This year, the month of Ramadan coincides with the presidential elections in France, the culmination of a campaign marked by anti-Muslim wickedness on a scale not seen in decades.
Considering the candidates who entered the race, for many the answer is no.
Eric Zemmour, a former TV pundit who has been convicted three times for hate speech, racial or religious hatred, has said he wants “save Francefrom Islam. Center-right candidate Valerie Pecresse declared the headscarf a “sign of a woman’s submission” and asserted with nationalist flourish that “Marianne is not a veiled woman.” Zemmour and Pecresse took the spots in the first poll four and five rounds and are eliminated.
Even Macron found time at his only campaign event ahead of the first round of voting to highlight the threat posed by Islamists and Muslim “separatists” in France who are intertwining France’s motto “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) with another preferred French republican value: Laicité (secularism).
Only one candidate, third-placed far-left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, has historically taken a position more supportive of the Muslim community. Ifop polls in the first round showed that about two-thirds of French Muslim voters supported him. He was also eliminated after the first ballot.
“What’s really scary about this upcoming election is that most (top) candidates just rely on programs based on stigmatizing minorities, on eroding our most basic rights and freedoms,” said Latreche, a law student, before the first round.
With the “normalization of Islamophobia, we are facing the consequences right now,” added Latreche, who is also vocal about the civil liberties of young Muslim women.
The political landscape in France this year is very different from just a few elections ago. As the country’s traditionally strong centre-left and centre-right forces struggle, the political extremes have benefited.
In the first round of presidential elections on April 10, Le Pen and Zemmour, the two far-right candidates with the most extreme policies affecting the lives of Muslims in France, together received just over 30% of the total vote; Le Pen alone received enough votes to advance to the runoff with 23% of the vote in the first round. Their surge has been accompanied by a clamor of anti-immigrant and anti-Islam narratives that have dominated much of the debate and reporting.
“We are constantly marginalized”
Strasbourg’s Grand Mosque – the largest in France – sits discreetly tucked away on a riverbank in the eastern border city.
Many of the worshipers there say they don’t feel represented by any of the dozens of candidates who ran for the presidency in the first round.
“We are constantly marginalized, excluded from society and then told that we don’t participate in society.” said Latreche. She felt that denying agency and agency about her own life and her contribution to society inevitably had a negative impact on her mental health and that of her friends, she added.
Entering for evening prayer, Wagner Dino expressed his dismay at the choice of candidates.
“There is no one presenting himself who really has the necessary parameters to initiate everything to have a France united with the Muslims,” he said.
Mosque volunteer Safia Abdouni said she believes none of the candidates “know what we are going through, our daily life and what we really need”.
“I feel like I’m not being represented as a young, female student. Even less as a young female Muslim student,” she added.
But Saïd Aalla, the president of the Grand Mosque, said if young Muslims “want to change the situation, it can only be done with the vote”.
Aalla expressed no preference for any of the contenders. As a cleric, French law prohibits him from publicly supporting a political candidate.
The Secularism Debate
In successive legislatures, Muslim women’s hijabs and headscarves have been easy targets for politicians trying to stoke support for traditional French republican values.
“Laicité” – or secularism – claims to ensure equality for all by eliminating differences, making all citizens French and protecting religious freedom in the private sphere. Religious symbols are banned in elementary and secondary schools, public offices and government workplaces, and even some sports organizations.
“Laicité per se is not a problem,” says Rim-Sarah Alouane, a doctoral student in comparative law at the University of Toulouse-Capitole and a specialist in religious freedoms and human rights in Europe.
“Laicité was transformed (and) was armed as a political identity tool to attack the visibility of Muslims in France, French Muslims and especially Muslim women and the wearing of the headscarf. So it’s more of a modern illiberal interpretation of Laicité that’s more problematic than Laicité itself,” she said.
Today’s Laicité debate has placed the hijab at the heart of France’s culture wars, pitting what conservatives call “secularism” against religious civil liberties
Le Pen and Zemmour both proposed banning what they refer to as “the hijab,” but neither campaign has offered details on what exactly such a ban would encompass or how it would be enforced. In her campaign manifesto, Le Pen has proposed banning all “Islamic clothing” in public, a definition critics say can be interpreted arbitrarily and imprecisely. The French government has already banned women from wearing the niqab – a full-face veil with an opening for the eyes.
The Macron government reacted furiously to a diversity campaign funded in part by the European Union last year that superimposed images of women wearing headscarves over the same images without headscarves. The campaign slogan was “Beauty lies in diversity, as does freedom in hijab.” The French government called for an investigation into the campaign and its withdrawal in France. In the words of a minister: “We must not confuse religious freedom with a campaign to promote hijab, that is unacceptable.” Last month, France’s Supreme Court ruled that local bar associations can ban headscarves and other “religious symbols” from courtrooms — the name secularism — forcing hijab-wearing women like Latreche to choose between pursuing a career and publicly practicing their faith.
“It’s actually extremely demotivating and disheartening to see that we wouldn’t be able to contribute to society and make it more vibrant despite our abilities,” Latreche said, “just because we choose to exercise our rights.”
“We (should) be in control of our own rights and bodies and beliefs,” she said.
Ludwig Knoepffler, a member of Le Pen’s campaign team, denied that Le Pen’s anti-hijab platform was being run “on behalf of Laicité”. Rather, he said the intention was to fight totalitarianism.
“The idea is to combat the hijab as a political tool used and promoted by Islamist militants,” he said. “If you believe that the Islamist political project is indeed totalitarian, then you must combat its distinctive features. Just as you would ban the swastika in public, as is already the case.”
Le Pen addressed the issue in Wednesday night’s presidential debate, calling the headscarf “a uniform imposed by the Islamists.”
Macron accused her of creating a “system of equality” between Islamism, terrorism and foreigners that would “trigger a civil war”.
“Liberty, equality, fraternity”
Aalla, the mosque’s president, said France’s Muslims have the same aspirations as other citizens.
“The Muslims of France have been here for several generations, but we still see them as strangers,” he said.
Aalla condemned the idea of a “Muslim vote”. There are Muslims who support all French parties, he said, people hoping to be taken into account by politics, particularly in relation to freedom of religion.
For legal scholar Alouane, the headscarf debate is a frightening distraction: “I mean, we have inflation, energy prices have gone up massively, there’s poverty, our public services are being dismantled, unemployment and so on… and everything we’re talking about is a piece Stuff that women wear… seriously.”
Aalla said French Muslims expect France and French society to address economic issues, social issues, housing issues or discrimination issues “that all citizens, including Muslims, expect from their new President”.
But for French citizens and voters, who gather to pray and break their fast amid a darkening political atmosphere, the hopes of many in their community can be summed up in one phrase: “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”
Journalist Camille Knight contributed to the coverage.