With controversial headline “This brazen Islam” a French magazine in 2012 claimed Muslims were infiltrating hospitals, cafeterias, swimming pools, schools
Commentators in France and elsewhere have taken the recent terrorist attacks in Paris as an occasion to reflect more broadly about Muslims in France. Many read the attacks as a sign of French Muslims' refusal to integrate. They've asked whether Muslims can be fully secular and expressed doubt as whether one can be both Muslim and French.
Even as we try to make sense of what happened, however,
we should be wary of myths about French secularism (laïcité) and French citizenship being spun in the aftermath of the attacks.France understands itself and
is often accepted as a preeminent secular nation that fully separates church and state and restricts religion to the private sphere.
The reality is more complicated, as more than
10 years of research on this issue have taught me.
In 1905, a major law officially separated church and state in France, though it did not go into effect in the northeastern region of Alsace-Moselle, which was under Prussian rule at the time. Even when Alsace-Moselle was reintegrated into France, however, it remained exempt from the 1905 law, and Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Judaism are still officially recognized religions in the region. As a result, religious education in one of those religions is obligatory for public-school students and the regional government pays the salaries of clergy of the four recognized religions.
Other exceptions to the separation of church and stateThe 1905 law itself contains a number of exceptions. For instance, though it forbids government financing of new religious buildings, it allows the government to pay maintenance costs for religious edifices built before 1905 - most of them Catholic churches. Thanks to later laws, the state also subsidizes private religious schools, most of them Catholic, some of them Jewish. And there exist other traces of Catholicism within the education system, like a public school calendar organized around Catholic holy days and public school cafeterias that serve fish on Fridays.
However, when Muslim French request the kind of accommodations offered to other religious communities in France, for example, state-funded Muslim schools, a school calendar that incorporates Muslim holy days, and the official recognition of Islam in Alsace-Moselle, they are reminded that France is a secular country where proper citizenship requires separating religion from public life.
Comment: So, by publicly threatening Japan, we're supposed to believe that ISIS' main intent is to end its support for the War on Terror. NATO is obviously going all in.