David D. Laitin: Laïcité or Discrimination Against Muslims in France?
[David D. Laitin, a professor of political science at Stanford, was a guest professor in the “Equal Opportunity” scholar-in-residence program of the French-American Foundation and Sciences-Po.]
In less than two weeks, Eric Besson, the French minister for Immigration, Integration and National Identity, will open a colloquium on “National Identities, European Identities” with leading European ministers and intellectuals in attendance.
The event stems from a campaign promise of President Nicolas Sarkozy to reinforce republican values through an open public debate. Besson, having accepted this portfolio, seeks to promote a national consensus on a France that is open to immigration, non-discriminatory and resolutely secular (laïque).
It is the value of laïcité that reveals the real foundation of the debate.
We know from European history that in the 15th century, in Constantinople and in Grenada, a clear boundary separating the Muslim and the Christian world was set. With the wars of religion in Europe ending in the 17th century, and clerics banished from civic life in France more than a century ago, it seemed to most French that the politics of religion was ancient history.
Yet the massive number of Muslim migrants into France in the past half-century, some of whom retain allegiance to radical clerics, has reopened the religious book in a new and troubling way....
There is no doubt: Anti-Muslim discrimination in at least one sector of the white-collar French labor market is surely holding back Muslim economic success in France....
Read entire article at International Herald Tribune
In less than two weeks, Eric Besson, the French minister for Immigration, Integration and National Identity, will open a colloquium on “National Identities, European Identities” with leading European ministers and intellectuals in attendance.
The event stems from a campaign promise of President Nicolas Sarkozy to reinforce republican values through an open public debate. Besson, having accepted this portfolio, seeks to promote a national consensus on a France that is open to immigration, non-discriminatory and resolutely secular (laïque).
It is the value of laïcité that reveals the real foundation of the debate.
We know from European history that in the 15th century, in Constantinople and in Grenada, a clear boundary separating the Muslim and the Christian world was set. With the wars of religion in Europe ending in the 17th century, and clerics banished from civic life in France more than a century ago, it seemed to most French that the politics of religion was ancient history.
Yet the massive number of Muslim migrants into France in the past half-century, some of whom retain allegiance to radical clerics, has reopened the religious book in a new and troubling way....
There is no doubt: Anti-Muslim discrimination in at least one sector of the white-collar French labor market is surely holding back Muslim economic success in France....