Juan Cole: President Hollande: Anti-Muslimism Is as Bad as Anti-Semitism

Worth reading, and an apparent ‘course correction’ nuancing the ‘war’ language :

French President Francois Hollande addressed the Institute of the Arab World on Friday, in a bid to reassure French Muslims, who fear being the victims of a collective guilt campaign or reprisals after the attack of radicals on Charlie Hebdo.

Hollande said:

“It is the Muslims who are the first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance…

We must remember that . . . Islam is compatible with democracy, and that we must reject lumping everyone together or mixing them up with one another, and must have in France French of Muslim faith who have the same rights and the same duties as all citizens.

They must be protected.  Secularism helps in this regard since it respects all religions… Anti-Muslim actions, like Antisemitism, must be denounced and severely punished…

France was formed by movements of population and the flux of immigration.  It is constituted by the diversity of what is in France.  A number of my compatriots have attachments in the Arab world, coming from North Africa or the Near East.  They might be Jews, Muslims, Christians, they might be believers or no.  But they have a link to the Arab world and they have contributed, generation after generation, to the history of France.”

In contrast to the racist discourse of the National Front, which paints Muslims as alien and dangerous and non-Muslim French as monochrome, Hollande adopted an almost American diction of celebration of immigrant communities.

He made the argument that it isn’t importing religion into government (as many states in the Middle East unfortunately do) that guarantees minority rights but rather secular government, which tolerates all religions equally.  He is being a little idealistic about actual French secularism as it is enshrined in law and practice, but the general principle is correct.  Secular government can neutralize religious competition for the state of the sort we have seen in post-Bush Iraq, with all its disasters.

Hollande surely made waves when he put anti-Muslimism on exactly the same level as Antisemitism, and pledged to be as vigorous in combating the one as the other.  I haven’t heard any other Western leader go so far as to equate these two.

Otherwise, his acceptance of the Muslim French as full French citizens is extremely important in the hothouse atmosphere of European politics today, where many right-wing parties determinedly “other” the European Muslims.

Juan Cole: President Hollande: Anti-Muslimism Is as Bad as Anti-Semitism – Juan Cole – Truthdig.