to blame it on the racial factor.

April 2011: French newspapers reveal that François Blaquart, the Technical Director of the FFF asked for the introduction of non-official racial quotas for the National Team: following his considerations, the ratio of Black and Arabs in the National Team should not exceed 30% there should be more white people in it. If not enough, it seems that the idea was accepted by some officials, including Laurent Blanc, the trainer of the National  Team. Laurent Blanc was a player during the 1998 World Cup; he was part of that “Black-Blanc-Beur” dream team, he held in his own hands this World Cup he won together with Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry or Lilian Thuram.

Apparently, ethnic diversity is a good thing only if the Black and Brown bring the world cups; in a difficult context, although, they are persona non grata. What is interesting here, is to point out that in the presence of players from migrant minorities has always been natural to French football and French sport scene in general. People like Luis Fernandez, Yannick Noah,  or Djamel Bourras who won competitions as French athlets were always pointed to the “Français issus de l’immigration” as being examples of successful “integration” (although there is absolutely no sense in talking about integration to the French society of somebody who is born in France and has always since then lived in France).

Nevertheless, although colored athlets are common in French Teams, one has to note that officials in Federations are almost never, never, anybody else than “white” people: colored people are accepted as bodies of the French Sport, but not as brains. Here again, the FFF proved they shared these racist views: Laurent Blanc, during this meeting on quotas, also mentionned that the team needs more “little clever white guys able to play the game smartly” and less “big, strong and athletic black guys”. For Blanc and for other officials of the FFF, the problem of the ratio of black/brown/white people in the National Team is then not only a question of “identity”, or “adequate” representation of the French society; it goes far beyond: they simply assume that the simple fact of being black/brown/white enhances some type of abilities, more intellectual for white people, and more physical for black people. These are pure racial stereotypes. They are, sadly, more and more common in a France where the nationalist anti-migration party Front National is becoming day after day more popular.

Sport was maybe the only field in French labour market where people were selected without any discrimination regarding to the skin color or origin: only durations, speed, goals, points, performances could decide. Now, it might well become the sad mirror of a desintegrating society, where gaps grow bigger every day. If the Ministry of Sports doesn’t severely condemn the behaviour of the FFF and doesn’t force the officials that pronounced racist views to resign, France would simply give to the French people the clear message that yes, they now live in a real state of apartheid.

When humor is a weapon against racism

I was in the bus, looking through the window, wandering from one thought to the other. At one of the bus stops, climbed in a group of teenagers, 3 girls and 2 boys. Like all teenagers, noisy and careless about being noisy – most of people here in Switzerland consider this as being misbehaved, and from the angry looks they gave them one could easily say that they were highly bothered. As for me, this ‘annoyance’ is always most welcome to me, as I consider noisy teenagers perfectly embodying life; it is the only period of life where one have an organic reason to be stupid and in the same time to be enugh aware of things to make sharp observations. Should I mention also that they were obviously Arabs, given the mix of some Arab words in their french talk and that were Muslims given the veils the girls where trying to wear – they looked quite unexperienced to it though – and the qamiss the boys were wearing? It might be by experience or maybe am I paranoid but I think I could say that the other people in the bus were not looking at “noisy teenagers” but at “noisy Muslims”.

As their loud conversation was ongoing – they were mostly talking about the celebration they were going to attend in the mosque – one of the girl said a joke, half in arabic half in french (this girl was quite witty in fact), her friends couldn’t help to laugh – so did I. One of her mates told her “look even the Madam is laughing at you“. “I was laughing at the joke. And if the jokes are going on like this all day long, I wonder how funny must be school.“, did I reply. We all went laughing, and then started talking. They apparently wanted to talk about school; proud to list all the jokes and tricks they did to the teachers and other students. As I learnt they were living in France (the scene was taking place in a bus in Geneva, which is next to the French border), in an area I know a bit.

One of the little stories they told me was about one of their teachers that apparently was punishing them everytime she was hearing an arabic word in class. The problem is that her allergy to any mention to a foreign language was even extended to their private conversations during break; it seemed also she never missed any occasion to emphasize on the fact that French rules only have effect on their lives. As a consequence, the young teenagers – that were after all like so many of us here, born in Europe from Arab migrant parents, and do not want any of the two parts that constitute their identity and culture denied – began to “outbid” about their Arabic identity. One of the boys explained me that for the yearly class picture, they took Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian flags they waved just at the moment of the picture. When the teacher received the picture, she told to the class “We are in France here, it is shameful that none of you took a French flag“. The boy replied “La France aux Français Madame” (“France for the French people”, according to a famous moto of the Front National, the french right-wing party). She dismissed him, and before leaving class he told her “A demain, Inshallah“.

The witty girl then told me that they were going to re-shoot the class picture, as asked by the teacher for it was too unacceptable to have those foreign flags on it. I asked them: “And how do you feel about it?“. The other boy just told me “We won’t have the flags, but we will be scowling on the picture.“. To that they all went laughing – again so did I.

Their bus stop arrived are they noisily left the bus – a relief to all other passengers for sure – waving at me “Salam Alikoum Madame“. And while I was seeing them crossing the street through the window, I was thinking: we all understood that it would be helpless to complain to the principal – after all there is certainly something in the highschool rules and regulations against waving foreign flags or speaking foreign languages at school – and sometimes racism takes so subtle forms that only the targeted person can get it deep meaning (the teacher would easily dismiss all allegations, if she was asked), that still the best way to resist is symbolic: using humor, for sometimes a joke can be a weapon against hatred.

April 8th: International Roms’ Day

April 8th is the International Roms’ Day (Journée Internationale des Roms). The Rom community is about 12million people, forming thus the biggest minority of Europe.  Originating from the Indian subcontinent and installed in Eastern Europe since the Middle-Age, they have been so far, throughout History, among the most persecuted people. Today, though we learn in our schools that they were genocided under the third Reich, there seems to be almost no awareness among our ‘sedentary’ population on how much discrimination and racism are still extremely strong towards Roms.

Indeed, there is no racism as common as the racism towards Roms. As a Muslim Arab living in Europe, I know how it is to be in a group sometimes targeted by hatred and misconceptions; but I also know that nothing extremely dramatic could happen to us, that there is powerful associations to fight for our rights, that as a part of the sedentary society, our economical, mediatic and political weight is big enough to act as a protecting shield for us, to guarantee us a minimum of respect. Roms not having this same situation, they seem to be targeted by everybody and from everywhere without anything able to counter efficiently.

When in France the authorities demolish their camps, when in Italy they are victims of the neo-nazi delinquent violence, when in Greece the police itself attacks them, when in Germany the government funds repatriation campaigns, when in Sweden 80% of Roms adults are unemployed, when in Romania and Bulgary they are subject to massive and institutional persecution, when in Switzerland the policemen write down the word “beggar”by hand in their passeports… do we need more to prove how far can go the democratic human-rights-friendly european societies with their own minorities? There is barely only in South of Spain that Roms and non-Roms seem to coexist in a mutual respect.

The most shocking fact here is certainly how “unshocked” the civil society is about this discrimination and persecution of Roms. After all, the perpetuation generation after generation of these behaviours wouldn’t be possible if a majority of Europeans would not have been that deeply hatefull towards Roms. Roms are generally accused by non-Roms to be thiefs, beggars, tricky, etc. As a consequence, the establishment make laws and (official and unofficial) procedures such as Roms can’t benefit from their full rights, nor reach a state of sustainable and satisfactory interaction with the non-Rom society.

Practically saying, everything is done for unallowing them to access work market, decent housing and freedom of undertaking their traditional lucrative activities; such a situation in itself would be already enough to justify much more criminality than what we are currently witnessing, but instead of being somehow aware of this and remedy to the problem, we see that an increasing repression on Roms is not only agreed by civil society, but also encouraged, for people do not  want to be bothered in having to bear the visible presence of those they discriminate (but besides this, of course, they have no problem in copying without any compensation their music and other artistic techniques). How far do we want to let this happen before to react?

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).

Black and Arab men as described by western medias

The French media scene has long debated about the Eric Zemmour case. The writer/TV commentator was sentenced for inciting racial hatred towards black and arab-type men saying that majority of drug dealers where from those ethnicities. The medias and politicians mostly debated on if the sentence was an attempt to freedom of speech. Some commentators and journalists pointed out the fact that Zemmour’s point of view was deliberately distorting reality: it was a shortcut between ethnicity and crime, not taking into consideration the fact that black and arab men are, according to statistics and studies, the most discriminated population in France (up to 15-20 times more discrimination). Anyway, the only revelant fact about the case is, to my point of view, that once again the medias spoke (indirectly) of what exactly were the Arab and Black men (are they drug dealers really?), without asking them what they were thinking about all this.

Sadly, this has been a general rule in the western medias: Black and Arab men are described by others, they are not given the chance to describe themselves. The subliminal representation spanned by these numerous description by others generally  reinforces strongly the clichés the West (Europe) has built since the early years of exploration and colonization of Africa, as explained long ago by Frantz Fanon in his famous “Black Skin, White Masks“. A simple statistic survery would easily show to anyone that Black and Arab men in western medias are described as follows:

1. Oversexuality, animality: the cliché of a beasty sexuality for Africans is certainly the oldest and the most common cliché about Africans. It tends to “oversexualize” the Arab and Black man and give them a unique function and concern for sex as a result of a denial of their humanity. Reducing Black and Arab men to sex is to reduce them to the animal part of the human being and objectify them. The esclavagist and colonialist paradigm of the animalic African is still very obvious when looking at the posters and TV spots, movies or music videos. Racial sex is among the best ranked sexual fantasies in western societies where sex is a consumer good.
   
2. Predominance of the body on the mind: it is a generalization of the cliché of the oversexuality of Arab and Black men. It tends to reinforce their objectification by over representing their bodies over their minds. Practically saying, perfectly built and helthy black and brown bodies are tools for advertising, while “visible minorities” mediatic personalities are mostly athlets/artists. Intellectuals, writers, thinkers who would be dark skinned is still largely unadmissible on the public and mediatic scene. Dark skinned politicians are still very taboo in Europe compared to US, for example. Although self-proclamed as gender-equality friendly, the european societies are still strongly associating power with masculinity: a Black and Arab man is a threat to the “White man realm”, explaining this under-representation in medias of dark skinned intellectuals and the over-representation of the black and brown bodies. Studies show that in movies and TV shows, not only African-type men are under-represented, but also that when represented they play caracters with lower economical power and lower social status (barmen, etc) than White men.
   
3. Violence: As said above, the clichés on Arab and Black men hide the fear of the “White man” to lose power. In consequence, any attempt to challenge the establishment is seen as an aggressive threat. The cliché of violence is carried mainly by the news broadcasted in a selective and incomplete way mixing suburban violence, African and Arab dictators, terrorists and warlords, drug dealers and gangs, hip hop artists. Western media create an inaccurate image of aggressive African men, to the point that its couterpart became also very common: Black and Arab women and children as victims of violence. Even charity organizations make theirs this representation by displaying only women and children in their visual content.

So, what now? What can be done against this? Resist to the cliché. It is the only way out. Unfortunately too many of us, Africans in Europe have accepted consciously or unconsciously the concepts carried by this representation. This is mostly what we have to stop: stop seeing ourselves the way external eyes want to see us. Stop letting others debate without us on what we are, if we are drug dealers or not, if we carry with us a cultural violence or not. We have to not accept to be just bodies for advertising. Our mediatic representation should be more accurate of what we are. Of course, the medias who created this image do not want to hear about our protests against it. So we have to make it obvious by our own means, using social networks, associations, publications. Use every mean to rise awareness.

Change of mentalities is always a tough fight, but it is worth it, for it is the only real guarantee we have against racism.

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.