Front Burner - Bonus | Nothing is Foreign: What’s at stake for Muslims in the French election

Episode Date: April 23, 2022

France is electing a new president this weekend — and once again the culture war over Islam is front and centre. Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, has proposed a ban on Muslim women wearing headscarves in public, and she's in striking distance of upsetting Emmanuel Macron, France's current centrist president. With the debate over French identity and rampant Islamaphobia flaring up again, Nothing is Foreign host Tamara Khandaker speaks with guest, Rim-Sarah Alouane, a French legal scholar, who says it's "draining" to feel as a French Muslim that "you are never enough." So what does this moment mean for Western Europe's largest Muslim population? And just how close is France to the brink of a far-right future? Featuring: Rim-Sarah Alouane, a French legal scholar and civil liberties expert.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. So this Sunday, people across France are heading to the polls to choose between far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and current French leader Emmanuel Macron to be their next president. After a campaign focused mostly on economic issues, the longstanding debate around the hijab is back in the news. And once again, Islam's place in France is being debated. the news. And once again, Islam's place in France is being debated. Macron and Le Pen clashed over the issue in one of the most heated exchanges during Wednesday night's presidential debate.

Le Pen reiterated her promise to ban the hijab in all public spaces. I cannot state this any clearer. I do believe that headscarves, hijab, is a uniform that is imposed on women by Islamists. And a lot of young women who wear it have no other way. Macron, who's reckoning with his own track record of policies that are seen by many Muslims as discriminatory, disagreed. Because if you go down your avenue, then you will ban all forms of religious science. You have not read my proposal then. If you apply this ban in the suburbs, then you are just going to create civil war. The last time Le Pen ran against Macron in 2017, she lost pretty badly.

Voters rejected a campaign that was widely seen as racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Muslim. But going into Sunday, while Macron is leading, for Le Pen, victory is within reach. For French Muslims, this means potentially another battle to practice their religion out in the open, one that they've been fighting for decades. One that they've been fighting for decades. Rims Sarah Alouane is a French legal scholar. She studies constitutional law, religious freedom, and civil liberties in France. We're going to talk about why the debate over religious symbols and what it means to be French and Muslim refuses to go away.

I'm Tamara Kandaker and you're listening to Nothing is Foreign. Rimsara, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm really excited to talk to you. It's great to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. Let's start with Marine Le Pen. Can you maybe start by just telling us a bit about who she is and her background? So Marine Le Pen is the leader of one of the French far-right party, Le Rassemblement National, which itself finds its roots, its origin in the Front National. So you have to know that Marine Le Pen is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former leader of the French far-right, whose party has inspiration in the Vichy regime. He had Nazi collaborators as close friends, as a member of his party.

And even though afterwards, his daughter took over and changed the name of the party in the process of rebranding the far-right to make it more accessible, mainstream, and removing all the controversial elements of the party. Don't be fooled. It's still there. And didn't she expel her father from the party? Well, she did. And I think he still holds a grudge against her. They're famous for family feuds as well. It's very interesting because many people want to vote for Le Pen

on the ground that she, you know, to vote against the establishment, quote unquote. But she is very much part of the establishment. She is part of the elite. She's the product of a dynasty. So how would you describe Marine Le Pen's politics when it comes to Muslims? Whether it's Muslims, and I will add vulnerable communities as well. Marine Le Pen, contrary to her father, is actually more clever.

Her father was condemned multiple times for incitement to racial hatred, and she wanted to get away from this. But when it comes to politics, she is not that different from her father. She would say that she's fighting Islamism, but not Muslims, even though when you look at her agenda, clearly it is an anti-Muslim agenda. She announced that she would like to prohibit the wearing of the headscarf in public spaces, so in the streets. Le Pen says the ban would be enforced by police, the same way they enforce seatbelts and cars, that they'd fine people. Last week, when she was approached by a woman in a headscarf who asked her what the headscarf is doing in politics, she responded saying she believed the headscarf is a uniform

imposed over time by people who have a radical vision of Islam. The woman challenged her. She said she started wearing it when she was older, and that for her, it was a sign of being a grandmother. Maybe it would be nice to actually ask Muslims what they think, Muslim women. What about their choice, their will to decide for themselves? But this would not stand judicial scrutiny because it is a discriminatory kind of, you know, piece of legislation. And we would be the first, be the first country to do that.

If she wants to pass such a ban, she will have to go through parliament. She will have to have the approval of both chambers, Senate and the National Assembly. If she is elected, well, chances are that such a bill might pass, but still it has to go through the council council. So the institution in charge of the judicial review.

And it's going to be very hard. If she did manage to pass something like this, how would it fit into the policies already in place when it comes to religious symbols in France? Can you maybe take us through what's there already? So, so far, the prohibition of the headscarf and any religious signs is imposed on, you know, the state and students from secondary school, like from primary school to high school. But in public,

you are allowed to wear any religious sign you want, with the exception of the full face covering, because this is banned. Such a ban would deeply affect freedom of religion and freedom of conscience and freedom of expression as well and and on top of this she's also promised to outlaw ritual slaughter which is something that would affect muslims and jews and just to give people an idea of what her policy is she's saying all animals should be stunned before slaughter and jews and muslims find this unacceptable because they think that stunning is causing unnecessary suffering to these animals, right? Yeah, it's not new. It's not just Marine Le Pen. We have been trying to prohibit halal and culture slathering, but it has always failed. And

anyway, there are regulations already. If she read the regulation, she would have seen that they are already processed to basically not harm the animal. The problem is, it's so easy to pander to people's fears and to basically look, they are animal killers, they are monsters. I'm here to basically save the animals. She clearly is targeting certain religious groups, the Muslims and the Jews, right? So you also have not only anti-Muslim bigotry, but you also have anti-Semitism, right? And her proposal is based on animal well-being and so on.

But hey, she's not planning on prohibiting foie gras. And I don't know if you guys are aware of how foie gras is made. Animals are, you know, force fed to be able to make foie gras. So of course, she's very selective about animal warfare. So let's pivot a little bit to Emmanuel Macron. She's facing off against him on Sunday in the second round of voting. And based on the first round of voting, it seems like Muslims don't really support him either. 70% of French Muslims voted for the far left candidate who ended up being eliminated. Why don't they want to vote for Macron?

Macron's policies in the past years has been really pandering to the right wing, to the far right. And Muslims were the victims of this kind of policies, I'm thinking especially about the infamous uh anti-separatism law right well uh this is called the reinforcing republican principles bill and uh what emmanuel macron is trying to do here is uh to defend what he says is free thinking and free speech in france which is according to the french president, now under threat, especially since the enormous activity by jihadist and terrorist groups in France since 2015. This anti-separatism bill, can you just tell us a bit about it? Where did it come from? And what is it all about? The discussions around that bill started after the horrific murder of this French teacher, Samuel Paty.

Paris has been rocked by a gruesome terrorist attack, which saw a school teacher beheaded in response to what he taught in class. Authorities say the victim drew the wrath of an Islamic extremist. drew the wrath of an Islamic extremist. So basically, the idea was that we need to create a French Islam to target separatism, even though separatism is nowhere to be defined, which is extremely problematic because in the term separatism, you can literally include anything you don't like. And when we're talking about separatism, it's this idea that Muslims don't want to integrate into French society.

Don't want to integrate and also try to remain outside of the national community to do harm to the country. Just to give you an example on how dangerous such fuzzy term can be. So it was in 2020, right? During an interview, our interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, declared that he was shocked by the existence of ethnic food aisles in supermarkets, naming culture and halal food isles, but the fact that you have communities separated from each other and from the national community, and that it was a form of separatism and basically of radicalization. We are talking about ethnic food isles. For some politicians as well, the wearing of the headscarf, just a random, you know, average woman, Muslim woman wearing a headscarf is a sign of separatism.

Now, if you want to create an association, you have to sign a contract to respect, quote unquote, Republican values. And if you don't, basically, you will not be able to open your association, your nonprofit. And you won't receive funding. And this law was designed for Muslim communities. And they're not even being subtle about it. Macron declared that, quote unquote, Islam is in crisis across the world. Islam is a religion that is in crisis today all over the world. We don't just see it in our country. It is a deep crisis that is linked to tensions between fundamentalisms, precisely religious and political projects, which, as we can see in all parts of the world, are leading to radicalism.

Right. And I remember there was a lot of backlash from leaders of Muslim countries after he said this, right? Muslim countries after after he said this, right? So so this law is passed in the wake of the murder of this teacher, Samuel Patti. Also, in the previous years, there's been all these other ISIS inspired terrorist attacks in France. And what have been the implications of the law so far since since it passed? So of course, this law is too new to have like precise, you know, report on the consequences. But so far, clearly many organizations were shut down on the ground of being separatist. But the French government is clear it will see through a controversial pledge to shut down religious institutions it sees as a threat. To shut down religious institutions it sees as a threat. According to Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin,

another six mosques across France will be closed and a number of associations disbanded. I'm not saying that France does not have problematic non-profits. It's not what I'm saying. But we have the rule of law. If you have suspicions, you conduct an investigation. You let the police do their jobs. You go through the judiciary system and like and you let people defend themselves. And just bringing it back to this campaign, what has Macron said about headscarves?

Is he proposing anything similar? Or does he disagree with that stuff? It's very interesting, because if you go back to 2017, contrary to many of his political opponents, he didn't run on the whole laicite, whatever thing, it was not his main focal focus, like during the election. And of course, things changed during his presidency when he definitely took a turn to the right. But he does not exactly care about the hijab as a whole or religious signs whatsoever. He even refused to change the law and so on. However, there is something different with his ministers, the Minister of National Education, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, and the Interior Minister, who have went like freestyle on the issue,

with extremely controversial, you know, statements about the Hatskas, about Muslims, about so-called Islamo-leftism spread in academia and so on. And we have seen that during the campaign. He's trying to tackle Marine Le Pen by saying, I will never do that. But it's kind of frustrating that he let his administration running on the anti-Muslim sentiment, you know, wave. And now trying to reach out the people he affected with his administration's policies because he needs their votes. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead Thank you. and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast,

just search for Money for Couples. It seems like every couple of years in France, this comes up and there's a new proposal that ends up targeting Muslims, especially around election time. People might remember things like the attempted burkini bans, the ban on religious symbols in schools, the niqab, the burqa ban, which you mentioned earlier. But Muslims make up such a small percentage of the French population. It's just 8% of the population. So why is this such a constant theme in French politics, do you think? If you want to understand the situation of French Muslims today,

you have to go back to colonial Algeria, really. When the War of Independence started, the headscarf and so on were for the Muslims a tool for freedom, for liberation that they used against the settlers, the colonizers. Fast forward to the 60s, France was in dire need of labor, cheap labor to rebuild the country. And after decolonization, there was a wave of immigration in France, especially, but not only from North Africa. Many of them were Muslims. The demographics of France started to change.

And this is when the far right start to, you know, spread this idea that the immigrants, quote, unquote, are going to steal native French's jobs. They're going to, you know, quote, unquote, sleep with your children, with your daughter, with your son, they're invading us, etc. So, you know, a classic far right talking points. Those immigrants were really separated from the rest of the population. They were invisible. And yet they faced a lot of racism, but they did not say anything by fear of deportation. And one thing leading to another, they brought their family from Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, etc. to France and they stayed.

Except that those children are born and raised in France yeah that that's so interesting and and clarifying and and so this influx of immigrants and their children ends up intersecting with this idea of laicite which you you brought up earlier and I wonder if you can just explain that to us because I feel like that's so central to this conversation. Where did that idea come from? And what is it exactly? First of all, you have to understand that France has always had tumultuous relations with religion as a whole, because of our history with the Roman Catholic Church. The idea of lae actually was born during the revolution of 1789, but it was really by the end of the 19th century that its implementation place to train future citizens. And to be able to do so, you have to remove any kind of religious influence, namely the Catholic Church influence.

And it was until 1905, really, during really huge and quite violent debates, that the law of 1905 on separation of church and state was adopted. This law is very simple. It implies that the state and its civil servants have to remain neutral in order to guarantee equality, and especially towards religious freedom, freedom of conscience, the freedom to think what you want, to change religion, to not have a religion. And the idea really was to impose religious neutrality upon the state and its civil servant, not on private individuals.

The problem is, since the 90s and accelerated ever since, that's what I call the weaponization of laicite. Laicite has been interpreted in a very illiberal way to basically restrict religious freedom and restrict the visibility of religion and especially targeting Muslims. The problem in itself is not laicite, is the way we are interpreting it. And so the way that the interpretation of laicite has evolved into what you describe as weaponized laicite has to do with what we talked about earlier, right? The influx of migrants, decolonization, and then it was sort of accelerated in the 90s and the early 2000s up until now.

Yes, absolutely. It started with a couple of school girls who were expelled from their school because they were wearing a headscarf, a hijab, on the grounds that they were violating racism. Hilal was expelled from her last school for refusing to take off the headscarf. expelled from her last school for refusing to take off the headscarf. Now, teachers at her new school are threatening to strike unless she agrees to ditch the scarf. The government asked for an opinion to the Council of State, which is our highest administrative Supreme Court, and in their opinion they said that, well,

as long as public order is not disturbed, you know, those students have a right to wear it. So a pretty liberal, you know, decision. Of course, it did not stop there. And fast forward to 2004, a piece of legislation was adopted to prohibit the wearing of conspicuous religious signs. Of course, nobody defined legally conspicuous and nobody defined religious sign in public schools. And then it went on and on and on. And we are trying nowadays to extend religious neutrality outside of the sphere of the state. what has it been like to be an ordinary muslim in france in recent years since muslim integration became part of like the the mainstream political discourse

it's training i think muslims just want to be forgotten, really. Basically, regardless what you do as a French citizen, it will never be enough. You will never be enough. I know that some people are giving up and are even leaving the country. I'm saying that I'm done. They are going to other EU states where they can, you know, just live their lives. There are like 99 problems in France and it sounds like being a Muslim is like the principal one. The rise of poverty is important.

Our public services are being dismantled and privatized. Social and economic issue. Healthcare. Heck, a pandemic. And yet, all we talk about really is the wearing of the headscarf. I dream of the day when we don't talk about French Muslims or French communities or Muslims of XYZ background, but just plain, boring French. And I think that's what people want. And always having to prove yourself. It's training.

So just bringing it back to the election, a lot of the coverage that I've read kind of downplays how much the conversation that we're having is part of what's going on in France. Like, for example, there has been a lot written about how Marine Le Pen is focusing on pocketbook issues, affordability, and she hasn't talked that much about Muslims or immigrants this time around. And maybe that's why she's doing a little bit better. What do you make of that analysis? And how big of a factor do you think the headscarf issue and, you know, this rhetoric around Muslims is in these elections? It's a very good point. Funny enough, I think Marine Le Pen did the best campaign. She was very clever. Again, she was the only candidate who actually talked about, yeah,

social and economic issues. But of course, again, you have to read her manifesto to realize that her agenda is racist, is white supremacist, is discriminatory and dangerous for the rule of law and democracy as a whole. She also had to face Eric Zemmour, who is far more vibrant in his like hatred that compared to him, she sounded more reasonable.

And Eric Zemmour is the candidate who came in fourth, right? In the first round of voting. And he's the other far right candidate. The other far right candidate. He is a pundit, really. And the problem is, you know, for instance, Zemmour was scoring super low at some point. And yet he was giving the tempo of the political election.

The same way that now Le Pen is giving the tempo to this election. Maybe if the far right was mainstream, it's because the mainstream looks like the far right today. So just jumping off of that then, since both of these candidates, Macron and Le Pen, have a track record of appealing to anti-Muslim sentiments, why does the outcome matter here? And what is at stake in this election? We have two choices. Save the republic or turning into an authoritarian, illiberal state. republic or turning into an authoritarian, illiberal state. You have two choices. Voting for a guy who indeed panders to the far right, but who yet will not stay in power forever. And you have another candidate who basically wants you

out, who does not even consider you as a human being. So between the vote that stinks and the vote that might kill you, you vote for the candidate that stinks. I think that's a good place to end it. Thank you so much. It's so interesting. I really, really appreciate it. Oh, I hope it was helpful. So before we go, the runoff vote takes place on Sunday. Polls are going to close at 8 p.m. in France, and whoever wins will be the country's next president. No president has won re-election

since 2002. Alright, that's all for this week. You've been listening to Nothing is Foreign. Our producer is Joyta Sengupta. Our sound designer is Graham McDonald. And our showrunner is Adrian Chung. Nothing is Foreign is a co-production of CBC News and CBC Podcasts. Willow Smith is our senior producer and Nick McCabe-Locos is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Joseph Chavison. Chavison. If you liked this episode and you want to help new listeners find the show, please take a second to rate and review us wherever you're listening. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at CBC Podcasts. I'm Tamara Kandaker. Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you back here next week. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.