it is hard to point to a single real success it achieved.157 The National Front vote continued to rise in the 1980s and 1990s, no North Africans were elected as deputies (in fact, none have been elected since 1962),158 conditions in the banlieues got worse, and the Beur vote proved to be divided among lines of class and age – just like the rest of the French population.
Even the term ‘beur’ has fallen out of favour. When Michèle Lamont interviewed thirty North African workers in Paris in 1992–3, he found that none of them accepted the term.159 Nasséra, a 19-year-old student interviewed by Bouzar and Kada, disliked the way it reduced a complex reality to a single word.160 One rarely sees it being used by academics or researchers: Geisser and Soum’s volume, published in 2008, is unusual in using it as a principal term of analysis. French Arabs I have talked to tend to shudder when they hear the word: once again, it is not pejorative, but it does sound outdated and even slightly patronizing. Instead, out of the disappointment with SOS-Racisme, a new generation began to look to Islam as a source of identity and values.
Conclusion: the little world of Marie L.
The ‘debate’ on the veil was decided in advance. Given the conceptual vocabulary used by leading politicians and the media there was never any doubt about the final decision of the Stasi Commission, or the ultimate consequences of its report. A revealing glimpse of the sub-culture which it created came to light in July 2004.161 A young woman, whose full name was never revealed, reported that she had been attacked by four North Africans and two black people on a Parisian suburban train line: they told her that they would not allow Jews into their area, they cut off her hair and carved a swastika into her arm. The episode was reported extremely widely on French television and in the press: it was taken as another dreadful example of the innate violence of the immigrant population, whose actions revived the memories of the worst moments of French history. However, almost alone, the police investigating the case were suspicious: no evidence could be found to confirm Marie’s experience. A few days later, she confessed: the whole episode was a fantasy. She had made it up, and was sentenced to four months in prison for making a false accusation. However, a society gets the insanity it deserves. Her sorry melodrama was an accurate reflection of the emotional charge within the case made by Brenner and Stasi: black people and Arabs were not to be trusted. More significantly, a double standard seemed to be operating. Anti-Semitic violence rightly aroused an immediate public revulsion among the media; other acts of racism somehow seemed less important, less central to the debate. Under these circumstances, why was it expected that immigrant families would accept Brenner and Stasi’s protests that the Republic had instituted equality?
The contrast between the meanings ascribed to our two keywords is significant. All politicians loudly proclaim their loyalty to laïcité, but produce wildly divergent interpretations of what this term means. On the other hand, attitudes to the veil are consistent, if inaccurate. In other words, the positive principle, which is supposed to bind together the isolated citizens of the Republic into a united national community, is illusory, a mere politician’s charade, while the negative principle, little more than an expression of educated prejudice, really does provide a type of cultural unity. The implications of this contradiction are extremely serious.
Chahdortt Djavann: Assimilation as Liberation
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I learnt my first words of French at the age of 25 … Today, I’m a writer: it’s possible in France to pull yourself up, even if you haven’t got a penny, even if you can’t speak a word. So, I reject this sob-story language, and let’s stop saying ‘we live in difficult areas, we’re poor …’ [interruption from Houria Bouteldja] … Here, in France, I have not known racism.
Chahdortt Djavann, 20061
Chahdortt Djavann and Houria Bouteldja were both guests on the ninety-minute-long television discussion programme Culture et Dépendances in January 2006. It was a strange occasion, with an odd selection of seven guests: among them, Vertan Berberian, a naturalized Armenian who proved to be more French than the French, Xavier Darcos, a sharp-suited and clean-shaven defender of the schools of Jules Ferry and a member of the government, the elephantine figure of Alain Finkielkraut, who seemed willing to talk for ninety-one minutes of the ninety-minute programme, and then the two women. Curiously, one could at least begin to describe them in similar terms. Both have mixed nationalities: Djavann is French-Iranian, Bouteldja French-Algerian. Both of them were brought up as Muslims, and both have raised questions about this faith. Both, in a sense, are rebels against established authorities: Djavann has been brave and forthright in her criticisms of the oppression of women by the Iranian Islamic Republic, while Bouteldja has criticized the racism of the French Republic. However, from the beginning of the programme, the differences between the two were obvious. It was even clear in their style of dress: Djavann had short, well-styled hair and wore an elegant, deep-red dress, an attractive example of that spontaneous, careless stylishness which French women spend hours achieving. Bouteldja dressed less fashionably, but was more willing to throw herself into debate. Djavann speaks with a slight but noticeable accent: she has no trouble expressing herself in French, but as the exchanges grew more heated it was noticeable that Bouteldja spoke louder and faster, while Djavann sounded angry, but more and more awkward, at one point even mistakenly addressing Bouteldja as ‘Monsieur’. At crucial moments, Finkielkraut seemed to be speaking in her place. The exchanges between the two women were not simply bad tempered, not just one more example of the professionalized rhetorical exchanges into which French public figures regularly enter, but something deeper. The obvious, extreme tension generated by their disagreements represented an absolute clash of ideas, ideals and experiences with no possibility of compromise.
Why consider Chahdortt Djavann in a book on French Muslims? It could well be argued that she is neither French nor a Muslim. She is, however, a naturalized French citizen, and her frequent, prominent presence in the French media comes from her claim to speak about the Muslim condition. There can be no doubt that her books have played a significant role in structuring the dominant French attitudes to Muslims. For these reasons, she merits inclusion.
Djavann’s France
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