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In our series of letters from African journalists, France-based Maher Mezahi writes how racism and Islamophobia are behind the anger that has been seen on the country’s streets over the past week.
The unrest that swept across the country following the police killing of Nahel M, a 17-year-old boy of Algerian origin, has shaken French society to the core. The riots have been described as unprecedented in terms of scale and intensity.
In Marseille, a city I’ve called home for the last year, an absurd routine has taken hold.
Afternoons were spent running errands in a hurry before shops and public transport closed prematurely due to the impending chaos.
The evenings were marked by a risky game of cat and mouse between police and rioters, accompanied by a pulsating soundtrack of car sirens, helicopters and fireworks.
The morning was devoted to French talk shows and the often one-sided analyzes they contain.
The same merry-go-round of police union spokesmen, legal analysts and politicians repeatedly tried to explain who, what and – most importantly – why the riots took place.
While the police killing of Nahel was almost unanimously condemned, many were quick to raise the same question about immigration to France after the riots.
There was the ever-present question: “How did third- and fourth-generation French immigrant citizens fail to integrate into French society?”
And my personal favorite: “Don’t rioters realize they’re ruining their own property?”
That such questions remain unanswered decades after they were first asked makes me wonder if those who asked them were seriously looking for answers.
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A crowdfunding campaign was launched for the police officer who shot Nahel
In his famous commencement speech at Kenyon College in the US in 2005, the late American writer David Foster Wallace told the parable of two young fish swimming past an older fish who says to them, “Morning boys. How is the water?”
The two continue on their way, and then one asks the other, “What the hell is water?”
“The point of the Fish story is simply that the most obvious and important realities are often the hardest to spot and talk about,” Wallace observed.
As a young, Algerian, Muslim man who grew up in Canada, I have observed in everyday life in France over the past few months that the water stinks of latent, trivialized racism and Islamophobia.
In the weeks leading up to the shooting, there were several examples of major media outlets and political elites making extremely provocative statements about Muslims and Algerians in France.
In early June, former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe gave a lengthy interview calling for immigration policy reform. He said some French people don’t see second- or third-generation immigrants as French for reasons of “integration, education and citizenship” – and that those views should be heard.
Mr. Philippe went on to say that another problem many French people have with immigration is Islam.
“It’s a pivotal issue, a troubling issue, a haunting issue,” he said.
Finally, he called for the termination of a bilateral agreement that makes it easier for Algerians to immigrate to France.
Later in June, BFM TV, France’s most-watched news channel, filmed the entrance of a middle school in Lyon to count how many students came in wearing an “abaya,” a loose robe worn by many Muslim women.
The report was intended to tell the French public that open display of religion is creeping into schools and goes against the doctrine of laïcité – the French concept of strict secularism in the public sphere.
The girls defiantly walked to the entrance in their abayas and removed their headscarves or hijabs, as required by French law, forcing the establishment to acknowledge that she was actively removing them.
The scenes were reminiscent of Frantz Fanon’s essay Algeria Unveiled, in which he analyzes the colonial apparatus’ obsessive view of Algerian women covering their bodies.
The abaya controversy was followed by the story that a handful of Muslim children in Nice, between the ages of nine and eleven, had the audacity to pray in their school’s courtyard.
Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, right-wing political party leader Eric Ciotti and Education Minister Pap Ndiaye all publicly criticized the children.
Days later, and just weeks before the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023, a French court upheld a ban on Muslim footballers wearing the hijab.
While the officer who killed Nahel is in custody, right-wing figures have launched a crowdfunding campaign for him, raising 1.6 million euros (£1.4m; US$1.7m) in donations before it was hired.
Some left-wing politicians condemned the campaign, but others on the right used it to symbolize their support for the police, and it has become a highly contentious issue.
All this fuels the feeling of not being accepted by the state and society among many Muslims and North Africans living in France and explains why many people reacted with great anger to the assassination of Nahel.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Rebellion is the language of the unheard.”
Last week, and perhaps for the first time in their lives, concerned French youth made their voices heard.