Everything has already been said about this law (partly pre­pa­red by a Stalinist MP, André Gérin, who chai­red a mul­ti­party par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion for seve­ral months) which will be voted in September 2010 : Sarkozy is dra­ma­ti­cally loo­sing ground in the polls ; he wants to keep sedu­cing the voters of the National Front ; French eco­nomy has serious pro­blems so the UMP (main govern­men­tal party) is loo­king for a diver­sion ; the gover­ne­ment wants to jus­tify French mili­tary inter­ven­tion in Afghanistan ; sala­fists (1) are trying to infil­trate the wor­king class dis­tricts popu­la­ted by a majo­rity of « Muslim » forei­gners and French « Muslim » citi­zens with North African or African des­cent ; this new law is the conti­nua­tion of the vicious debate about natio­nal iden­tity laun­ched by the UMP ; among the 2 000 women who sup­po­sedly wear the burqa in France, one can count many young, newly-conver­ted, French women who behave like the mem­bers of a sect and don’t repre­sent the « ave­rage Muslim » woman, etc.

Probably all these expla­na­tions have a bit of truth, but none of them explains the disar­ray of the Left and Far Left in front of this new law, pre­sen­ted by the French govern­ment as a « femi­nist » ( !) law.

If we consi­der the two main par­ties of the refor­mist Left, we can only observe a divi­sion in their ranks. The CP depu­ties will abs­tain but at least André Gérin will vote for it. The Socialist Party wanted to pre­sent a dif­fe­rent law to unite all par­ties, but it will finally abs­tain, even if seve­ral « socia­list » MPs have already announ­ced they may vote the UMP law.

As regards the three main Far Left groups, the trots­kyist Lutte ouvrière (Workers Struggle), after having appa­rently taken a posi­tion less cri­ti­cal towards the law, seems to have slightly chan­ged its line and to now denounce the govern­ment’s maneu­ver while at the same time sup­por­ting the « strug­gle » of the phony Ni putes ni sou­mi­ses (2).

The NPA (3) has publi­shed two press relea­ses to denounce the law, but has not enga­ged a natio­nal cam­paign against « isla­mo­pho­bia », to the great disap­point­ment of its pro-SWP or anti-isla­mo­pho­bia mili­tants.

And the POI (Independant wor­kers party, heir of the « lam­ber­tist » OCI-PT) has taken posi­tion against the law, under­li­ning, like all its oppo­nents, that this law will oblige women wea­ring burqas to stay at home, but the denoun­cia­tion of the future law does not seem cen­tral in its press, as they devote their energy to attack the govern­ment’s policy about pen­sions and com­pany clo­su­res.

The fact that the refor­mist Left is unable to take an active and united posi­tion against the anti-burqa law shows at least the tac­ti­cal talent of Sarkozy for his (very pro­ba­ble) next pre­si­den­tial cam­paign. For the last three years, he has been able to use the divi­sions of the Left, its ambi­gui­ties towards French natio­na­lism and ins­ti­tu­tio­nal racism, its unwillin­gness to defend a cri­ti­cal posi­tion towards all reli­gions (inclu­ding islam), its dra­ma­ti­cally decli­ning mili­tancy in wor­king class dis­tricts.

The refor­mist Left has only been able to raise the rather abs­tract banner of anti­ra­cism, which does not dif­fe­ren­ciate it from the main Right and Center par­ties, even if some mem­bers of the poli­ti­cal elite regu­larly express some form of (uncons­cious ?) racism towards North Africans, Africans, Romas, etc. The Far Left has talked in a very gene­ral way of femi­nism and women’s rights but its pre­sence in wor­king class dis­tricts is too weak and too dis­crete to make the dif­fe­rence.

When some Left Republicans, femi­nists, gaul­lists, extreme right win­gers and fas­cist mili­tants tried to orga­nize toge­ther, on the 18th of June 2010, a « wine-sau­sage party » against Muslims in the 18th dis­trict of Paris (4), all the local Left and Far Left mili­tants met and dis­tri­bu­ted a lea­flet. As could be expec­ted with such a broad coa­li­tion, it only denoun­ced « racism » and « fas­cism » in a very abs­tract way, without being able to mobi­lize the inha­bi­tants of this dis­trict against this xeno­pho­bic demons­tra­tion – which was finally banned by the autho­ri­ties and took place ins­tead on the Champs Elysees without being dis­tur­bed by any pro­tes­ter !

To come back to the title of this arti­cle, the pro­blem posed by the burqa law is linked to two dif­fi­culties.

The first dif­fi­culty is to unders­tan­ding Sarkozy’s tac­tics and stra­tegy (the French President would be pro­ba­bly at pains to explain the cohe­rence of his own policy !). The Far Left often pre­sents Sarkozy as an evil « neo­li­be­ral » who wants to pri­va­tize all public ser­vi­ces, and even some­ti­mes as a copy of the National Front, a heir of Marshal Pétain who col­la­bo­ra­ted with the Germans when Hitler’s sol­diers occu­pied France during the Second World War. It’s quite obvious Sarkozy is not a friend of the wor­king class, and that he is going to reduce a good part of the ser­vi­ces « offe­red » by the Welfare State. But his poli­ti­cal strength is to play on the Gaullist-Statist tra­di­tion (una­ni­mously prai­sed by the refor­mist Left) and to try to make people think the French State is going to save the indus­try, to save the euro, to impede the world crisis to touch France – a bit like the Chernobyl cloud was sup­po­sed to evade cros­sing French ter­ri­tory and go directly to Italy !

As regards islam, the Left and the Far Left have the same dif­fi­culty and inca­pa­city to explain and unders­tand the UMP’s policy as shown when they denounce its so-called « isla­mo­pho­bia ». It’s a non­sense to call « isla­mo­pho­bic » Sarkozy, a man who forced the main ten­den­cies of French islam to unite in a common orga­ni­sa­tion (the Consultative Council of Muslim Cult) in order to orga­nize the coo­pe­ra­tion bet­ween the minis­ter of Interior and the main Muslim asso­cia­tions ; who has deci­ded that the French State will finance the secu­lar for­ma­tion of 50 imams every year at the… Catholic Institute of Paris ; who took with him to Irak the lea­ders of the main French Muslim asso­cia­tions, so that they could send a reli­gious mes­sage to the kid­nap­pers when a French jour­na­list was held hos­tage for months, etc.

In the same vein, the Left and Far Left have denoun­ced André Gérin as « isla­mo­pho­bic » while this Stalinist MP (ree­lec­ted 3 times since 1985 and member of the Central Comittee until 2000) has been coo­pe­ra­ting for years in his cons­ti­tuency (Venissieux, a suburb of Lyon) with all Muslim asso­cia­tions, gene­rously hel­ping them, sup­por­ting the return to France of seve­ral French Muslims detai­ned at Guantanamo, invi­ting Tariq Ramadan to the par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion about the anti­burqa law, and refer­ring to all sorts of Muslim reli­gious autho­ri­ties to prove that burqa is… anti-isla­mic.

The second pro­blem which the Left does not want to confront is why Franco-French wor­kers are hos­tile to the burqa and not indif­fe­rent to the hidjab (veil) in the streets and in class rooms. It’s cer­tainly not because they are more femi­nist, say, than British or German wor­kers. But it’s pro­ba­bly linked to the fact that French bour­geois Republic has been built on a very long and intense conflict with the Catholic church. So reli­gion is a very touchy sub­ject, and the deve­lop­ment of a recently impor­ted, non wes­tern reli­gion inside France can only pro­voke all sorts of xeno­pho­bic reac­tions or at least fear and misun­ders­tan­ding. The margin bet­ween natio­na­lism, xeno­phoby and racism is quite thin, but one should not mix all nega­tive reac­tions against the hijab or the burqa under the confuse and mani­pu­la­tive term of « isla­mo­pho­bia ». One should try to dif­fe­ren­ciate them, even if one condemns them all as expres­sions of nasty divi­sions among the exploi­ted.

As a mili­tant in a net­work sup­por­ting migrants in their fight to get lega­li­zed, I can tes­tify that French wor­kers, even when they express nega­tive com­ments about Muslim « osten­si­ble reli­gious signs » are at the same time often ready to express their concrete soli­da­rity towards a « Muslim » when he/she is arres­ted or threa­te­ned to be expel­led from France, at least if they know him/her, if he works in the same com­pany, lives in the same dis­trict, if his chil­dren are stu­dying in the same school as his chil­dren, etc.

In France, both the Right and the Left are taking a more « mul­ti­cultu­ra­list » poli­ti­cal orien­ta­tion, which should nor­mally lead to a change in the 1905 law regu­la­ting the rela­tion­ships bet­ween the State and the « cults », i.e. reli­gions. This legal change would pro­ba­bly have nega­tive effects and give more power to reli­gious autho­ri­ties over their res­pec­tive sheep. But even if there are a lot of deba­tes about a more « open » form of « laïcité » (often trans­la­ted in English as secu­la­rism, although it has a dif­fe­rent mea­ning in French), no impor­tant poli­ti­cal party is ready to call for a refe­ren­dum about the place of reli­gions in France today or to seriously launch a natio­nal debate about this kind f sub­ject.

This is why this debate is both per­ma­nent (some­ti­mes in tiny intel­lec­tual cir­cles, some­ti­mes in the mass media) and never fini­shed. Obviously it’s mani­pu­la­ted by all poli­ti­cal par­ties but it tou­ches iden­tity pro­blems for which the Far Left (or the Left) has no quick-and-easy ans­wers. Calling for « wor­kers soli­da­rity » or « equal rights for men and women, natio­nals and forei­gners », when unem­ploy­ment grows dra­ma­ti­cally, when new popu­list and fas­cist par­ties are defen­ding secu­la­rism and the gains of the Enlightenment, is not enough. One has to pro­pose ano­ther gene­ral pers­pec­tive, an alter­na­tive to the fight of all against all and cult of indi­vi­dua­lism which are cen­tral to modern capi­ta­lism. This radi­cally new vision is tra­gi­cally mis­sing among « revo­lu­tio­nary » groups.

Y.C.

(Ni patrie ni fron­tières)

1. Muslim fun­da­men­ta­lists are sup­po­sed to repre­sent from 5 000 to 50 000 people over the 4 mil­lion Muslims living in France, 2 mil­lions being French, 2 mil­lions being forei­gners.

2. Ni putes ni sou­mi­ses is a small group ini­tia­ted by the Socialist party and which was sup­po­sed to defend women’s rights in wor­king class dis­tricts, but is actually not very active and whose former leader – Fadela Amara – has accep­ted to par­ti­ci­pate to Sarkozy’s govern­ment…

3. The New Anticapitalist Party is a new larger group formed by the trots­kyist LCR which dis­sol­ved itself and has an even looser policy than its pre­de­ces­sor.

4 . The 18th dis­trict is a wor­king class area hos­ting a high pro­por­tion of forei­gners, and also Muslims who are obli­ged to pray in the street because their mosk is too small.