1. religion and spirituality
2. islam

Magazine
Ireland’s cultural and lifestyle
magazine with full 7-day TV listings
March 22 2015
Je suis
Charlie?
After the Paris attacks:
Thomas Hubert on the new face of fear
and the rise of the far right in France
The Anderson
files
Gillian Anderson is an
agent of reinvention
Grand grub
in Galway
A festival of food from
four chefs in the West
The strong,
silent suit
Men’s wardrobe staples
that wow and woo
INSIDESTORY
Demonstrators make their way
along Boulevard Voltaire, Paris,
on January 11, 2015, during a
rally following the terrorist
attacks
David Ramos/Getty
A twist of
12 Magazine March 22 2015 The Sunday Business Post
INSIDESTORY
faith
After the horror of the Charlie
Hebdo shootings, France is
in a state of tension as it
goes to the polls this month.
Thomas Hubert reports
from Paris on the mood of an
increasingly divided nation
The Sunday Business Post March 22 2015 Magazine 13
INSIDESTORY
Adji Ahoudian, a member of the ruling Socialist party and local councillor in
charge of community development in the 19th arrondissement of Paris
Pascal Perrineau of the Paris Institute of Political Studies is France’s foremost
expert on the far right
wo and a half months ago, a pair of
radical Islamist gunmen shocked
France and the wider world by shooting dead 12 people in the offices of
a Parisian satirical magazine. Today
and next Sunday, the country goes to
the polls in local government elections. This will be
the first reshaping of the French body politic since
what has come to be known as the Charlie Hebdo
massacre.
high-necked dresses in bright colours,
promises “a wind of modesty for your
clothes”. Across the street, a life-size poster
of a woman in a suspender belt advertises
racy lingerie.
The mosque had a reputation for radical, anti-Jewish preaching a few years ago,
but its current imam, Cheykh Achour, takes
part in regular inter-faith meetings with
other religious leaders in the neighbourhood.
“We meet in a mosque, a church or a
synagogue with rabbis and priests, as well
as Buddhist and atheist representatives,
to debate how each religion approaches a
given topic,” Achour says, offering dried
dates in his white and green office, which
is decorated with pictures of Mecca. “Then
we share a buffet. It really brings people together.”
He is adamant that the Paris killers were
“not Muslim”.
“The day after the attacks, I preached
that you can only answer the pen with the
pen – not with a Kalashnikov,” he says, in
reference to the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad printed by Charlie Hebdo. He also
quotes numerous occurrences in the Koran
where Mohammed refused to take revenge
after being assaulted or imprisoned. “The
Angel Gabriel appeared to him and offered
to crush the village of his attackers between
two mountains. Despite being wounded and
bloodied, he said no,” Achour recounts.
On the other side of the boulevard, a
vibrant Jewish community is organised
around kosher restaurants and synagogues
– the latter is under heavy military guard,
since the January attacks also targeted a
Jewish supermarket.
“That’s against some people who have
been brainwashed – but I wouldn’t fear anything from the Arabs in the neighbourhood,” says Journo Bnini, a 75-year-old local Jew. “Look at us, we’re like brothers,”
he adds, gesturing towards his friends at a
café run by a group of older Tunisian im-
T
Who wins control of these councils is
largely irrelevant, for French president
François Hollande has announced their
gradual abolition as part of ongoing decentralisation reform. Yet this is only the first
in a marathon of polls which will culminate
in the 2017 presidential election. Worryingly, opinion polls consistently predict that
the far-right National Front (FN) will win
an unprecedented 30 per cent of the vote.
“The coming year is decisive for the
FN,” France’s foremost academic expert
on the far right, Pascal Perrineau, tells The
Sunday Business Post. “All département
and regional councils are about to be renewed at a time when the National Front is
in a dynamic, upward phase, and it can establish local roots.”
But in Paris’s 19th district, the spirit of January 11 – when millions of people
across France rallied behind their leaders
in marches against violence, four days after
the shootings – lives on.
This is the area where Chérif and Saïd
Kouachi, the brothers who murdered 12
people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo on
that date, grew up in abject poverty in the
1980s. “People here remember them,” says
Cécile Michalet, a volunteer at a local community centre. It is one of the areas most
directly affected by the Paris attacks.
“We feared people would barricade
themselves within their cultural identities. But I have been around all the neighbourhoods, and have not felt any tension
– instead, it seems the tragic events have
brought people closer together,” says Adji
Ahoudian, a member of the ruling Socialist
party and local councillor in charge of community development in the 19th district.
A decade ago, Chérif Kouachi and his
friends took to running in the beautiful
Buttes Chaumont public park opposite
Ahoudian’s office, where families from the
large surrounding Muslim and Chinese migrant populations mingle with their neighbours of old Parisian stock – many of them
Jewish.
A police investigation later revealed that
Kouachi’s jogging sessions were part of a
plot to train and send Islamist fighters to
Iraq. The young man was sent to jail, where
he came into contact with even more radical militants. In their flight after the Charlie
Hebdo attack, the Kouachi brothers abandoned their car here and went on to die in a
shoot-out with police outside the city.
The 19th district is gentrifying fast, but
its bad reputation endures. “Are you going
to work in the 19th? It’s dangerous!” Maureen Eriyomi, herself from a working-class
Paris suburb, was told when she started an
internship here. After a few months working in the area, she says: “It’s not true at all.
As a young woman, I can walk around at
night safely. This is not Baghdad!”
The district’s south-western tip, a short
walk away from the offices of Charlie Hebdo, brings large numbers of Muslim and
Jewish people into contact like few places
outside the Middle East. Down from the
Boulevard de Belleville, a hub of Islamic
trade and culture has developed around the
Omar mosque. Koranic libraries and halal
butchers alternate with Parisian cafés.
One shopfront, filled with long-sleeved,
Cheykh Achour, imam at the Omar mosque in the 19th district: ‘We meet in a
mosque, a church or a synagogue with rabbis and priests, as well as Buddhist and
atheist representatives, to debate how each religion approaches a given topic’
14 Magazine March 22 2015 The Sunday Business Post
migrants – most of them Jewish, but some
also Muslim. The room is filled with the
aroma of hot coffee and the shouts of men
playing cards in French and in Arabic.
“Things are great here in Belleville, I’m
not scared,” says Salomon Saada, another Jewish immigrant from Tunisia. But he
adds: “I’m scared for my children. Things
were different five or six years ago. The
radicals have changed the world.”
And as the conversation rolls on, cracks
begin to appear in the façade of confidence
and tolerance natural to these men, who
have spent most of their lives here. “I own
a restaurant, and we have less business.
[Jewish] people are more afraid of relaxing
in public,” Bnini says.
Saada adds: “Since the Arab Spring,
many illegal migrants have come here who
might just as well have gone to fight in jihadist groups. Some of them have never
seen a Jew and have no idea what one is.”
Among Parisian Muslims, too, reactions
to radicalisation and violence are more
complex than the widespread public condemnation of the January attacks may suggest at first glance, with many in the shops
surrounding the Omar mosque refusing to
talk.
Muslim women in one of the district’s
large social housing projects say how they
and their neighbours had reacted on the day
of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. “We immediately formed groups – even sick women
who hardly ever go out – and we went to
Place de la République,” says Sita Touré;
there, a spontaneous vigil took place that
night.
Touré was compelled to take a stance
against Islamist violence by her seven-yearold daughter, who was confused by the
comments she heard at school and in the
media. “Is being Muslim about killing? Is it
a crime?” her child asked her.
“We marched and showed we were
proud to be Muslim, which is not a crime,”
Touré says.
Her friend Chahrazade Terbeche, however, disagrees and refused to take part in
mass protests against the attacks. “We had
nothing to prove. I didn’t march, because
I was annoyed at the idea that Muslims
should demonstrate more than others,” she
says.
Back at the mosque, imam Cheykh
Achour says ordinary Muslims should not
be expected to disassociate themselves
from terrorism. “Most people understand
that it is not a problem with Islam, but
some don’t. It is the role of Islam’s public
representatives to explain this to them,” he
says.
Last month, François Hollande pledged
to boost cooperation between the government and France’s notoriously divided Islamic organisations, especially in relation
to the recruitment of clerics. “Should we be
INSIDESTORY
Sita Touré, resident of Paris: ‘We marched and showed we were proud to be
Muslim, which is not a crime’
Louis Aliot MEP, vice-president of the Front National, and partner of Marine Le
Pen, the party’s leader
All pictures: Thomas Hubert
receiving imams from abroad without rules,
controls or training? No, we shouldn’t. And
we must all work on this. This is fully part
of laïcité,” Hollande said.
Although this latter word is often translated as “secularism”, French law defines it
as absolute religious neutrality in public affairs – with much stricter implications than
secularist legislation in English-speaking
countries. Its most controversial manifestations have been the past decade’s laws banning visible religious signs in schools and
full-face Islamic veils in all public places.
“The ban on religious signs is what
everyone remembers, but what we mean
is that we should be able to come together without anyone being identified by their
religion – that everyone should be accepted, whether they are a believer or not,” says
local councillor Ahoudian. “We politicians
thought this was obvious and took it for
granted, and we can be rightly criticised for
that.”
France’s 1905 law on the separation of
church and state marked the victory of secular, progressive republicans over Catholic, monarchist conservatives. “There was a
war between two Frances at the time,” says
sociologist Michel Wieviorka, who studies
relations among communities in France.
“Today, everyone is a republican – yet we
see that the republican ideal is facing difficulties. For example, state schools are
plagued by inequality: you’ll get a better
education as a white inhabitant of an affluent area than if you’re from a poorer neighbourhood and have a darker shade of skin.”
Wieviorka says French politicians and
commentators have failed to find solutions
to “actual racism and discrimination” – instead repeating the same old calls to respect
the values inherited from the French Revolution.
“When an ideal doesn’t work well and
you keep pushing it, it becomes a repressive incantation. There is no use in announcing new civics classes to teach young
people how to become citizens and how
great laïcité is, when such discourse has
been received for 40 years as a broken
promise. It is, in fact, the discourse of powerful elites who have a good position in society,” he says.
Many of the residents in the social housing projects that line Paris’s Périphérique
ring motorway are Muslim immigrants
from North and West Africa, or their children. One of them is Sophiane Nafa, the
manager of the Espace 19 community centre – a cosy, bright set of rooms on the
ground floor of one of the 19th district’s
tower blocks.
“In these neighbourhoods, laïcité is seen
as going against Islam,” he says.
French Muslims also felt uncomfortable
with the ubiquitous slogan “Je suis Charlie”
displayed by individuals and institutions
stricted to “the small number of idiots you
would find anywhere”.
However, he worries about the growing
influence of social networks on his fragile neighbourhood, where he says people
increasingly interact online rather than in
person.
The deeper you dig, the more fragile the
show of unity that followed the attacks appears to be. Back at the Institute of Political
Studies, Perrineau warns that there are two
sides to the “spirit of January 11”.
He says: “At first, there was the generous
and open aspect of people marching to defend the founding principles of our pluralist, liberal democracy, especially freedom
of thought and expression. Yet at the same
time, and sometimes among the same people, a more fearful and inward-looking movement developed, concerned
with French and European democracy’s ability to assimilate cultures and
religions whose principles appear to
be in contradiction with its own.”
He mentions the widespread
French perception that Islam is more
prone than other religions to envisage
government as a theocracy. This is
especially the case when it comes to
blasphemy, regarded by many Muslims as a crime – which it ceased to
be in France two centuries ago. Perrineau adds that Muslims themselves
would benefit from Vatican II-like
reforms to clear the air with other
French people.
Meanwhile, he adds, “the dark side of
the spirit of January 11 is not opposed to
the ideas of the National Front and other
nationalist and populist movements in Europe, which play a lot on this questioning
about Islam”.
Perrineau says that these issues of cultural identity have grown to occupy so much
space in public debates that the traditional
French divide between labour and conservative orientations on social and economic
policy is being shaken up, with a new rift
forming between “national and cosmopolitan” preferences, and the nationalist right
emerging as a third pole in political life.
“Some expected the recent events to
weaken the National Front. I never believed
that,” Perrineau says.
The analysis articulated by Wieviorka of
the School of Advanced Social Studies is
similar. He has seen two positions develop in relation to Islam in the wake of the
attacks: “The first one holds that the radical Islamism of the killers has nothing to
do with Islam in general: things should not
get mixed up and radicalisation, rather than
Islam in general, is what needs to be addressed,” he says – noting that this progressive opinion was in fact going against traditional French principles.
The second opinion Wieviorka has observed in France considers that radical Islamism cannot be separated from Islam
and immigration, which has made it the
second-largest religion in the country. The
sociologist says: “The paradox is that the
second opinion – which I personally find
reactionary and dangerous – is the most
compatible with the French Republic’s
ideal” of a secular state that rejects religious influence in public life. In its extreme
form, Wieviorka says, this view leads to
the wholesale rejection of Muslims and immigrants. “This means that islamophobic,
racist and xenophobic nationalism can affiliate itself ideologically with the Republic’s values.”
Wieviorka also notes that many French
Jews, who had previously confined their
religious identity to private life as expected by the French authorities, have
made it more visible in the last 30 years.
This has transformed them into easier targets for anti-Semitic attacks – which, like
anti-Muslim crimes, have risen sharply
– and leads increasing numbers to move
to Israel, where the government promises
them a better life as openly practising Jews.
Last month, Hollande spoke before the
French federation of Jewish organisations
and felt the need to state: “You French Jews
are at home here.”
Members of the National Front, too,
routinely chant “We are at home here” at
rallies. The slogan makes Louis Aliot, the
party’s vice-president, slightly uncomfortable. “We don’t use this phrase, but our activists have used it because they have the
impression they are no longer at home,” he
says. “Yet if the president is forced to come
before an organisation representing a religious community to say that French Jews
are at home, it proves that in reality – and
maybe in his mind – it is not currently the
case.”
Aliot, one of the 24 MEPs elected last
year under the FN banner, met The Sunday
Michel Wieviorka, a sociologist who studies relations among French communities
to page 16
across the country in solidarity with Charlie
Hebdo. “Some people put up ‘Je suis Charlie’ placards around here, but they were
torn down,” Nafa says. “Many people think
that it was wrong to assassinate the cartoonists, yet they cannot identify with the
newspaper that pointed the finger at Islam.
However, nobody said ‘Je suis Kouachi’
either.”
While Nafa had seen local people wear
Osama bin Laden T-shirts or praise Khaled
Kelkal, the Islamist perpetrator of the
1995 Paris bombings, nothing of that ilk
happened this time. “Everyone here condemned the Kouachi brothers, especially
after the shocking video of the policeman’s
murder,” Nafa says. One of the gunmen
was filmed shooting dead Ahmed Mera-
‘I’ve had to set a rule
that we never discuss
religion. It creates
division, because
people just cannot
listen to each other in
France at the moment’
bet, a French Muslim policeman, as he lay
wounded outside Charlie Hebdo’s offices
begging for mercy.
Some people did side with the terrorists
in online messages, and in isolated incidents during the minute of silence organised in French schools in the wake of the
attacks. This led to a number of arrests and
prosecutions – including that of previously
convicted anti-Semitic comedian and politician Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, who identified with one of the killers on Facebook.
But Nafa says such provocations were re-
The Sunday Business Post March 22 2015 Magazine 15
INSIDESTORY
Mother
courage
Fiona Ness
Journo Bnini and Bammouri Zouhair: Jewish and Muslim
residents live side by side in the Belleville area of Paris
from page 15
Illustration: Ben Hickey
The riddle of the middle
In which the middle child proves
that three is a magic number
T
oo young to monopolise your conversation (as per the oldest child),
and too old to monopolise your
movement (as per the youngest
child), being the middle child is always going to be tough.
As a parent, you’re told to be on your guard
against the one in the middle developing ‘middle
child syndrome’.
The syndrome is exhibited when feelings of
disaffection about being the middle child – the
fact that you get less parental attention because
you’re caught between two stools – are played
out in unruly behaviour. Unfortunately, this bad
behaviour draws a parent’s ire, and not the understanding and engagement the wee one in the
middle so deeply craves.
It’s textbook stuff. This bad behaviour (rookie
parents take note – it’s the behaviour that’s bad,
not the child), just leads to further disaffection,
which trips off a cycle of worsening behaviour
and before you know it you’re starring in Rebel Without a Cause and wondering where it all
went so wrong.
Except for the middle child there is a cause,
and the cause is YOU and the fact that you
didn’t just stop at two.
By the time I have three children, I have consumed all the parenting manuals, and affirmed I
will not be caught in the middle child syndrome
trap. I make a pact with myself that I am going
to disprove it all as hokum, by having three children who grow up as individuals who haven’t
been rated according to rank.
Although, a small part of me wonders if it
isn’t the inescapable destiny of Two, to forever
have to jostle for position, only to find herself in
the purgatory of a familial no-man’s land. That
no matter what we do as parents, Sleeping Beauty is always going to locate a spinning wheel.
Because no matter how high-minded my approach to parenting the middle child is, I have to
admit that I’ve been slipping. For starters, it was
just such a relief that with little personal effort,
the one in the middle turned out to be completely self-sufficient by the time she was two. And
so the temptation to just let her get on with it
proved all too much. And so I just did.
Then, before I know it I have a four-year-old
middler screaming “I hate you! I want a dif-
ferent mummy!” in my face and I am frantically tapping the words “David Coleman” into
the RTEPlayer and thinking, “She’s right! She
would be better off with a ‘not a shouty mummy’ across the road.” And all because tonight I
refused to read the bedtime stories only to her
and not to the others.
And then we’re both at Defcon 1 but, being
older and tireder, and more irrational, I’m the
one who detonates the bomb.
Having finally manhandled her into bed, I
say, fine, I will arrange for her to go to live with
another family, as per her request. Yes, we will
miss her, but such is life.
But, I say, I actually don’t know where I will
find another mummy who would only read stories to one of her children, and give no attention to the others. And would she really want a
mummy who would do something not nice like
that? Would that sort mummy really be better
than me?
Part of me wonders if
it isn’t the inescapable
destiny of Two, to
forever have to jostle
for position, only to find
herself in the purgatory
of a familial no-man’s
land
There’s stillness in the room, then wracking
sobs and a face, blotchy and pale, dramatically
exits the duvet. She (sob). Doesn’t (sob). Want
(sob). Another (sob). Mummy (sob). Ever (sob).
And I, the biggest bully ever, say no, no, it’s
all arranged, she can go if she really wants to.
She really doesn’t want to.
“You know,” I say to her. “When I was in
hospital having my babies, you were the dream
baby, the baby in the middle. No medicine, no
pain. You were the one that just popped out.”
“I did?” she says. “I was the best?!”
Just popped out!, I say, with a knowing look
to One, who understands the explanation, and
the cleverness.
Twitter: @fionaness
16 Magazine March 22 2015 The Sunday Business Post
Business Post at the European Parliament’s Paris office and had no
qualms about being photographed
in front of the EU flag. He cites
Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle
among the National Front’s inspiring figures, mentions his Jewish
grandfather, and points out that the
French authorities had been unfair
in refusing Muslims the right to
hold French citizenship in Algeria
under colonial rule.
He also supports Charlie Hebdo’s right to satire, suggesting that
those who disagree with the paper
should take it to court just like the
National Front does on occasion.
This is the new face of the FN
under the leadership of Marine Le
Pen – Aliot’s partner in his private
life – who has been busy turning
it into a mainstream party. Her
efforts aim at distancing the National Front from the antics of her
father Jean-Marie, who founded it
in 1972 and was repeatedly convicted of racist and anti-Semitic
slander.
“The French system has been
imploding through generalised
negligence and leniency,” Aliot
says, mentioning poor policies in
disadvantaged neighbourhoods
with large immigrant populations
under left and right-leaning governments alike.
He also points out that several
high-profile French terrorists of
the past decades held dual citizenship – a right the National Front
wants to abolish – and criticises
insufficient jail sentences for reoffending criminals including Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked the
Paris Jewish store in January.
“We were the first to denounce
this, which is why we were labelled racist and xenophobic,” Aliot says.
When asked about the reasons
for the Paris attacks, he points to
Islam and “a fundamentalist pressure within that religion that pushes for separation and questions the
rules of the French Republic”.
Aliot acknowledges that a significant Muslim population has
lived in France for decades, and
highlights that the first French
mosque was built in Paris to thank
Muslim colonial troops after the
First World War.
“What is new is that their assimilation has stopped under the
sheer numbers of mass immigration, and their communities have
turned into ghettos in some neighbourhoods. As a social and eco-
nomic crisis developed, radicals
took a hold of those areas and the
authorities gave up on them,” Aliot says, adding that the Israel-Palestinian conflict had encouraged
French Muslim youths to join radical movements.
In response, the National Front
has vowed to curb immigration
and pass restrictive legislation on
citizenship, enforce legislation on
laïcité more strictly and cut support to community organisations
in run-down neighbourhoods –
what Aliot describes as “the scattering of billions in government
funds for electoral clientelism,
which then goes out of control”.
When asked about the difference between this programme and
that of former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy, Aliot says:
“An additional argument is that
we want to seek the support of the
people for a number of significant
reforms to be decided by referendum, especially on Europe”, siding with Britain’s desire to stay
out of the euro zone and reduce
the power of EU institutions.
Under an FN government, the
Espace 19 community centre
would probably lose its funding.
Its manager Sophiane Nafa, along
with many local residents who
talked to The Sunday Business
Post, regrets that the media portrayal of their neighbourhood was
closer to Aliot’s view than to the
reality they experience every day.
Many feel hurt by the international coverage of the “no-go areas” of Paris “ruled by sharia law”
as incorrectly described by the US
TV channel Fox News, which later
apologised for the misrepresentation. In their opinion, French media are not much better. “When
kids get up at 3am to organise a
car boot sale and raise funds for
a humanitarian trip, nobody talks
about it. I’m not saying everything
is rosy, but there isn’t enough positive light shone on our young
people,” Nafa says.
Religion, too, could be approached in a different way. Nafa
mentions mothers who tell him in
private how they use Islam as a
moral code to educate their children and keep them away from the
temptation of petty crime.
Yet, for all his work in Paris’s
multicultural neighbourhoods over
the past 12 years, Nafa has one regret. “I’ve had to set a rule here
that we never discuss religion. It
creates division, because people
just cannot listen to each other in
France at the moment,” he says.