the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has unleashed an ideological war over laïcité — the strict version of secularism that underpins laws banning headscarves at school and face-covering veils in public areas.
This may seem counterintuitive. After the murders in January nearly 4m people took to the streets of Paris
and other French cities in solidarity with a publication that could not
be more emblematic of secularism à la Française. For decades, the
fiercely anticlerical Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who were shot down by
Islamists used their right to blaspheme — formulated by Voltaire, the
Enlightenment philosopher, three centuries ago — to mock religions.
Their attackers claimed their acts were in retaliation for caricatures
of the Prophet Mohammed.
The atrocity could have strengthened
laïcité. The crime of blasphemy was abolished not long after
Chevalier de La Barre was tortured, beheaded and burnt in 1766 for not
removing his hat in front of a Catholic procession. Today’s secular
republic has a duty to protect all citizens, including those who do not
believe in God. Prime Minister Manuel Valls was quick to announce a plan to bolster the teaching of those principles at school.
But the debate that ensued has highlighted deep
divisions, pitting intellectuals who call for the return to stricter
observance of secularism against those who argue that this version of laïcité is racism in disguise, directed at a Muslim population that already faces discrimination.
Alain Finkielkraut, an author and a member of the
prestigious Académie française, belongs to the first category. Sitting
in his living room in a well-heeled arrondissement of Paris, he laments
that his camp is losing. The fact that Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right anti-immigration National Front (FN), has begun depicting herself as a champion of laïcité makes anyone else defending it a suspect, he says.
Born to a Polish leather-goods maker, he is a product of the
meritocratic, secular state school system, and he fears these good old
days are gone.
L’identité malheureuse
, the book he published last year, caused an uproar for accusing modern
European societies of caving in to Islamists in the name of tolerance
and liberalism. The son of an Auschwitz survivor, he was called a
“fascist”. He says: “I get insults all the time now.”Anti-racism and political correctness have become an ideology, he adds. The concept of Islamophobia “wrongly confuses the rejection of a population and the rational criticism of a religion”. Since Charlie Hebdo, “self-censorship has settled down, and it’s increasingly difficult to criticise Islam”.
For Mr Finkielkraut, religion is incompatible with teaching and learning. He is in favour, for instance, of banning the headscarf in universities, and prohibiting mothers who wear the veil from accompanying pupils on day trips. “It’s not discriminatory, it’s setting the rules,” he says. The veil, for example, is not neutral: “It’s a way of separating men and women, and that has nothing to do with the French tradition.”
When I suggest it is hard to prevent traditions from evolving, he snaps: “Evolution can be regression.”
Mr Finkielkraut’s malaise echoes the identity crisis afflicting France, which has partly translated into the rise of the FN — which received about 25 per cent of the votes in the weekend’s regional elections — amid record unemployment and fears over globalisation. But while it may make sense to stick to principles that have shaped French culture, it is not possible to ignore discrimination based on ethnicity, skin colour and religion — nor the fact that some do use laïcité to dress up racist tendencies. A dose of pragmatism is perhaps required.
Mr Finkielkraut fears that France will take a darker course, with more tensions and possibly some sort of civil war
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