LEISURE & ARTS

To Keep the Banlieue From Burning
Will France ever integrate its Muslim immigrants?

BY MATTHEW KAMINSKI
Thursday, October 26, 2006 12:01 a.m.

A year ago this Friday, the poor, predominantly Muslim housing projects that ring France's large cities went up in flames. Just this past weekend, as if to mark the anniversary, a group of about 30 "youths" in a Paris suburb (banlieue) attacked a packed bus in broad daylight, forcing the passengers off, torching the bus itself and stoning the firefighters who arrived on the scene. In recent weeks, similar sorts of gangs have set upon police patrols in the banlieues, throwing stones and wielding metal bars. Plus ça change, indeed.

Of course the problem is not only French. Much of Western Europe faces the challenge of integrating its Muslim populations, tamping down social unrest and thwarting the threat of radical Islam. The Continent-wide reaction to the Danish cartoons caricaturing Muhammad was a demonstration of the tensions lying not far beneath the surface. Britain experienced terrorist violence with the London subway bombings a little more than a year ago and was the site of the recent thwarted plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners.

At the moment French Muslims, like Muslims elsewhere in Europe, exhibit the pathologies that have long characterized the American underclass. Nearly a fifth of French residents with immigrant origins--a group dominated by North Africans--don't have jobs. Unemployment among young people in the projects runs as high as 50%. Muslims make up a majority of the French prison population, and in jails near urban areas their numbers approach 70% or 80%. It requires only a short commuter train trip from central Paris or Lyon to come across a culture of drugs, welfare dependency and crime.

Still, France has a long and unique, for Europe, tradition of welcoming immigrants; all sorts of nationalities have moved from the lower class to the middle over time. Will the Muslims of recent years follow the path of the Armenians and Vietnamese before them? Messrs. Laurence and Vaisse seem to believe so. France touts Europe's highest rate of intermarriage between Muslims and non-Muslims. In the realm of popular culture, its most beloved sports star (Zinédine Zidane) and comic (Jamal Debbouze) hail from Algerian Berber families. Though immigrant birth rates are high, they tend to slow down with each succeeding generation, approaching that of the general French population. A Muslim middle class is tiny but emerging.

An assimilationist outlook may be emerging as well. According to a Pew Global Attitudes survey published in July, 42% of French Muslims consider themselves French first; 47%, Muslim first. (In Britain, the numbers are 7% British first; 81%, Muslim first.) In the same poll, 78% of French Muslims say that they want to adapt to French customs. Another recent survey, this one for La Vie, a Catholic monthly, appears to show that French Muslims aren't averse to "French" values: 91% of those interviewed approved of gender equality, 73% of the separation of church and state; 69% said that they don't oppose Muslim women marrying outside the faith.

These statistics came to light after "Integrating Islam" went to print, but they confirm the book's cautious optimism. Messrs. Laurence and Vaisse argue that French Muslims are a diverse and fast-changing group, in many respects moderate. France, for example, saw virtually no public protests against the Muhammad cartoons, in contrast with other European countries. Dalil Boubakeur, the head of the French Muslim Council, is quoted at length in "Integrating Islam" describing a liberal vision. He calls Islam "a religion and a culture that has combined itself with other cultures and that is now combining itself with Western democracy." French Muslims, he adds, "wish for a tolerant Islam, humanist, inviting the faithful to live with their times, to accept modernity."

Sounds good. So why are so many French citizens convinced that relations between Muslims and Christians will get worse and not better? The warning signs go beyond the delinquents who grab headlines by burning cars. The Pew survey also shows that Islamism--the militant, fundamentalist form of the religion--is putting down roots in France, as it is elsewhere in Europe. Mr. Boubakeur may be speaking for only so many.

The group that seems most susceptible to radicalization is the young who were born in France but feel at home neither in the West nor in the birthplace of their immigrant parents. Zacarias Moussaoui, the convicted 9/11 terrorist and a French citizen, is the most prominent example of this cohort. The authors note that up to 200 French Muslims trained in al Qaeda's Afghan camps. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is certainly active in Frances's suburban projects.

The French approach to assimilation, with its insistence on strict secularism and its dirigiste firmness, does not make for an American-style melting pot. But it may well carve a better path to civil peace, over time, than the policies of Europe's other Muslim-populated countries. The path would run smoother if France could undertake a major economic reform. Remarkably little has been done, even in the year since the riots, to loosen up the restrictive labor codes that do so much to keep poor immigrants--not least poor Muslim immigrants--from finding work and integrating themselves into French life.

Mr. Kaminski, who lives in Paris, is editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe. You can purchase "Integrating Islam" at the OpinionJournal bookstore here.

Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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