DAYS before she was due to be married, Ghofrane Haddaoui, 23, refused the
advances of a teenage boy and paid with her life. Lured to waste ground near
her home in Marseilles, the Tunisian-born Frenchwoman was stoned to death,
her skull smashed by rocks hurled by at least two young men, according to
police.
Although the circumstances of the murder are not clear, the horrific
“lapidation” of the young Muslim stoked a French belief that the country can
no longer tolerate the excesses of an alien culture in its midst. A few days
ago, pop celebrities joined 2,000 people in a march through Marseilles
denouncing violence against women, particularly in the immigrant-dominated
housing estates. The protest against Islamic “obscurantism” and the
“fundamentalism that imprisons women” was led by a group of Muslim women who
call themselves Ni Putes ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Submissive).
The movement, which emerged three years ago to defend Muslim women, is
spawning similar groups across Europe, supported by a mainstream opinion
that has recently abandoned political correctness and wants to halt the
inroads of Islam.
From Norway to Sicily, governments, politicians and the media are laying aside
their doctrines of diversity and insisting that “Islamism”, as the French
call the fundamentalist form that pervades the housing estates, is
incompatible with Europe’s liberal values.
The shift is not just a reaction to exceptional violence such as the Madrid
train bombings, or the murder of Theo van Gogh, the anti-Islamic Dutch
film-maker, by a Dutch-Moroccan. It stems from a belief that more muscular
methods are needed to integrate Europe’s 13-million strong Muslim community
and to combat creeds that breed extremists and ultimately, terrorism. With
mixed results, governments are trying to quell the scourge by co- opting
Muslim leaders to promote a moderate European Islam.
In Germany, with its three million — mainly Turkish — Muslims, and France,
with its five million of mainly North African descent, television viewers
were shocked when local young Muslims approved of Van Gogh’s murder. “If you
insult Islam, you have to pay,” was a typical response.
“The notion of multiculturalism has fallen apart,” said Angela Merkel, leader
of Germany’s Christian Democrat opposition. “Anyone coming here must respect
our constitution and tolerate our Western and Christian roots.” Italy’s
traditional tolerance towards immigrants has been eroded by fear of
Islamism. An Ipsos poll in September showed that 48 per cent of Italians
believed that a “clash of civilisations” between Islam and the West was
under way and that Islam was “a religion more fanatical than any other”.
Similar views can be heard across traditionally tolerant Scandinavia — and no
longer just from the populist rightwing party’s such as Pia Kjaersgaard’s
People’s Party in Denmark. The centre-right Government of Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, has equipped Denmark with Europe’s toughest curbs on immigration,
largely aimed at people from Muslim countries. In Sweden, where anti-Muslim
feeling is running high and mosques have been burnt, schools have been
authorised to ban pupils who wear full Islamic head-cover, although the
measure comes nowhere near France’s new ban on the hijab in all state
schools.
In Spain, with a rapidly rising population of nearly a million Muslims, the
backlash has been less visible despite the bombings, but thousands
demonstrated in Seville this week against plans to build a mosque in the
city centre. The Government has also won approval by sending 500 extra
police to monitor preachers and Muslim associations.
Police across the EU are closely watching prayer meetings in makeshift mosques
in cities and housing estates, and media accounts of the jihadist,
anti-Western and anti-semitic doctrines of the imams are fuelling public
anger. In Germany, pressure is growing for sermons to be preached in German
rather than Turkish or Arabic. Hidden TV cameras recently broadcast an imam
in a Berlin mosque telling worshippers that “Germans can only expect to rot
in the fires of hell because they are nonbelievers”.
The debate over the limits to free speech is loudest in France, which now
acknowledges the failure of its “republican” approach to integration whereby
immigrants were supposed to blend harmoniously into society and not exist in
separate communities.
Dominique de Villepin, the Interior Minister, is deporting foreign imams who
support wife-beating and other uncivilised practices. This week the
Government moved to ban a Lebanon-based television channel for anti-semitic
broadcasting. The left wing, which long shunned criticism of Islam as the
stock-in-trade of Jean-Marie le Pen, the far-Right leader, now denounces the
“totalitarian”, anti-feminist, antisemitic doctrines of the fundamentalists.
Jacques Julliard, a leading left-wing commentator, said the Left’s
longstanding tolerance had been used as “an agent for the penetration of
Islamic intolerance”.
Some on the Left have also taken strong exception to the concept of
“Islamophobia”, a supposed sin defined by EU anti-racism watchdogs as akin
to anti-Semitism.
The French consensus was symbolised by the 80 per cent public support for the
head-scarf ban, which started with little trouble in September. While many
Muslims felt stigmatised, the Government took comfort from the approval of
the ban by a substantial minority of the 10 per cent of the population that
is of immigrant origin.
Among them is Fadela Amara, a Muslim town councillor from Clermond Ferrand,
who heads the Ni Putes, Ni Soumises movement. “The veil is an instrument of
oppression that is imposed by the green fascists,” she says. Mme Amara, who
led the Marseilles march, advocates an “open Islam, an Islam of French
culture a bit Gallic around the edges”. This is also the aim of the state,
which two years ago created a national Muslim Council to promote moderate
mainstream Islam. The council was set up by Nicolas Sarkozy, the then
Interior Minister, who now heads the UMP, President Chirac’s centre-right
party.
M Sarkozy has just caused a stir by going a stage further, proposing that
France’s rigorously secular state fund the building of mosques. “Whether I
like it or not, Islam is the second biggest religion in France. So you have
to integrate it by making it more French,” he said. To general dismay,
however, the national council is coming increasingly under the effective
control of radicals.
Reluctantly, some intellectuals have lately concluded that the model for
Europe should be the US. On Tuesday a writer for Libération, the
French left-wing daily, noted that immigrants in the US threw themselves
into “the American dream” and prospered. “There is no French, Dutch or other
European dream,” she noted. “You emigrate here to escape poverty and nothing
more."
