France's 'race' and 'terrorist' issues highlight the failure of laïcité and social policy

A group of laïcists brush off social issues with a smile

Here are the headlines of the eight articles which were to be found, one after the other, at the top of the Figaro website homepage at 11:30 this morning;

Prasquier: a warmongering Islam is developing
Terrorism: Manuel Valls promises more arrests
Do you fear an increase in terrorist acts by Islamists in France? (poll, with over 80% of 'yes' votes as I type)
Valls: these terrorist networks are within our communities
Bruguière: Muslim proselytes are the most dangerous
Twelve apprentice Jihadists ready to die as martyrs
The Jews of Sarcelles refuse to give in to fear
CRIF: Radical Islamism is Nazism (CRIF = Representative Council of Jewish organisations in France.)

These articles and more were posted over the last 24 hours and they all concern issues related to weekend raids on alleged jihadists in various cities by anti-terrorist police which resulted in twelve arrests and the death of one suspect, who was shot after he opened fire on police officers who wanted to arrest him. Those arrested are suspected of being implicated in a grenade attack on a kosher grocery store which took place in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles on September 19.

Although the other French papers did not put quite as much emphasis on the story as Le Figaro did they all ran prominent coverage and analysis by various experts and former terrorist police chiefs. In what is being interpreted as a riposte to the arrests, drive-by shooters fired blanks at a synagogue, also in Paris, on Saturday evening which prompted President Hollande to meet urgently with CRIF representatives to reassure them and promise increased police protection for "religious sites".

The fact that France is preoccupied with these events to this exaggerated degree may surprise some but this situation has been brewing for months, as anyone who follows race and terrorist issues in France will attest, with each week bringing its lot of race and terrorist-related articles and pronouncements by politicians.

The Mohammed Merah affair, in which a young French-Algerian man who described himself as an Islamic terrorist shot and killed seven people and seriously wounded several others during three attacks in March, shocked the country. Three of the victims were off-duty soldiers and most of the remaining victims were Jewish. He was killed after a 30-hour siege.

The story dominated the press for many weeks, but it has since been overtaken in importance by a slew of more recent race/terrorist-related incidents and statements.

Jean-François Copé, candidate for the presidency of the right-of-centre UMP, has been quite busy stoking the fires of racial tensions in France over the last few weeks. He caused outrage a while back with the assertion that "anti-white racism" existed in predominantly immigrant areas of cities and he was even rounded on by his own party.

Undeterred however, last week saw him back in the headlines with a statement in which he said that young thugs (read Muslim thugs) steal food from other children on the pretext that "you mustn't eat during Ramadan."

Other headlining stories over the last month or two include that of the Charlie Hebdo Mohamed cartoons, which led to outbreaks of vandalism and attacks on Jewish-owned or run property amid vain calls by Muslim community leaders asking people to remain calm. The Chief Rabbi in Lyon received death threats and elsewhere three Jewish men were attacked with a hammer and iron bars.

Front National leader Marine le Pen predictably joined in by foolishly falling into a cheap journalistc trap laid by a journalist from Le Monde and saying that kippas should be banned in public. This caused a furor for days. Also, October 4th marked the 10th anniversary of the murder of Sohane Benziane, a 17-year-old girl who was covered in petrol and burned alive in a storage room for rubbish bins in a high-rise building in Vitry-sur-Seine in affair involving family honour. This crime has become synonymous here with sexist attacks by men in immigrant communities and their perceived machism.

These and other stories have been given prominent press coverage for months and the culminating effect is very bad news for France, particularly given that the country has the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in Europe. But what could possibly have led to this situation in a country which prides itself on its multiculturalism?

France's social fabric is defined and underpinned by its strong secular principles, called 'laïcité', the idea of which is to ensure that religion and religious considerations come second to the idea that, whatever one's origins, one is French first. The system arguably worked well while Catholicism was massively predominant, but that changed after the Algerian War when large-scale immigration from Algeria began and was increased in scope with the worldwide phenomena of increased immigration in general.

The result is that France now has a large and varied immigrant population, many of whom live in poorer areas on the outskirts of cities, where unemployment is rife. Racial tensions have been simmering for years and anti-immigrant racism has become commonplace. The post 9/11 era has exacerbated the situation, as have the Arab Spring conflicts, and Jews have become the scapegoat for the frustrations of a tiny minority of disaffected Muslims, more and more of whom have gone overseas for jihad training, inspired by terrorist attacks and a desire for revenge.

But the situation is much the same in Britain, which has its own problems with immigration and home-grown terrorists so the fact that France has these problems to deal with too does not in itself explain the country's current fever-pitch obsession with all things racial and terrorist.

This is because France is slowly waking up to the realisation that the principles of laïcité are becoming irrelevant, and fast. They were not designed with the current situation in mind, a situation which sees large populations of immigrants living together. They were designed as a colonialist 'we're all French together' sop to its overseas territories, including Algeria, and not as a means of social integration in France, which is why all efforts to apply it have ended in failure.

Nor was laïcité meant to help combat inequalities and societal problems, even more so given that it was precisely the idea of laïcité that contributed much to France's disastrous integration policies, which have led to the development of sprawling immigrant ghettos. These policies have led to the alienation of many young immigrants and the increase in what is erroneously termed 'Salafist' tendencies within their ranks. France now has 12,000 Salafists on its territory according to French intelligence agencies

Poverty, unemployment, a sentiment of abandon and a refusal based on the principle of laïcité to tackle head-on the problems facing individual immigrant communities ('we are all French so there is no racism and thus no problem to resolve') has created a major social crisis.

Those who commit Antisemitic acts and those intent on pursuing terrorism must be punished severely, but until France admits that it has serious social problems and begins to address them instead of hiding behind the fig-leaf of laïcité the situation will only get worse. France's problem is not one of racism and terrorism, it is the direct result of the country's failure to integrate its immigrants.

A time-bomb of hate and resentment is ticking away in France, and it's time France began to try and defuse it before it's too late.

Dieudonné, France's wannabe Antisemite hero

Dieudonné, showing off his well-aligned bottom teeth

Notorious French antisemite, 'comedian' and activist Dieudonné is not well known outside of France, but he is quite the star in countries such as Iran, which share his view that Israel should be destroyed. His latest attention-grabbing stunt was intended to get an antisemitic film to which he had contributed shown at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival, but the screening has been refused by the festival's organising bodies.

The film, Yahod Setiz, or 'Antisemite', as Shafi Agha Mohammadian, President of the Iranian production company DEFC (Documentary and Experimental Film Centre) put it, features a central character who plays a violent alcoholic who wears a Nazi uniform and hates every Jew alive. Shot in Iran, 'Antisemite' begins with a sequence which attempts to ridiculise the events which took place at Auschwitz.

All this explains why Dieudonné was so keen to offer production and marketing help to the DEFC. The decision to select him to help with the film's promotion was surely facilitated by an old French friend of his, the conspiracy theorist Thierry Meyssan, who has already co-produced two films for the DEFC and who runs the viciously antisemitic clearing house Réseau Voltaire.

And, of course, the film's content also explains why it was refused at Cannes, with a spokesman declaring that "Our general conditions forbid the presence of any film which may constitute a risk to public order or offend the public or those with religious convictions, as well as any film containing pornography or which is an incitation to violence." 'Antisemite' has also been banned from French cinemas.

Dieudonné (real name Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala) used to work in a a stage duo with the Jewish comedian Elie Semoun, but they separated in 1997 because of their increasingly divergent views. After this split Dieudonné began a prolific career as an antisemitic satirist which has continued to this day, and his latest stage production, Mahmoud (for Ahmadinejad), is a revisionist and antisemitic requisitory aimed at Jews, slavery, and the 'official' version of historical events. Violence is common both inside and outside those few venues which continue to accept him, and his theatre dates are often cancelled by local authorities due to the risk of violence, antisemitic content, or both. Many venues and towns refuse to accept his presence on stage.

Originally a left-wing antiracist, Dieudonné's political stance has radically changed over the years and he is now an avid supporter of the far-right National Front party, whose president in 2008, Jean-Marie le Pen, accepted to be named as the godfather of Dieudonné's third child in 2008.

His activities have not gone unnoticed however, and he has been physically attacked in public on several occasions. Also, he has been condemned in French courts on numerous occasions for defamation, the public insult of people of Jewish faith or origin, revisionism, and accusations that the Jews are slave traders.

But, in the name of free speech, should his film have been banned and, more widely, should he be banned from expressing his antisemitic views in French theatres and elsewhere? The answer is yes. France has laws which proscribe cultural events which may lead to public disorder, and it also has laws which condemn holocaust denial and racial insult. In other words, Dieudonné has given the authorities no choice.

So why does he continue to plan tours and public appearances which fall foul of the law and complain bitterly afterwards about 'censorship' after every banning? Is he really as indignant as that or is this the only way that he can continue to get funding for his propaganda efforts and productions in order to subsidise his rather privileged lifestyle, even though they are refused a wide audience?

I suspect the latter. After all, he may hog the limelight every now and again with his sad antics, but the fact is that he has an extremely limited following, even amongst France's Muslim population.

Dieudonné will go down in the infamous history book of destructive antisemitic thought as a two-bit rabble-rouser who made a lot of noise but achieved nothing, and that is exactly how it should be.