LONDON - From his current vantage point at Oxford University, Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan cautions against putting an Islamic spin to the unrest that has swept Franceâs downtrodden surburbs.
In an interview with AFP, Ramadan said the French authorities will need to embrace a more sophisticated approach if they want to respond effectively to the rioting that has run for a dozen nights straight. âIn all that is happening, there are of course groups who are in it for pure vandalism, for wild violence,â said the scholar, named by Time magazine as one of the leading thinkers of the 21st century but barred from the United States.
âBut the phenomenon doesnât stop there,â he added, citing âobjective eventsâ involving the relationship between those living in the grim suburban housing projects and French society as a whole. âPeople (in the suburbs) have the impression that they count for nothing, that they can be looked down upon and insulted in any way.â
He added: âWeâre in the process of losing a footing in the suburbs. Even so-called Muslim associations are more and more disconnected. The fracture is profound... We are seeing an Americanisation in terms of violence.â
| No, you're seeing something that is typically European. America didn't invent the ghetto. |
âAbove all, one must not Islamisize the question of the suburbs,â Ramadan stressed. âThe question that France must answer is absolutely not a question of religion.â
| Thumping a few moose-limbs, however, might calm things down a bit. |
Asked where the roots of the malaise lie, Ramadan said the entire political class in France has been âblindâ to what has been happening in the suburbs, with their unemployed youth of Arab and African origin and bleak high-rises. âThereâs an obsession about a religious divide, but no one sees the socio-economic divide in France, with places in the process of becoming ghettos with the suburbs on one side, the better-off areas on the other.â
âThere must be a struggle against this institutionalised racism. There are second-class citizens in France. That is the reality.â
Ramadan, the grandson of Hassan al-Bana, founder of the influentual Muslim Brotherhood movement in the 1920s, said there needs to be a return to order: âViolence is not a solution and sanctions must be taken against gangs.â But he said that security measures can only be part of a broader policy, one that addresses the core of social problems. âWe need a modern-day Jaures,â he said, referring to Jean Jaures, the pioneering French socialist politician at the turn of the 20th century.
âIt was Jaures who said that the religious question must be filed away so that one can focus on the social question. The unity of France is a myth in socio-economic terms, and the question of faith is not the problem.â
| But filing away the religious question allowed the French to stuff the Berbers and Arabs into ghettoes without any qualms. |
It would also help to keep a lid on âcounterproductiveâ speech, said Ramadan, who recalled Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozyâs description of the rioters as âscumâ. âItâs not by insulting one part of France that you can protect the other.â
| Which is why the French are doomed not to fix the problem, since they can't talk about it. |
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