Myriam Francois-Cerrah2013-05-21T04:46:47-04:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=myriam-francoisCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Myriam Francois-CerrahGood old fashioned elbow grease.French Court Ruling Reignites 'Laicite' Vs Headscarf Debatetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30856562013-04-15T12:46:50-04:002013-04-17T06:30:57-04:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/
On March 19th, the court ruled that the private nature of the crèche rendered her firing a "discrimination on the basis of religious convictions", overturning two earlier rulings by an employment tribunal in 2010 and a court of appeal in 2011, and ordering the crèche pay her 2500 euros. Many French Muslims viewed the decision with muted optimism, hoping that the precedent set by the court would protect French Muslim women from misapplications of the law on laicite and unfair dismissals. In 2012, a report by Amnesty international found that Muslim women are routinely "denied jobs and girls prevented from attending regular classes just because they wear traditional forms of dress, such as the headscarf." The report also found that legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment is not being appropriately implemented, despite contravening European Union (EU) anti-discrimination legislation.
But in a sign of just how politicised Islamic issues have become in France, within days of the ruling, Socialist Interior Minister Manuel Valls responded by expressing his "regret" at the court's verdict, while former Prime Minister Francois Fillon took the opportunity to call for an extension of the law on laicite to all work places, including the private sector. Within days, the case had reignited the "laicite debate", fuelling endless discussions over French identity and the alleged intractability of Muslims.
From the late '80s when the first case concerning Muslim women's dress became a political issue, the reach of laicite has crept ever more worryingly into the private sphere. The 2004 ban on "ostensible religious symbols" in schools, has been followed by the 2010 ban on face veils in "public spaces". For its opponents, such legislation has bolstered various forms of anti-Muslim prejudice, apparent in a range of worrying developments, from discrimination in housing and employment, through to attacks on Muslims and their places of worship.
Many perceive the discourse on laicite as a cover for a stigmatisation of French Muslims who already face widespread discrimination and racism. A 2010 report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) found discrimination in access to employment, education, housing, and goods and services. A young activist currently lobbying MPs to reject any new legislation, told me that the discourse on laicite now allows for the expression of a respectable form of racism which specifically targets Muslims.
In his election pledge, President Hollande promised to be a figure of unity, decrying Sarkozy's divisive policies, pandering to the Far-Right, and portraying himself as a president for "all French citizens". According to one poll, 93% of French Muslims voted for the Socialist candidate, but many have been left disappointed.
In 2012, then spokesperson for the Socialist party, Benoît Hamon expressed surprise at support from socialist senators for the "anti-veiled nanny" law, as it has come to be known, describing it as "collateral damage from the debate on national identity" initiated by the Right in 2009 and affirming that the Socialist party would not support such a law if it came to power. But within a week of the High court ruling, and following a petition by public figures calling for a new "law on laicite", President Hollande added his voice to the clamour, venturing that "where there is contact with children, in what we call public service nurseries, in a crèche which benefits from public funding, there must be a certain similarity with what occurs in schools", referring to the 2004 ban on "ostensible religious symbols." Worse news still for French Muslim women was his apparent willingness to consider an extension of the law to all companies "in contact with the public or undertaking a mission of general interest or of public service", just as MPs on the Right are pushing for the law to cover all work places, public and private.
In response, 40 public figures, academics and intellectuals published a statement on March 28th, which gathered over 3000 signatures, opposing the law and calling for a commission on islamophobia.
Historically, the Left's record is no more tolerant than the Right's on Muslim issues. The Left overwhelmingly backed the 2004 law banning religious symbols in schools and it was a French socialist minister who proposed the criminalisation of face veils. In 2010, First Secretary of the Socialist Party Martine Aubry voiced that unlike the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) which had put forward a Muslim candidate who wore the veil in regional elections, the socialist party would not have accepted such a candidate.
However a number of dissenting voices within the Socialist party have begun to make themselves heard, seeking to distance themselves from anti-Muslim rhetoric viewed as the legacy of the Sarkozy era. Among them, MPs Razzy Hammadi, Alexis Bachelay and Christophe Caresche have already spoken publicly, emphasising that laicite comes with responsibility, but also rights, including the right to freedom of conscience. Caresche denounced any extension of the ban on religious symbols to private companies, arguing that "French universalism, in the name of which republican principles are invoked, is less and less universal and more and more French" and warned that proposals put forward by the Right to extend the ban to all work places and even in public spaces, could produce greater exclusion.
Marwan Muhammad, from the Collective against Islamophobia in France says a grassroots campaign started by his organisation is beginning to change attitudes in France's national assembly, including that of up to 20 predominantly Leftist MPs: "Public opinion is progressively realising the abuses occurring under the pretext of laicite and an increasing number of people are realising that you can't ban people from workplaces or you risk affecting social cohesion. There is no French cultural exception which can justify racism towards Muslim women."
As it stands, Muslim women who wear the veil struggle to find any type of employment, with few exceptions. The spread of intolerant attitudes using the cover of laicite was recently illustrated in the case of 15 year old student Sirine Ben Yahiaten, expelled from school for wearing a headband and long skirt, deemed "too religious" by her teachers. Some within the Left have expressed concerns that the instrumentalisation of laicite to create increasingly stringent guidelines prohibiting people of faith from exercising their religion, will contribute to ghettoization and marginalisation, as faith groups are pushed to forge separate schools and companies willing to accommodate their religious needs.
But with some polls suggesting a majority of over 80% would support a ban on the extension of religious symbols in places involving contact with children, it seems Muslim women's struggle against employment discrimination is far from over. Having expressed his support for the new law, any backing down by Hollande now will be painted by his rivals as a capitulation to 'Muslim radicals' at a time when his popularity is already at an all time low. But with growing dissension within his own party and the government, the 'laicite debate' won't be ending any time soon.]]>Anti-Semitism? Not at Our Dinner Tabletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29338162013-03-22T13:44:26-04:002013-03-25T08:17:06-04:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/news broke that Lord Ahmed had allegedly blamed Jews for his 12-week stint behind bars for killing a man through reckless driving, I tweeted my disgust with his blatant expression of prejudice. Many Muslims echoed my sentiments.
That's why Mehdi Hasan latest blog "The Sorry Truth Is That the Virus of Anti-Semitism Has Infected the British Muslim Community" has left me feeling uncomfortable.
A critical factor in Lord Ahmed's statement was his audience. Speaking in Pakistan where radical groups regularly peddle anti-Semitic libel, he thought his words would find resonance. Do I think he would have made that same statement to a British Muslim audience, even if he thought the cameras weren't watching? No I don't. Because regardless of the anti-Semitism of certain elements among British Muslims, anti-Semitic discourse is not considered acceptable and does not routinely go unchallenged.
On one hand, Mehdi is absolutely right to point out that anti-Semitic attitudes are not uncommon in Muslim circles and have become somewhat normalised, concealing the ugly face of hate behind objections to Israeli policies and spurious claims of Jewish conspiracies. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the stumbling block in much Jewish-Muslim dialogue. As one interfaith activist told me, "we're fine as long as we steer away from Middle East politics". The single biggest issue which fosters animosity towards Jews, whom some erroneously fail to distinguish from expansionist Israelis, is the Israel-Palestine conflict. This doesn't make the intolerance any less inexcusable of course. The other significant factor fostering anti-Semitism is conspiracy theories, an unfortunate import from many Muslim majority countries, where opaque and autocratic governing structures lend themselves to an unhealthy fixation with the machinations of "dark forces". Both tensions over the Middle East conflict, as well as conspiracy theories go some way towards explaining the existence of anti-Semitic attitudes. They certainly don't excuse them.
On the other hand, I do not see such views as being tolerated, considered acceptable or even being ignored - on the few occasions I have witnessed anti-Jewish sentiment, I have seen it robustly challenged usually by the "mild-mannered and well-integrated British Muslims" Mehdi refers to. That said, I've also witnessed an elderly Muslim man remonstrating an over-zealous youth by reminding him that our forefather Prophet Abraham, whom we praise alongside Prophet Mohamed in all five of our daily prayers, was the patriarch of the Jewish people. So while I support Mehdi for taking a stand against anti-Semitism and urging Muslims to be as diligent in denouncing it as they are Islamophobia, I reject the presumed community complicity implied by his reference to "our dirty little secret".
It's disheartening to hear Mehdi's been witness to so much anti-Semitism, but it is important to recall that his, like mine, is just one experience amongst many. More reliable indicators of Muslim-Jewish relations are the sheer number of co-operative initiatives and evidence of mutual solidarity. In 2009, following the Israeli onslaught against Gaza, British Muslims rallied together to denounce anti-Semitic attacks amid fears of a backlash against Jewish communities in Britain. In March last year when Mohamed Merah opened fire on a Jewish school in Toulouse, killing seven, Jews and Muslims marched together in a show of solidarity against hate. The Gathering of European Muslim and Jewish Leaders regularly brings together over 70 religious leaders as part of an effort to develop good Muslim-Jewish relations across Europe. Such displays of camaraderie are not anomalous.
Mehdi's presumption of group guilt undermines the valuable work being done by many interfaith groups - the MUJU Comedy Crew, the Joseph Interfaith Foundation and the Three Faiths Foundation, among others - in recognition of our shared heritage. It also unfairly tarrs the vast majority of Muslims who do in fact reject anti-Semitism and who risk henceforth being viewed with suspicion.
Commenting on a Gallup poll which showed that in the US, the single most powerful predictor of "a great deal" of prejudice toward Muslims is equivalent negative bias toward Jews, James Carroll wrote: "Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are halves of the same walnut. That is surprising because Jews and Muslims are widely perceived-and often perceive themselves-as antagonists occupying opposite poles in the great contemporary clash of cultures". The reality is that Jews and Muslims share the same struggle against intolerance and prejudice and many are united in opposing regressive legislation which affects the practice of rituals central to both faiths.
When Baroness Warsi stated that Islamophobia had "passed the dinner-table test" in Britain, she referred to the way in which anti-Muslim sentiment is increasingly perceived as normal. It is a misnomer to argue that anti-Semitism has passed the same threshold in the British Muslim community. Any intolerance is too much intolerance and so I applaud Mehdi for highlighting the critical importance of standing against bigotry in all its forms. I just hope his somewhat rash generalisations won't be used to validate anti-Muslim prejudice, and that we can all move away from notions of 'the other' in order to find ways to work towards the common good.]]>Maternity Discrimination on the Rise as Women Pay the Price of Austeritytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28690712013-03-13T15:10:32-04:002013-05-13T05:12:01-04:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/
Stories like Sarah's are increasingly common. A report released today by the group Working Families has revealed high levels of maternity discrimination for the third year running, reinforcing recent research suggesting this is a growing trend.
Despite this, very few women take any formal action. According to the most recent national research in 2005, of women who lost their jobs due to discrimination, 8% took action, while only 3% went to tribunal. The vast majority (71%) did nothing, a statistic advocacy group Maternity Action put down to women being "very cautious out of fear, they'll be labelled trouble makers - a lot of women simply go quietly". Sarah Jackson, chief executive of Working Families stated "we have far too many callers who, even when advised about their rights, are reluctant to take action for fear of losing their jobs". And as of this year, women taking a pregnancy discrimination claim to an employment tribunal will face fees of £1,200, deterring many more.
In 2005, the Equal Opportunity Commission found that 30,000 women each year were losing their job as a result of pregnancy discrimination. Today, campaigners describe increasing levels of unfair selection of pregnant women and new mothers for redundancy and described the discrimination as increasingly "blatant". Figures show that one in seven women in a recent survey by OnePoll had lost their job while on maternity leave. The Fawcett Society believes in times of austerity, when employers cannot afford to take any perceived risks to profits and growing business, discrimination against women in the workplace is likely to rise. The downsizing and restructuring of many companies due to the economic recession has meant a hike in redundancies, with many pregnant and new mothers adversely affected and those in less skilled jobs perceived as dispensable.
In many cases, pregnant women or new mothers are made to feel they no longer have a place within the company, with attitudes towards pregnancy increasingly hostile. Just last month, Mark Thomas, the former chief executive of BBC Studios & Post Production, was accused of declaring that "female workers of child-caring responsibilities should not hold senior management positions". Businessman Lord Alan Sugar, who'd previously stated that the way to get round the laws protecting pregnant women was not to employ them, has also criticised laws which ban interviewers from grilling women about whether they want children. And such attitudes are not restricted to a few renegades, with a government survey indicating that 24% of men thought that women on maternity leave should be made redundant before anyone else.
For Rosalind Bragg, whose organisation Maternity Action has also recorded a hike in discrimination, media coverage of pregnancy leave negatively affects women's perception of their rights: "Media coverage of maternity leave increasingly represents this as a burden on business, and this has definitely influenced women's approach to their maternity rights". The consequence of these misrepresentations is women often feel unsure about their entitlements, and guilty for demanding their rights. She added: "Many women are unaware of the law prohibiting pregnancy discrimination and do not recognize their experiences as discrimination." From the notion of ditzy mums ill-equipped to handle the pressures of work through to portrayals of 'yummy mummies'* unabashedly enjoying iced Frappuccino's while their employers foot the bill, feminist writer Glosswitch notes "almost all mummies - no matter who they are or what they're doing - are perceived to be a bit rubbish."
The very perception of pregnant woman betrays assumptions concerning their abilities and reliability. A 2007 study found that "visibly pregnant women managers are judged as less committed to their jobs, less dependable, and less authoritative, but warmer, more emotional, and more irrational than otherwise equal women managers who are not visibly pregnant". What's more, research published in the Harvard Business Review suggests bearing children means women are "judged to be significantly less competent" and were "least likely to be hired or promoted". Such perceptions are born out in the cases handled by charities like Working Families. One caller who was four months pregnant was sacked following her three month probationary period with her employer stating that she "would be focusing on other things and that she wouldn't be capable of doing the job".
Among the core concerns listed in Working Families' report is "employer imposed changes to working patterns which undermine parents' ability to combine work and childcare". The organisation found many more employers in 2012 were too quick to turn down a request for flexible working, which combined with the impact of childcare tax credit cuts, disproportionately and negatively impacts women. Britain has some of the highest childcare costs in the world, in an economic climate which renders the cost of childcare relative to wages so disadvantageous as to push women towards non-remunerated work within the home - even when they'd rather be out working for a salary.
Among the incidents handled by the group was an employer insisting that a female staffer work a late night rota. If she did, she could not pick her child up in time from nursery and it would cost her between £60 and £80 in charges for every late night worked. Despite informing the employer that she was struggling to feed her children and was feeling "completely and utterly desperate", her employer responded that it was "her choice to have children". For many women, flexible hours are not simply a luxury, they are a basic necessity allowing them to remain in the workplace.
Liz Gardiner, head of policy for Working Families believes the government's Children and Families Bill, which seeks to promote a system of shared parental leave, including extending the right to request flexible working to all employees, could help tackle pregnancy related discrimination. "Improving rights for fathers to take paternity leave, would make it harder for employers to view women of child bearing age as the problem". She also believes it is high time an EHRC review was conducted to document what she deems a 'hardening of attitudes among employers'. At a time when the UK ranks 18th of 27 countries on job security and pay for women, the 'motherhood penalty' perpetuates the glass ceiling and fails to recognise the true contribution of mothers to society. ]]>Mali: France's Afghanistan?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24994582013-01-17T18:10:06-05:002013-03-19T05:12:01-04:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/
In the midst of its economic woes, cynics might look at France's intervention in Libya which brought home lucrative oil and reconstruction contracts and point to Mali's significant natural resources. Others speculate that Hollande's shaky political standing and the virtually unquestioned support bestowed upon any leader opining to combat Al Qaeda and its associates, offers motivations closer to home. Few things can ensure political consensus on the French political scene the way 'operation Serval' has. A few renegades not withstanding - including former PM Dominique de Villepin who drew parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan - the Socialists, UMP and even the National Front have approved Hollande's decision. But surely if the decade has taught us anything about defeating highly motivated guerrilla groups, it is that short interventions turn into protracted, bloody battles which can only actually be resolved at the diplomatic table.
So why has France decided to intervene and why now? Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been a longstanding concern in the region and the suggestion it has teamed up with criminal and militant elements in the lawless region in northern Mali is bound to create some concern. This is particularly true as these elements take advantage of the power vacuum which has followed Mali's military coup in March 2012, to expand control over greater parts of the north, emboldened by the government's unresponsiveness. Indeed, in October last year an EU official warned ""We consider AQIM the growing, and maybe the leading, threat against us."
In the last few years, the northern region has become a haven for criminal activity and a key transit route for cocaine trafficking. A recent United Nations mission in the Sahel region described northern Mali as a dangerous crossroads of drugs, crime, terrorism and rebellion. Until recently, Mali's disaffected ethnic tuaregs, a nomadic people at odds with the Mali government, had teamed with jihadists to take control over an area the size of France, in a marriage of convenience which soon ended in infighting. Criminal activity has funded the purchase of weapons used to impose an extremist form of control, which has included public executions and the use of child soldiers.
This growing militancy in northern Mali has occurred alongside the demise of one of West Africa's hopes, as the military overthrow of a democratic government has left the country as just another 'failed state.' Given broader instability in the region, namely that of the indigenous militants of the Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, arms floating around following NATO support to rebels in Libya, and the predominantly Algerian AQIM, a small but dangerous group involved in the hostage crisis on an oil plant in alleged retaliation for France's "crusade", the implications of Mali's instability are far reaching for the region. Popular support for French intervention among African leaders should be understood in light of the instability wrought by extremist elements and more cynically, to the Western aid which may also ensue.
On one hand, the extremist alliance at work in northern Mali, which includes AQIM, Mali's homegrown Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa and Ansar Dine rebels suggests an emboldening of jihadist elements in the face of West Africa's struggling states. Though a military solution will likely defeat this threat, although perhaps not as quickly as the French might hope, Foreign minister Laurent Fabius having optimistically predicted the intervention would last "a matter of weeks"- it is unlikely to resolve systemic political instability. A military intervention looks a lot like a quick fix solution to a much deeper problem which involves a legacy of failed states, poverty, ethnic tensions and corruption. Northern Mali has never been properly integrated into the state, with poor social indicators across the board, leaving an alienated ethnical tuareg minority willing to forge insalubrious alliances. Oxford researcher in African studies, Harry Verhoeven described the problem, saying: "the jihadists are a symptom, veiling a deeper crisis of underdevelopment, failed nation-building and faltering public services delivery in Mali and the Sahel more broadly."
Comparisons with Afghanistan have their limitations, but after 11 years of armed conflict, the realisation has dawned on many that the political stability of any nation cannot be secured through strictly military means. French President François Hollande has described the goal of the operation as "to ensure that when we leave (...) Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory." A unilateral military approach alone is unlikely to achieve any of these goals. Without addressing the endemic problems which contribute to the fragility of Mali's state, France's actions could simply be adding fuel to the fire. ]]>Egypt: Beyond 'Islamists' Vs 'Secularists', What Way Forward?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22457592012-12-05T13:53:14-05:002013-02-04T05:12:01-05:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/argued that the only question facing Egypt's faltering democratic transition "is whether it will be the tyranny of the Islamist majority or that of the secular minority".
Since the fall of Mubarak, Ottoway argues that an 'islamist majority', with popular support, has been pitted against a 'secular minority' with considerable influence over state institutions. Yet, this oft-repeated dichotomy of 'islamists vs seculars', masks real diversity in the motivations of opponents to both the presidential decree and the hastily drafted constitution. The labelling also avoids adequate scrutiny of the actual proposals being made by all sides. With protests rocking the country once more, Egypt's democratic future relies on all sides moving on from revolutionary exceptionalism, to working together for the national interest.
Opposition figure Abul Futuh recently voiced a widespread critique of President Morsi: "The president cannot rule in unilateral fashion, just because we are in a period of transition, after the revolution. It is not reasonable or wise for he who governs to say "I received a majority of votes. My party received a majority of votes. Therefore, it is our right to govern unilaterally by virtue or representing a democratic majority." A former MB leader, Abul Futuh's view reflects the concerns of a wide array of political voices, beyond simple descriptions of 'secular' or 'islamist'.
Many Egyptians who voted for Morsi in the presidential election were not espousing an affinity for the political branch of the MB, but opposing the alternative, in the form of Mubarak era relic, Ahmed Shafiq. Post-revolutionary figures often struggle to reflect the multiplicity of views which rallied behind them. Instead of recognising and reflecting this diversity, Morsi is using his position and the predominance of islamists in key institutions, to forge a framework for Egypt's future which ignores many of the voices which got him elected - including alternative islamist voices, Leftists and others.
Morsi was handed the people's trust to reform the Egyptian state, a re-imagining of the Egyptian 'self' in a democratic setting where all parties hoped to see their aspirations reflected, not least in the nation's core document, the constitution.
As protests erupted over his wide-reaching 'temporary' decree, Morsi decided to rush the constitutional drafting in 24 hours, avowedly to quell dissension. Of the 100-strong constitutional assembly, 22 withdrew. The result has been called "hasty and ill-defined", while Human Rights Watch notes: "The constitution (...) provides for basic protections against arbitrary detention and torture and for some economic rights but fails to end military trials of civilians or to protect freedom of expression and religion."
In the midst of widespread instability and in a cavalier move, Morsi initiated political decisions of serious consequence, without fostering a broad based consensus.
His actions have been met by an opposition struggling to unite beyond its reactionary stance. Few of the recently established political parties have the deep societal roots of a social movement like the MB. Speaking to locals in the Cairene district of Imbaba, researcher Rahma Bavelaar relays previously widespread popular support for the MB. One local confided that this is "because they are the only ones who ever did anything for us over the past decades. People accuse them of giving out bread and oil to win votes, but this is what we want: bread and oil. We don't care about freedom of expression and the freedom to walk around naked. Didn't the Revolution come to fight social ills such as corruption and 'zina' (unlawful sexual intercourse)? It was the poor who filled Tahrir and made the Revolution succeed. We want to just live and eat."
However, recent events have seen a dampening in the MB's popularity. The same local admitted no longer supporting the MB because she feels their behavior in power has demonstrated that "they only care about the interests of the MB and have failed to bring any positive change." Bavelaar's research suggests the opposition still have significant ground to cover in convincing lay people that their policies will positively affect their lives, in a country where parties have long been perceived as vacant vessels and where meaningful social action has tended to occur outside of the formal political setting. However, the mystique surrounding the MB has been severely tarnished.
The current stand-off will see some form of denouement on December 15th, when a referendum will be held. Although judges responsible for overlooking the referendum had threatened to walk out, it now seems likely many will cooperate. But serious questions remain over the constitution's content. Not least, the outline of an extremely strong executive, in lieu of strong checks and balances and a pre-amble which presents the military as saviours, despite evidence of Human Rights abuses, from virginity tests on protestors, to torture and military trials.
Just as critical is the sense the drafting of the constitution by predominantly islamist figures, fails to capture the aspirations of all Egyptians. In forging the country's post-revolutionary identity, Morsi should have shaped a constitution which could unify Egyptians and would establish a base line consensus on the route for reform ahead. Instead, the draft contains a number of articles which seemingly confirm the apprehensions of MB critiques. In a nod to Islamist identity politics, Article 10 gives the state the power to preserve the "genuine nature" of the Egyptian family and its "moral values", which combined with the fact it no longer lists "sex" as one of the grounds for prohibiting discrimination, leaves women open to gender based discrimination and state interference. The islamist ideal of seeing a greater influence of religion in the state's operation is reflected in the designation of Al Azhar as having a consultative position in defining the principles of Sharia, while other sections raise questions over freedom of speech and minority rights.
For years, academics have pleaded for islamist parties to be assessed on their policies, not a speculative fear of 'Sharia based politics'. Until recently, distance from power shielded them from scrutiny. But the MB can no longer hide behind accusations of a secularist plot in the face of all criticism, despite the undoubted residual influence of old regime figures. Some of Morsi's current critiques are no less attached to 'islamic values' than he is.
Reliant for too many years on sycophantic supporters, islamist parties must now produce concrete policies of tangible benefit to the majority. The hierarchical habits of the 'Murshid al-'am' have no place in a democratic setting and have shown their limitations. Morsi's success as a democratic leader will lie largely in his ability to recognise the significance of his leadership of all Egyptians and his willingness to distance himself from the ideological rigidity which remains the privilege of those outside the political game. In the midst of current civil strife, Morsi must reach out to the opposition, an opposition which needs to move from sit-ins, to substantive alternatives. Egypt's stability depends on it.]]>Why Blaming 'Asian Sex Gangs' Is the Real Disservice to the Victimstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21757162012-11-22T12:23:15-05:002013-01-22T05:12:01-05:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/interim report on Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) has reignited debate over 'asian sex gangs' and whether the PC brigade are impeding the police from identifying the variable of race as relevant. In a debate with Tory MP David Davis on BBC Radio 2 yesterday, he put to me that we all apparently 'know deep down' that girls are targeted due to inherent misogyny in the Asian - and specifically Muslim - community. In defence of his argument, he referred (erroneously) to the Quran. Because of course, 'Muslim' paedophiles like to consult their Holy book before they ply children with alcohol and abuse them.
The latest report is a vital contribution to our understanding of child sexual exploitation, but it focuses only one particular type, namely that involving gangs or groups. Although Asian men are overrepresented in this particular category, 95% of the UK's sex offenders are white males. An interesting question the report does raise is why Asian men favour this gang or group set up. It could be that in certain gang dominated areas, typically impoverished areas where BMEs are overrepresented, CSE is an extension of broader criminal activity. A paucity of details about perpetrators means we can only speculate, but what the report makes clear is, "there is more than one type of perpetrator, model and approach to child sexual exploitation by gangs and groups."
The report also belies the suggestion that such groups target 'white girls', playing on age old fears of black sexuality preying on white innocence: "the characteristics common to all victims are not their age, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation, rather their powerlessness and vulnerability." Indeed the report showed victims come from a range of backgrounds, ethnicities and genders, with 28% of victims from black and ethnic minority backgrounds.
In a Daily Mail article yesterday, Yasmin Alibhai Brown argued that "some Asian cultural assumptions make the paedophiles feel no guilt or shame about what they do," raising questions about a culture which could condone such abuse. The report itself states: "There is no doubt that girls and young women are targeted due to the way some men and boys perceive women and girls."
There is no denying the existence of misogynistic attitudes among some Asian men. In the Muslim community, I'm the first to denounce their existence. Each subculture has its own variant to express disdain for women - sluts or skanks, hoes and bitches, gora or kuffar. Pick your idiom and I'll show you a lexicon referring to women deemed worthy of contempt. The problem is, misogyny is not exclusively 'Asian' .
What exactly is uniquely 'Asian' about these cases? Alibhai-Brown suggests the fact many of the men "cannot relate to women except as objects" is symptomatic, but various feminist groups, including OBJECT, regularly denounce the objectification of women in popular culture as leading to the dehumanisation of women.
What exactly is 'Asian' about men plying young girls with alcohol at 'parties' and then taking advantage of them? In Britain, alcohol is one of the most commonly cited factors in attempts to explain or excuse rape, alongside a woman's attire. According to the Fawcett society nearly a third of people (30%) say a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk and more than a quarter (26%) if she was wearing sexy or revealing clothing (AIUK 2005).
The report raises some worrying questions about the perception of women or girls whose lifestyle might not conform to mainstream views of 'propriety', a view which filters through to CPS professionals, who dismissed victims as 'promiscuous' and 'liking the glamour'. The report notes that some of the most common phrases used to describe a young person's behaviour by CPS professionals, were: 'prostituting herself', 'sexually available' and 'asking for it'. Why did these professionals perceive the girls in this way? A study by Warwick university argues that working class women are framed in the press as "oversexualized and with the 'wrong' kind of relation to men". When you consider the troubled background of most victims, including the fact that 34% are in the care system, this has serious implications.
This sexualising terminology and the suggestion by Alibhai- Brown that "many abusers are sexually frustrated," reflects a widely held misconception that rape is primarily about sexual gratification, when studies suggest power and control are central. The abuse described in the report, namely the fact that oral and anal rape were most widely reported, alongside physical violence, suggests a pattern of intentional humiliation and control. The misrepresentation of rape in the media has left even CPS professionals confused as to what constitutes rape.
The Leveson inquiry recently heard that misrepresentations of violence against women in the media impact on public perception of these crimes. Marai Larasi, head of the End Violence Against Women coalition affirmed that the media perpetuates a culture of blaming female victims, including through the "exoticising of violence through racism or anti-religious rhetoric".
Rather than viewing the men responsible as cultural aberrations whose views of women were drawn from the plains of Afghanistan, we would do well to ask to what extent they reflect pervasive representations of (certain 'types' of) women and in particular of working class girls.
Let's talk about culture - popular culture which has led to such confusion over the notion of consent, to images spewed out by the porn industry skewing the way young people think about sex. CPS professionals themselves have expressed concern that pornography is impacting children's understanding of what constitutes 'acceptable, required or expected' sexual behaviour.
The closest Alibhai-Brown came to an 'Asian' cultural explanation was the suggestion the men were buying the girls 'kebabs.' Why would we assume, as a society, that Asian men live in mental ghettos where their values and ideas are so radically different to those of the rest of society. It seems to fit neatly into the characterisation of Muslims and Asians as 'resistant' to integration, essentially 'different' to the rest of us and the classic orientalist depiction of the 'hypersexed Muslim'. It also lets our common culture off the hook, by avoiding a deeper examination of normalised sexist attitudes which prevail. Ultimately though, it is the victims who pay the price. Twice.]]>Gaza's Citizens: A Human Sacrifice in a Political 'Blame Game'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21548402012-11-18T11:32:14-05:002013-01-18T05:12:01-05:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/
Hamas' status as an international pariah, means that the lack of sympathy reserved for an organisation listed as 'terrorist' by most countries in the West, now sadly extends to all Palestinians living in Hamas' ruled Gaza. Over half of Palestinians didn't actually vote for Hamas and many of those who did were voting against the corruption and the successive failures of Fatah, rather than for rocket attacks directed at Israel. Just as the ongoing blockade of Gaza is a form of collective punishment, the current international unwillingness to protect Palestinian civilians on the grounds that Israel has a right to respond to rocket attacks, also represents a form of collective punishment. The message is clear: Vote for Hamas and live with the consequences. In this asymmetric 'war' in which militants are said to be Israel's target, why should civilians be caught in the middle.
Since Wednesday Israel has launched about 1,000 air strikes on the Strip with devastating human consequences. In just the past few days, 57 Palestinians have been killed, including several children, and more than 450 people have been wounded. Rather than targeting alleged militants, Israel is now bombing government buildings, police compounds and buildings housing Palestinian and international media, including Reuters, Sky news and Al Arabiya, whose correspondent clarified "there were no gunmen or militants at the site." In what way can Israel's attacks on Gaza be defined as self-defence? A rocket shield is a defence strategy. Brokering a truce is a defence strategy. Bombing one of the most densely populated strips on earth, when consistent historical evidence suggests this merely escalates, not reduces violence, is not a defence strategy. It may be an electoral one though.
The timing of this assault coincides, as did the previous one (Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09), with an impending election. Israeli Journalist, Aluf Benn suggests a familiar pattern in Israeli politics, whereby "whenever the ruling party feels threatened at the ballot box, it puts its finger on the trigger".
With Israel's decision to mobilise 75,000 army reservists - almost eight times as many as in Operation Cast Lead in which 1400 Palestinians, including 320 minors, were killed and 5,000 Palestinians were injured ( nine Israelis were killed) - it seems the Likud's victory will be written in blood.
Sunday, the aerial assault on Gaza intensified, as Netanyahu announced Israel is "prepared to widen its Gaza offensive significantly". Tanks and troops have amassed at the border and the IDF is warning Gazans of an impending 'second phase'. It now seems likely a ground operation will ensue despite suggestions by the Egyptian and Turkish PMs that a truce 'might' be on the cards.
According to Al-Youm news, Hamas has agreed to stop firing rockets on Israel if it lifts the blockade and stops assassinations - but this is unlikely to halt the aggression. Politically, Netanyahu has far too much to gain from it, as a poll by Channel 10 showed that 91% of Israelis support Operation Pillar of Defence. What's more, Israel's current prime minister is an unlikely ally for peace negotiations. He never endorsed a US backed plan for a two state solution, has refused to halt settlements and in 2009 resigned from the cabinet over the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
All evidence suggests that Hamas was in the process of trying to broker an extended ceasefire when tensions flared. Despite all the talk of Hamas wanting to 'wipe Israel off the map', something it does state in its charter, the posturing has not been reflected in reality. The fact Hamas negotiates with Israel suggests it de-facto recognises its existence. Several reports indicate that at the time the hostilities began, negotiations in view of renewing a truce were underway between Israel and Ahmed Jabari, Israel's "subcontractor in Gaza", mediated by Egyptian intelligence officials and accepted according to them, by Israel.
Jabari, the man murdered in an extra-judicial assassination on Wednesday, was in fact seeking to enforce the peace on other militant groups. According to Hareetz "for the past five and a half years, Israel demanded of Hamas that it observe the truce in the south and enforce it on the multiplicity of armed organizations in the Gaza Strip. The man responsible for carrying out this policy was Ahmed Jabari." The killing of Jabari has been described by Israeli Gershon Baskin, who was brokering the long term ceasefire arrangement, as "a pre-emptive strike against the possibility of a long term ceasefire."
Hamas' truce offering is hardly a novelty. It has previously offered Israel truces lasting up to 20 years and has every reason to want to observe them. In conflict with Israel, Hamas knows Palestinians have everything to lose - more civilian casualties, more loss of infrastructure and increasingly, more popular desperation. Since 2009, 16 times as many Palestinians have been killed by Israelis as the other way around.
Israel's far-right minister for foreign affairs, Avigdor Liberman has stated that toppling Hamas is not on the agenda. Of course not, Hamas is much too convenient a bogeyman, which offers significant cover for Israel's disregard for Human Rights, alongside guaranteed sympathy from western governments which accept the narrative that Israel is merely engaged in its own version of the 'war on terror'. Given our own government's track record - extra-judicial killings, torture, drone attacks, illegal invasion - we hardly seem well equipped to criticise.
What we do know is that, according to Israel's interior minister, "the goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages". Currently, four in five Gazans are dependent on humanitarian aid due to the blockade, which Amnesty international describes as 'targeting the most vulnerable'. Unemployment levels are among the highest in the world and according to MSF, 70% of families live on less than $1/day, while 75% of the Gaza population relies on food aid.
It wouldn't take much to plunge Gaza back into a deep humanitarian crisis, the apparent aim of this latest operation. Some might argue they are there already. Without international pressure on Israel to desist and agree to a truce, innocent Palestinians will continue to pay the price for electoral pandering.
In his 2009 Cairo speech, Obama had promised the Middle East its own version of 'change', a vision for peace which included a two state solution, in sympathy with the "intolerable" plight of the Palestinians. The US president's reference to "the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own" have not disappeared, even if US political will to endorse them have. With current US support for Israel unyielding, Palestinian lives remain sacrificed to political exigencies once more.
This piece was first published as an Op-Ed on Your Middle East, here]]>Rowan Atkinson Is Right - We Need More Free Speech - But We Also Need More Responsible Speechtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19854822012-10-19T06:49:07-04:002012-12-19T05:12:01-05:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/ campaign to repeal part of Section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act, which outlaws "threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour that is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress". Specifically, Atkinson believes, and I share his concern, that the term "insulting", in addition to the phrasing "likely to cause", are far too subjective and, as such, threaten free speech.
That the law has already been used in Kafkaesque fashion, is well illustrated by the case of the Oxford University student arrested for asking a policeman: "Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?" and pertinently, by a 16-year-old boy held for holding a placard reading 'Scientology is a dangerous cult'. (For the record, yes I would still be defending his right had the placard read 'Islam is a dangerous cult'). Civil liberties campaigners, Liberty have stated Section 5 "can have serious implications on peaceful protestors and others exercising their freedom of expression, as someone who uses insulting language that might distress another were they to hear it could be guilty of an offence."
The concern lies in a scenario where meaningful criticism can be curbed under this banner, where accounting leaders through peaceful protests, or any other language or behaviour that might be deemed 'insulting', could be curtailed. While we should be able to say something which might be perceived as insulting about someone's religion, more importantly surely is the fact we should be able to say something insulting, or even act 'insultingly' towards those who enact regressive policies, who threaten the NHS, who cut support for the disabled and vulnerable, those who make higher education unobtainable for the majority. As things currently stands, the poor phrasing of Section 5 joins a host of other worryingly vague limits placed on free speech which, rather than protecting minorities, carry the seeds of state censorship.
However, in the words of Spiderman (and possibly someone else!), with great power, also comes great responsibility. The right to insult means we should have the right to express our views without fear of prosecution, even if they happen to insult someone. What it surely doesn't mean is the obligation to intentionally trample upon people's sensitivities. One might express a view which might be deemed insulting by someone, but surely the objective of seeking to insult them, for insult's sake, is simply egregious. It shouldn't be illegal, but it should be deplored. In real life, people who walk around insulting people for the sake of it are called idiots. They're not lauded as the human embodiments of free speech.
Should we have the right to say things to one another which might be deemed insulting? Absolutely. Should we define the European 'creed' as the obligation to insult one another - definitely not. None of us want to see free speech used as an excuse to go back on hard fought for tolerance, for bigots to have free rein to spout racist/homophobic/sexist/islamophobic/etc tirades unchallenged, just as much as one might not wish to see such statements prosecuted or censored. It is possible to believe in the need for clearer, less restrictive legislation whilst also calling for more empathy and understanding of the experiences of those minorities who will inevitably be on the receiving end of some of the less palatable free-speech.
The concern is that the free speech debate actually masks an underlying concern that religion in general but Islam in particular, represent an inherent threat to the secular liberal worldview. From this perspective, insulting Islam and Muslims represent not merely a right to free speech, but an obligation to confront values assumed to be incompatible. According to a YouGov poll, more Britons (43%) than Americans (39%) believe in a fundamental clash of cultures between Islam and the West, and this has bred the sadly widespread view that not only are religious people not worthy of protection but that their 'pre-enlightenment superstitions' must be derided at all costs, including the cost of our social cohesion. There surely is some irony in discussing the 'issue' of the integration of Muslims, if they're deemed inherently incompatible by virtue of that religiosity. As with all minorities, the two-way process of civic integration requires broader society to acknowledge the particular sensitivities of those we regard as our democratic equals. It doesn't mean minorities will never be insulted, it just means there won't be a concerted campaign to insult them. When comedians or satirists choose to mock the most marginalised and disenfranchised, rather than the powerful and the corrupt, it poses much more significant questions than 'can we insult Islam'. It raises rightful concerns over the use of such arguments as a smokescreen to obscure some of the crudest forms of racist vilification. In some cases, rather than representing the best of the European tradition of satire, such material can be located within a tradition of racist representation.
When the way we discuss minorities impacts their life, through discrimination and sometimes even violence, there is a responsibility upon us all to ensure the vilification is not afforded a credence which bolsters the hate-mongers. Studies of hate crimes suggest a link between negative representations of minorities and their targeting by violent individuals or groups. Protecting the psychological and physical wellbeing of fellow citizens is as about as axiomatic as any value gets. To do so should not require further ambiguous legislation but rather a shift in our perception of Muslims - as an integral part of our society, their grievances are, like the grievances of any minority, our grievances. Freedom of speech may well be a central British value, but so is live and let live. It's a mistake to assume they're mutually exclusive, but it's also complacent to assume that either is immune from erosion.]]>Demonstrating For Dignity: Why Are Muslims So Enraged?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18850202012-09-18T14:44:00-04:002012-11-18T05:12:02-05:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/
Firstly, although the film may have been the catalyst for the riots, it would be wrong to assume that all the riots have exactly the same cause. The murder of American embassy staff in Libya appears to have been the work of an Al Qaida fringe which had been plotting the revenge of one its senior leaders and used the protest against the film as a smokescreen for its attack. What brought regular Libyans to the embassy was undoubtedly initially, opposition to the film. However there and elsewhere, the anger of the masses has appeared to morph into something much broader - a reflection of anti-American sentiment grounded in the USA's historically fraught relationship to the region.
This is hardly the first demonstration of anger against Western targets in any of the countries at hand, it is only possibly amongst the most mediatised because of the spin placed on the story, represented as it has been, as some sort of reflection of the fundamental intolerance of Islam.
For those with a short memory, it was only last month that a pipe bomb exploded outside the US embassy in Libya and both the Red cross and other Western aid organisations have come under fire there in recent months. It is certainly a misnomer to think that NATO intervention in support of the rebels against Gaddhafi somehow erased deep-seated grievances against the US, not least the sense of humiliation of the Arab world against decades of Western domination. Sure, we may have helped get rid of Gaddhafi when it was expedient, but for a long time, we traded quite happily with the man whilst he brutally repressed his people. In some cases, we even helped him do it. A recent Human Rights Watch report, Delivered into Enemy Hands: US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi's Libya details the stories of Libyan opposition figures tortured in US-run prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and then delivered back to Libya, with full-awareness that they were going to be tortured or possibly killed. Even in the "new Libya", not all sections of the Revolution feel the outcome of the elections was truly representative of popular feeling.
Not to mention Egypt, where Mubarak, whom Hilary Clinton once described as a "close family friend", tortured and killed innumerable dissidents in a US backed dictatorship which had been the second largest recipient of US foreign aid after Israel since 1979. To think the elections which happened just months ago would transform popular opinion concerning the US's role in the region is ludicrous. And that's before we even get to Iraq.
Broken by poverty, threatened by drones, caught in the war between al Aaida and the US, to many Arab Muslims, the film represents an attack on the last shelter of dignity - sacred beliefs - when all else has been desecrated.
It is no surprise that some of the worst scenes of violence come from Yemen, where US policy has resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians, fuelling anger against a regime whose brutality and corruption has left the country ranking amongst the poorest in the Arab world. Given that it is also one of the countries where people have the least access to computers and the internet, it is also entirely likely that many protestors never even saw the film. It also seems unlikely anyone believed the film was actually produced by the American government. Though many might have believed the US government could act to restrict the film's diffusion, censorship being altogether common in many of these countries, the focus on American symbols - embassies, American schools - even KFC - suggests the roots of popular anger, is not hurt religious pride. These symbols of America were not the unwitting target of frustration over a film - rather the film has provided an unwitting focal point for massive and widespread anger at US foreign policy in the region. If the Arab revolutions let the dictators know exactly how people felt about their repression, these demonstrations should be read as equally indicative of popular anguish with the US's role in the region.
The film is merely the straw that broke the camel's back - to stand in consternation at the fact a single straw could cripple such a sturdy beast is to be naïve or wilfully blind to the accumulated bales which made the straw so hard to carry.
This is not an attempt to minimise the offense caused by the film - Mohamed is a man whose status in the eyes of many Muslims, cannot be overstated. When your country has been bombed, you've lost friends and family, possibly your livelihood and home, dignity is pretty much all you have left.
The producers of the film may have known very little about film-making, but they knew lots about how to cause a stir. Despite its obscure origins, mediatised references to an "Israeli" director living in the US, to a "100 Jewish donors" who allegedly provided "5 million dollars", to a hazy "Coptic network" - all played into a well-known register. When 2 out of five Arabs live in poverty, a 5 million dollar insult has more than a slight sting to it.
Those who sought to bring winter to an Arab spring and possibly destabilise a US election, were keenly aware of the impact those words would have, situating the film within on-going tensions between Israel and the Arab world and stirring up the hornet's nest of minority relations in a region where they remain unsettled.
In a tweet, Atheist academic Richard Dawkins decried the events by lambasting "these ridiculous hysterical Muslims". In so doing, he, like others, not only failed to read these events for what they are - political protests against US meddling, but he also failed to recognise the basic humanity of the protestors. To dismiss deep anger as mere hysteria is to diminish to decades of oppression experienced by many Muslims, particularly in the Arab world, often with US complicity.
If you deny any relationship between the systematic discrimination of Muslims and stigmatization of Islam and the overreaction of the Muslim community to offensive jokes, or films, or cartoons, then you are only left with essentialist explanations of Muslim hysteria and violence. These protests aren't about a film - they're about the totality of ways in which Muslims have felt humiliated over decades.
Reporting on the "incident" as somehow indicative of Islam's essential incompatibility with the West not only conveniently omits the realities of Muslim oppression globally, but also reinforces them in many ways. Before we start searching for the nebulous network behind the film, or the reasons why "Muslims are so prone to getting offended", we would do better to actually search for the conditions that have contributed to rendering the mass dehumanization of particular group of people socially unobjectionable and do well to remember that the right to protest, angrily even, is just as central to the concept of free speech, as the right to make offensive movies.]]>Get Over Colonial Guilt? Not So Fast Mr Haguetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18642072012-09-09T09:24:20-04:002012-11-09T05:12:01-05:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/Evening Standard, William Hague argued that Britain needs to get over its feelings of "post-colonial guilt", stating that we have a "new and equal partnership" with countries unburdened by our colonial past history. Apparently we all need to 'relax', because Britain's empire history is "no longer an issue for the rest of the world." Is that so? In what world do the populations of former colonies, British or otherwise, no longer consider the lasting consequences of decades of exploitation and oppression "no longer an issue."
Presumably, all that post-colonial guilt was washed away with Jeremy Paxman's incondite effort to portray colonial administrators as benevolent public schoolboys on a mission to improve healthcare and education for the darker folk, in his very establishment series "Empire". Owen-Jones has already covered why speaking of 'getting over' our 'post-colonial guilt' is farcical, but to suggest that the UK has an equal relationship with its former colonies is no less bombastic.
There is plenty of inequality in our partnerships with our former colonies. For a start, most of our former colonies remain, as they were under British rule, essentially our larder. They primarily export raw materials, leaving them open to the vagaries of market fluctuations and often depriving local populations from farming crops more useful to their immediate subsistence needs.
As in the colonial era, our former colonies provide us with cheap labour, a destination for obsolete technology, and markets for our goods, in return our large corporations, many of which were established during the colonial period, or periods of dictatorial rule which ensued, have maintained a convenient interface in the form of a small, wealthy local elite, whose economic interests are tied to our own and ensure the perennity of those interests through economic deregulation, underhand deals and at times, even brute force.
Once in a while those sequels, which apparently are not, rear their head in the form of a local protest, typically presented as incensed locals burning or smashing things for reasons left unexplained. In July this year, luxury liner P&O Cruises sacked 150 Indian waiters for protesting wages as low as 75 pence per hour. Uganda, another of our former colonies and one of the most corrupt countries in the world, has been rocked by a series of demonstrations over surging commodity prices -- particularly petroleum, while in July, the country's prime minister, internal affairs minister and foreign minister were all accused of taking money from Tullow Oil, a British company scheduled to complete a $2.9 billion deal to produce Uganda's oil.
And what about India, the 'largest democracy in the world", where a report by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice found that in 2009 alone, 17,638 farmers committed suicide--one every 30 minutes - as a result of foreign multinational corporations, neoliberalism and cycles of debt. You might argue this has nothing to do with colonialism, or even Britain today, until you realise that the acute poverty facing millions of Indians today was not an inevitable state of affairs. Britain left India's economy in a state of utter disarray - at independence, it was one of the poorest in the world, with an agricultural system designed for exports, not to feed its growing population. The consequences of the tracks laid by colonial administrators have far from disappeared. Without discounting the incompetence and corruption of subsequent leaders, to suggest colonialism is forgotten in India is insulting to those struggling with its enduring effects. According to Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy, "India has more malnourished children than anywhere else in the world, and more poor people in eight of its states than 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa put together."
Mr Hague would do well to explain in what way we have an 'equal' relationship with Nigeria, another former colony and a country in which British companies reap bountiful profits off the oil and gas industry whilst most of the population languishes in increasing levels of poverty. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, almost 61% of Nigerians in 2010 were living in "absolute poverty", a rise from 54.7% in 2004. According to the report, Nigerians consider themselves to be getting poorer, despite the Nigerian economy being amongst the fastest growing globally, the bulk of the wealth accruing to foreign companies many of them British.
The very creation of Nigeria was motivated by the economics of extraction, and nothing there has changed much. With or without formal 'independence' from colonial masters, the pleas of local communities, protesting the impacts of oil production on their land, livelihood and rights, have been not simply ignored but brutally repressed often through a collaboration of the military with oil companies including the part-British owned company Shell. US cables, released by WikiLeaks in 2010, allege that the company paid hundreds of thousands of pounds towards the deployment of 350 soldiers in the delta in 2003 and allegations that the police, the air force, the army are paid for with Shell money suggests a worrying complicity in furthering the private company's interests through using state instruments.
I don't know what Mr Hague considers to be 'equal', but by any standard the vast enrichment of one partner at the expense of another's wellbeing is surely oxymoronic.
While nationals of former colonies are of course expected to follow the rule of law within Britain, British companies have been complicit in corruption scandals, preventable ecological disasters, ruthless repression and tax avoidance which deprive local people from billions of dollars accrued from the sale of their natural resources. In many former colonies , British economic interests have trumped the basic rights of citizens and belying the very values promoted as at the core of our democracies.
If Britain truly had an equal relationship with its former colonies, it would not view the rights of their citizens as any less critical than those of British citizens. It wouldn't sign profoundly unequal trade agreements deeply skewed in our favour and that of multinational companies and which threaten the health of millions of people by depriving them of basic medicines to treat diseases, like tuberculosis, which have virtually been eradicated in our own country. In other words, it wouldn't exploit countries already reeling from the legacy of our colonial rule.
What's more, the legacy of a culture in which 'white is best' continues to impact the lives of ordinary people in our former colonies. From skin whitening products which promise to resolve marital woes by lightening women's genitalia through to enduring class structures, forged through an imitation of the coloniser and which places English and all things British above the culture of indigenous people, the impact of colonialism is not such a distant memory for those living with its daily implications.
Today, imperial colonialism has been replaced by corporate colonialism and in this, Britain is still a leading player. Rather than underplaying our role in the exploitation of other nations, we must recognise its persistence in new, insidious forms, harder to detect through the veneer of 'democracy', which serves to place the blame for the pauperisation of populations on elected leaders, rather than in an unjust global economic system, into which former colonies were inserted during the colonial era.]]>Islamophobia: Orwellian 'Doublespeak' ?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16643042012-07-11T13:01:09-04:002012-09-10T05:12:03-04:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/blog for the Independent comparing Islamophobia to a type of Orwellian doublespeak, designed to shut down public debate. He joins a chorus of voices on the Left who reject the term on grounds of the 'freedom to criticise' Islam.
Some on the Left have gone further still, joining voices on the Right in denouncing Islam on the grounds of its alleged anti-liberal tenets. British novelist and former New Statesman editor Martin Amis has previously stated Muslims should be deprived of their civil liberties and Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee frequently regurgitates the most odious and decontextualized translations of the Quran as if they were, well - Gospel. Paul Hockenos argues that "the left and liberals have largely capitulated, unable to address the issue of Islam and the Muslims among us in a constructive way."
Despite the frequently erected straw-man of stifling free speech, countering islamophobia is not about limiting discussion of the faith itself. It is about ensuring a largely socially, economically and politically disenfranchised minority is not stigmatised, stereotyped, further marginalised and consequently left open to hate crimes.
A personal bugbear is the suggestion that Islam or the Quran 'says' - Islam doesn't speak - people speak in the name of Islam, filtering the texts through their experiences and drawing on interpretive traditions. Islamophobia is when influential figures like Toynbee define Islam in a public sphere where Muslims struggle to make themselves heard, over and above how Muslims themselves understand their faith. In other words, it is to ascribe meaning to Islam which most Muslims do not. This reification of faith assumes that, unlike other religious traditions, Islam is monolithic and can be gleaned from a brief perusal of sacred texts. It can't. To do so is to misrepresent Islam, the faith of over 1.3 billion people in the world, and to leave its practitioners open to the accusation of complicity in a depraved hate cult.
What's more, despite a clear ontological distinction between race and religion, it cannot be ignored that Islam is associated with racialized minorities - South Asians in the UK, Arabs in France, Turks in Germany. When critique of religion overlaps so significantly with a particular racial group within society, and is often used as short-hand for that racial group, the line between religion and race becomes obscured. The Daily Mail's choice to use the term "muslim gang" to refer to rapists, is one such example. The recent case in Rochdale further illustrated this confusion. While Chief Crown Prosecutor in the case Nazir Afzal blamed "imported cultural baggage", commentators such as David Aaronovitch promptly interpreted that to mean Islam.
Although Pakistan is a Muslim majority country, to assume Islam is the central motivating factor in the behaviour of all Pakistanis, is a form of cultural racism.
Islamophobia, as a term, is required to refer to precisely these cases where the focus of abuse is a projected understanding of what someone stands for based on their being identified as Muslim. New forms of discrimination avoid the crude biological markers of racial stereotyping and have been replaced with a focus on cultural differences, real or imagined, to rationalize the unequal status and treatment of different racial groups.
The assumptions is that honour killings and forced marriages are reflections of a backward 'islamic' culture, which through the presence of Muslims in Europe, poses a threat to our identity and values. Despite Muslim objections to these practise, such assumptions are then reflected in people's attitudes and behaviour towards Muslims.
The topic of Islam has had a uniquely harmonising effect on Left and Right, uniting unlikely pundits in a shared concern that Islam - assumed to be a hegemonic influence on people's behaviour- is responsible for virtually all social ills, from sex trafficking to benefit fraud. Perceived ethnic uniformity is taken to mirror a uniformity of belief and outlooks, despite the fact, all religions have plural expressions.
The concern is that the racist essentializing of "Muslimhood" is ignored on the grounds that the term 'islamophobia' isn't clear enough. I would wager the term is crystal clear for those on the receiving end - such as when Muslim columnist Mehdi Hasan was described by one blogger as a "moderate cockroach". Or when the American writer Laila Lalami 's husband was asked by an immigration officer "So, how many camels did you have to trade for her?"
Islamophobia is only unclear to those who seek to obfuscate its meaning. It is the tendency to reify Islam - that is to assume the behaviour of given individuals (typically extremists) reflects an accurate concretisation of the principles of the faith itself, and it is the tendency to view its practitioners, Muslims, as a monolithic block, whose every behaviour is a consequence of that essentialised identity.
Rather than investigating and investing in countering rape culture, we claim the 'muslimhood' of particular rapists is to blame, absolving popular culture when the men themselves refer to the victims using the popular playground put down "slags". We regularly see 'Islam' used as a catch-all phrase to explain complex phenomena, distracting us from the real issues.
Islamophobia is rejecting the ease with which dejecting stereotypes are accepted as normal, such as the recent claim, popularised by the Daily Mirror, that Zain Malik of boyband One Direction, was "pimping Islam" on young girls through "boyband jihad". Or the use of imagery to fan the flames of fear, as the Sun on Sunday did by superimposing the image of a woman in a burka against a caustic anti-immigration article.
Raising awareness of islamophobia is also about recognising that far from being a lone sociopath, Breivik's actions were grounded in an all too common view of Islam and Muslims as a fifth column and a threat to Western values. A consequence of this 'theoretical' islamophobia, the intellectual jousting over the place of Islam in Europe, is that Muslims in Europe are facing increasingly tough conditions.
According to a report from Amnesty International, "European Muslims are regularly denied employment and educational opportunities because of widespread cultural and religious stereotypes that lead to discrimination against them."
Just as minarets or or face veils have become imbued with a significance beyond that attributed to them by Muslims themselves, discrimination against those bearing religious symbols becomes justified through the fallacious reasoning that people have chosen to subscribe to those ideas, in a way people don't choose their ethnicity. We don't choose the significance people attribute to our symbols - especially when we have so little access to defining them ourselves. We have no choice in the stereotypes and assumptions people make on the basis of our skin colour, nor do we have a choice in those stereotypes concerning the symbols which people interpret according to the dominant narrative of extremism and cultural incompatibility.
John Mullen of France's radical left-wing Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste has argued that "opposition to religious practices on the basis of progressive values can easily turn into a thinly disguised form of racism." It is time the Left take a stronger and clearer stance against islamophobia and stop giving the Right free rein to dictate the terms of European interaction with Muslims based on misplaced and ill-informed assumptions about Islam and Muslims.
The struggle against islamophobia is the struggle for a nuanced and contextualised appraisal of events involving Muslims, a refusal to accept that everything can be explained away through a facile reference to 'Islam' and a defence of a European minority group. There is nothing Orwellian about that.]]>France's Legislative Elections: A Left Turn for Europe?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15845822012-06-10T11:39:04-04:002012-08-10T05:12:07-04:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/48.31%) in France's legislative elections as 6500 candidates campaigned for 577 seats. People headed to the booths to choose between an average of ten candidates, including a number of smaller fringe parties such as the Pirate party and the Blank vote party, which reflect the broader European tendency towards a balkanisation of politics.
Despite tepid public interest in the elections, their outcome could have a significant impact on the government and its ability to undertake its agenda, which includes raising taxes on the wealthiest, tougher measures to regulate the finance sector, the creation of 60,000 new jobs in education over the next 5 years, reducing the deficit to 3% by 2017 and outlining a new Franco-German treaty. The high level of abstention increased the number of 'three ways' in the second round on 17 June 17, whereby three candidates reach the second round and which traditionally sees the formation of alliances to achieve a majority, a situation in which smaller parties can become King-markers. Such an outcome is likely to favour Hollande's Socialist party (PS) which already has a national alliance with the Ecology party and a less formal agreement with the Far-Left.
The party which wins the presidential elections traditionally achieves a majority in the national assembly, a result which could see the Left dominate all the major government institutions and consolidate Hollande's power. Whether the PS will have to be drawn into a coalition with the anti-capitalist Far-Left in order to achieve that majority will determine its ability to manoeuvre subsequently and could further complicate negotiations with European partners on the already thorny issue of austerity, just as Spain has conceded a bailout. Leader of the Leftist Front, Melenchon, who wants a 'citizen revolution', has previously expressed his desire to weaken the Right in France in order to create a precedent for Leftist policies in Europe, starting with Greece, which will vote straight after France and Germany, set to vote in October. Such a prospect has Layla and Florian, a young Parisian couple and Melenchon supporters, enthused. They claim the Leftist Front offers a way out of this "corrupt and unjust capitalist system" and reflects the only real alternative: "We don't need three cars or big houses - the current system means the middle class and the elite get richer whilst the poor get left behind - we need a revolution." But their conviction the Far-Left can resolve France or even Europe's problems, is far from unanimous. An elderly couple queuing at the polling office tell me they're concerned there could be a 'return' of the communists, as occurred under the government of Leon Blum in 1936, which they recall was marked by "near constant strikes." After casting a vote for the UMP, they praise Le Pen's views on immigration, but say their memory of the war and "the fratricide which occurred" means they would not contemplate voting for an anti-EU party.
The elections have highlighted tensions with the UMP, which suffered significant losses, over its ideological outlook and strategy . The traditional UMP alliance with Centre right parties has been negatively affected by the poor showing of Francois Bayrou's ModDem party, as well as by the rise of the Far-Right, which has drained some of its electorate. Since the departure of Sarkozy, the party has been embroiled in a power struggle between Party leader hopefuls and the public squabbling has served the interests of the National Front, which seeks to position itself as the 'New Right'. Despite some pressure from its base to form UMP-FN alliances to keep the PS at bay, the UMP has so far resisted such a move, with Alain Juppé warning of the dangers of an alliance with a party which seeks to weaken the Right, in order to subsume it. But MP for the Gironde and representative of the UMP's right wing, Jean-Paul Garraud, has called on the party to move beyond an 'ideological blockage' for pragmatic reasons and unite with the FN, a strategy which though officially denounced, may end up being reflected on the ground. The pressure to concede it even more accute in light of the thirty two 'three ways' in which the FN remains present for the second round.
A UMP-FN alliance, though grounded in electoral concerns, also reflects Marine Le Pen's success in transforming the image of her father's party, distancing herself from his racist and anti-semitic rants through a focus on anti-EU rhetoric and economic protectionism, coated in xenophobia. The FN which achieved almost 18% in the Presidential elections, has traditionally failed to gain seats in the National Assembly, a fact that reflects both an element of protest vote in its score at the Presidential election and the higher levels of abstention in local elections, which disproportionately affects smaller parties. Yesterday, it achieved 13.77% of the votes, a three fold increase on its 2007 showing in the legislatives elections then, through considerably lower than its score in May's election. In the second round, the FN may achieve between 0-5 MPs, under the banner of the "Marine blue gathering", a symbolic gain which reflects the growth of the Far-right in Europe and which would undoubtedly negatively impact France's Muslim citizens.
While it looks likely Hollande will get his socialist majority parliament, the chorus of anti-austerity voices from both the Far-Left and the Far-right, which may be rewarded with a parliamentary presence, will complicate his ability to act against the significant challenges faced, including 10% unemployment, sluggish growth, a lack of competitiveness and a massive deficit. Despite the lack of enthusiasm for them, these elections will have a decisive impact on France's policies and given its place in Europe, on the very nature of European policy.]]>The Danger in Referring to 'Asian' Sex Gangstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15023312012-05-09T07:32:14-04:002012-07-09T05:12:04-04:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/read the Daily Mail headline in November 2010, "Muslim gang jailed for kidnapping and raping two girls as part of their Eid celebrations" states another of its salacious headlines in April this year, while the typically more demure Telegraphran with "Asian grooming gangs, the uncomfortable issue".
These headlines all refer to recent cases involving sexually predatory gangs, the most recent of which, is the case of a group of men in Rochdale found guilty of sexually abusing 47 vulnerable girls. The case has caused controversy as some pundits claim the police failed to prosecute the men through fear they'd be branded racist. Former MP Ann Cryer believes such fears meant that both the police and social services failed to act to protect the girls and Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation urged the police and the councils "not to be frightened to address this issue, there is a strong lesson that you cannot ignore race or be over sensitive."
The case has thrust the issue of race back into the spotlight just as the MET is being investigated for mounting complaints about racism and as increasingly strident voices claim political correctness is impeding an assessment of the role race plays in such crimes. Columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown suggests as much as she writes she's been "warned not to write" about such cases, for fear of encouraging racism. "The rapists are all probably in one sense 'good' Muslims, praying and fasting in the daytime, then prowling and preying at night", she lambasted, ignoring as one commentator pointed out that "the defendants in question are at most nominally Muslim". Practising Muslims certainly aren't supposed to rape children.
Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee Keith Vaz claims that the issue has nothing to do with race or being Asian. He cautioned of the dangers in singling out the Asian community and has advised caution in using race-related terminology.
The focus on isolating race as an explanatory variable in cases of sex-grooming ignores all other factors and essentialises the identity of the culprits - it ignores why Asian men are over-represented in socio-economically poorer areas where street-grooming occurs and why white girls are over-represented among vulnerable groups in such areas.
What's more, plenty of sex-gangs are not Asian. Crime researchers Ella Cockbain and Helen Brayley warned: "If on-street grooming continues to be reduced to the big Asian networks alone, a whole host of other offenders will get overlooked."
The sex slave trade in this country is sadly alive and well and is not primarily Asian driven, and paedophiles are not overwhelmingly of Asian ethnic backgrounds, suggesting any abhorrent link some may seek to make between race and inherent sexually predatory behaviour is not born out by the facts.
Such a link is also reminiscent of racist terminology used to refer to black gangs in the 1980s, particularly Jack Straw's comment in January last year relating to a separate case in Derby: "These young men are in a western society, in any event, they act like any other young men, they're fizzing and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that..." His comment both singled the men out as 'foreign' by referring to them as "in a western society", rather than products of a society they were born and raised in, and reduced their behaviour to physically urges, completely ignoring the dimension of power inherent to rape, which is primarily a crime of violence, not sex.
Some have referred to culturally specific terminology in order to claim that the view of some women as worthless and thus open to abuse is restricted to certain communities. This ignores power inequities based on gender manifest at every level of society and expressed through different social and cultural idioms. Different terminology expresses a shared disdain for women, inflected with culturally specific justifications: "sluts" "hoes" "gora" "skank" "cheap" "easy" - sexism is not an 'Asian' issue, though it does of course affect Asians as it does everyone else - it is sadly omnipresent, cross-culturally.
Those seeking to locate these crimes within some inherent Asian characteristic need to explain the vast majority of law abiding Asian men, the diversity of Asian cultures, not culture and the fact the Chief prosecutor who re-opened the case is himself an Asian Muslim, Nazir Afzal.
The treatment of this case is not about political correctness, it is about not stigmatising an entire community based on a mis-identification of the explanatory variable in the crimes of this group of men, who happen to be Asian.
Both the police and the judge appear to believe the race of the victims and abusers was "coincidental", so the real question is why as a society, we are seeking to attribute a racial dimension to it and what that says about our unspoken racist assumptions concerning Asian men.
Academic Vron Ware recounts that the black male has been historically constructed as the antithesis of white femininity, sexually predatory upon white innocence and beauty - we'd be naive not to notice the same rhetoric being played out now with Asian/Muslim males...]]>Francois Hollande: The Candidate for Change? Not for French Muslimstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14760772012-05-03T18:49:46-04:002012-07-03T05:12:03-04:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/
And yet, when the candidates got on to discussing the hot topics of Islam and multiculturalism, the visions seemed to narrowly converge. Despite some heated repartee, both affirmed their credentials in dealing with France's "problem" of communalism and the role Islam has to play in exacerbating it.
Muslims have been a regular political fodder throughout the election. In the first round President Sarkozy adopted Far Right rhetoric by suggesting halal meat was a "central concern" for the French, while Marine Le Pen spoke of the "rise of green facism" in the wake of the attacks by Mohamed Merah, whom she described as "the tip of the iceberg".
The socialist candidate, Francois Hollande has raised the hopes of many, drawn in by his rejection of the Far-right and his objection to fear based rhetoric. In a France where a young generation of North African origin are seeking to make their mark, he appointed Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, a Moroccan born French politician as his co-spokesperson. And in Wednesday's debate, he argued that foreigners who've lived in France for over five years should have the right to vote in local elections, a proposition Sarkozy opposes.
However, it was here that the limits of French political discourse on Islam became apparent. As the subject of Islam was raised, Sarkozy asserted that it is the Muslim identity of immigrants which fuels his opposition to their right to vote in local elections where they would have power to influence policy and would fuel the "rise of radical Islam": "...the majority of those concerned are not Norwegians or Americans" Sarkozy exclaimed "the communalist tensions I'm talking about, who do they come from? Or where do they come from? From the absolute necessity to have an Islam of France, not an Islam in France." The president was pulled up by Hollande, who pointed out that to reduce immigrants to their religious identity was to ignore their diversity, "some might not even identify as Muslim" he corrected. But Hollande's indignation at the reification of Muslim identity stopped there. And so does much of the hope, he might offer change in this contentious realm.
In France, the essentialisation of Muslims identity and attribution of their difference to a single inassimilable culture which allegedly threatens the French way of life, is common currency across the political spectrum. Even the Far-Left is not immune from this perception: "You can't say you're a feminist and wear a sign of patriarchal submission" exclaimed Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2010 in response to a veiled Muslim political candidate.
As Sarkozy went on to link the right to vote for foreigners to "the rise in communalism and tensions", Hollande's discourse veered right. Reassuring the public he would make no concessions to the Republic's golden calf of 'laicite', he agreed with his opponent that the sort of 'extravagant' demands Muslims might make on municipalities - the option of halal meat in school canteens, occasional women-only swimming sessions and access to female doctors -would not be tolerated.
The Presidential debate highlighted the extent to which Islam has been singled out as problematic across the political spectrum. By linking such basic issues as dietary provisions, to the bogeyman of communalism, Sarkozy was suggesting they are fundamentally incompatible with his cryptic and yet emblematic notion of "an Islam of France." And yet, efforts to foster a balanced French Muslim identity have been met with the President's ire. Oxford Professor Tariq Ramadan who contends that French Muslims don't need to negate their religious identity in order to become fully French, but must rather live out both aspects of their identity fully, was recently described as 'unwelcome' by the President and specialist Catherine Wihtol de Wenden states that French Muslims don't share the state's complex about their contested identity: "Most Muslims in France feel very French -- but they feel that the French don't see them that way, because they may look Arab or black." Rather, the stigmatisation of Islam in public discourse has fostered a climate which ensures hostility towards its practitioners, despite their own desire to fully identify with the nation.
Rather than tackling this climate, Hollande sought to shore up his 'secular' credentials during the debate by boasting that his party was behind the 2004 law banning veils in schools. Since then, legislation targeting Muslim female dress has continued to increase, supported and instigated at times by the Left. In 2011, Sarkozy instated the ban on the wearing of face veils in public in France with near unanimous support, and in January 2012, the Senate approved a law, proposed by a Socialist, to ban nursery assistants from wearing headscarves on the basis of "protecting children from women unworthy of their trust." The Ecologist party denounced the law as intrusive and discriminatory and Muslim groups have expressed fears the law will increase suspicion and hostility towards women who wear the headscarf.
During the debate, Sarkozy went unchallenged as he argued that Islam has been the cause of "an extravagant rise in communalist tensions" despite the fact the most frequent cause mentioned for the 2005 riots was joblessness and the reality that Muslims are over represented in disadvantaged neighbourhoods with high unemployment, poor educational facilities and few career options. This omission of the social and geographical marginalisation of Muslims is compounded by the oft-denied omnipresence of hostility towards Islam.
Nearly four-in-ten Muslims French Muslims report that they have had a bad experience attributable to their race, ethnicity or religion. Legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment is rarely implemented in France and employers have been allowed to discriminate on the grounds of religious or cultural symbols, in direct conflict with European Union anti-discrimination legislation. Linda, a thirty year old administrative assistant of Algerian origin tells me her employers declined her request to pray in an empty office during her lunch break on the grounds the office is a "secular space." A young white convert explained to me that she was refused entry to a bowling alley on the grounds her headscarf was unwelcome there. Shaima, a journalism graduate from one of France's top universities, explains she has been unable to find employment due to her headscarf and is seeking to emigrate. Amnesty international's expert on discrimination, Marco Perolini has denounced the pandering to prejudices by political parties in quest of votes, which he linked directly to human rights violations: "Muslim women are being denied jobs and girls prevented from attending regular classes just because they wear traditional forms of dress, such as the headscarf. Men can be dismissed for wearing beards associated with Islam.(...) There is a groundswell of opinion in many European countries that Islam is alright and Muslims are ok so long as they are not too visible. This attitude is generating human rights violations and needs to be challenged."
Despite an increasing number of studies suggesting French Muslims are getting a raw deal, politicians don't appear to be listening and the rise of the Far-Right has made initiating such discussions political suicide. American academic Joan Scott argues that France has failed to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens and believes that the suppression of diversity is not a feasible path for social harmony in the contemporary era. The candidate for 'change' who calls for national unity has so far offered an alternative vision for France on many fronts, but the issue of social harmony has yet to be tackled from a different angle. The question remains whether on the issue of Muslim visibility and acceptance, a Socialist President will make any difference at all. It seems unlikely. ]]>France is Turning 'Bleu Marine': the Existential Crisis of the French Righttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14471922012-04-23T17:22:17-04:002012-06-23T05:12:02-04:00Myriam Francois-Cerrahhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-francois/
His hope now will be to galvanise the Far-right and Centrist votes to compete with the Leftist block, totalling 41%, which gives the socialist candidate, Francois Hollande a solid basis on which to achieve the winning 54%, predicted by an IPSOS poll in the second round.
As Sarkozy seeks to salvage the situation in the run up to May 6th, his Sunday speech offered a glimpse of things to come as he focused on key National Front issues of immigration, border controls and national identity. In recent years, the UMP has been split by its veer to the right under the direction of Sarkozy's adviser, Patrick Buisson, considered the architect of the UMP's "LePen-isation". Many blame the strategy for alienating traditional right-wing voters and changing the very nature of the neo-Gaulliste party. Others see Le Pen's success as a vindication and evidence of the need to move further on this terrain. The fact Sarkozy can count on 60% of Le Pen's votes in the second round, poses some existential questions about the very nature of the Right in France.
A regional breakdown of the vote showed Le Pen achieved high scores in the industrial North Est, where she often came second, behind the Left for whom the North is not traditional terrain and where Sarkozy had scored highly in 2007. The North Est and France's industrial regions were those worst hit by the economic crisis in 2008-2009, with a significant increase in unemployment. Today jobless claims are at a twelve year high across France. In addition, France has lost competitiveness. Its exports have lagged behind those of its major trading partners in the past decade, labour costs have grown and whilst the economy is sluggish, workers are faced with reduced purchasing power. This squeeze on the working class under the UMP's rule means many are looking elsewhere. The breakdown of votes shows Sarkozy lost many seats in central France, the 6th largest industrial region, where the Far Left made significant advances and 29% of Blue-collar workers now vote Le Pen.
But the Far-Right has also benefited from Sarkozy's tactical inclusion of Far-right themes into the mainstream political discourse. Many of Sarkozy's election pledges seemingly acknowledged the problematisation of issues raised by the FN, including the halal meat saga and the proposed rethink of the passport-free Schengen zone. This strategy assumed the incorporation of such issues into the UMP's agenda, could garner more votes away from the NF, but appears instead to have legitimised Le Pen's discourse and ensured the perennity of her party on the French political scene. What's more, Sarkozy's perceived failure to address these issues, alongside his acknowledgement of their importance, has bolstered the FN's agenda.
Marine Len Pen's speech on Sunday suggests she now views her party as the 'true' Right, in the face of a weak and discredited UMP. What is certain is that her historic success in this first round has shifted the political terrain in France and conveyed a degree of respectability she has worked hard to foster. Since taking over from her father, Marine has morphed the party's image, seeking to distance it from its racist reputation and consolidating its platform through a solidly anti-EU focus, broadening its appeal. The message of curbing immigration and combating a European elite by taking France out of the Eurozone, is designed to protect an allegedly threatened French identity.
Alongside proposals to protect small businesses and ban supermarkets in towns of under 30 000 people, she speaks to a France suspicious of globalisation and of the EU's austerity plans, in a country where only 31% of people agree that a free market economy is the best system. It is amongst the squeezed working and middle classes, who feel that Europe is failing to protect them against global competition, that her message of protectionism, both social and economic, has found an audience.
Last year, academics warned of the "France of the invisibles" where almost 40% of the electorate in rural and suburban areas, as well as in towns hit by deindustrialisation, feel abandoned by the democratic process and unrepresented in their concerns. The consequence is the emergence of a more radical political vote, towards the Far-Left but more so towards the Far Right whose combination of a focus on social and identity issues has broad appeal. Worryingly, this is no longer perceived to be a protest vote, but a vote of adherence to the FN's agenda. 64% of FN voters state their support for Marine le Pen as a candidate, and only 36% describe theirs as a "protest vote". Amongst FN voters, immigration polls as the highest concern (62 %), followed by insecurity (44 %) and purchasing power (43 %) and Le Pen has successfully taped into this combination of social and economic conservativism.
While Hollande may be elected France's first Socialist president in 17 years, it was under another socialist, Francois Mitterand that the National Front first made headways in response to austerity measures in the 1980s. In 2012, their presence is far more entrenched and they'll be facing a candidate whom only 25 % of voters believe can improve the situations in France. If he fails, an emboldened Far-right is waiting in the wings.]]>