ACMCU Opinion Pieces
Dr. Shireen Hunter
Nicholas Sarkozy, the French presidential hopeful, recently suggested the formation of a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity. The goal of such a ministry supposedly would be to limit immigration, to establish standards that should be observed in order for immigrants to qualify as being “French,” and hence to encourage and speed up the process of integrating the North African and Middle East immigrant population.
Sarkozy’s proposal initially sparked criticism from many quarters, especially from his Socialist rival for the presidency, Segolene Royal, although she herself later advanced similarly nationalistic ideas. Among the critics was Simone Weil, a former cabinet minister and Holocaust survivor who said that, if there were to be a specific ministry for regulating immigration, it should be called the Ministry of Immigration and Integration and not that of National Identity.
In making his proposal, Sarkozy did not refer specifically to Muslim immigrants, but it was clear to all that his main target was the Muslim community in France, which is seen by many natives as posing the most serious challenge to its cohesion and hence to its national identity. However, Sarkozy has not elaborated his definition of what constitutes French national identity and its basic ingredients. Is it mastery of the French language and commitment to so-called republican values, including a particularly anti-clerical and anti-religion form of secularism? Or there are also other requirements to be “French?”
But if Sarkozy is vague about his notion of French national identity, that is not true of those on the far right who have a very clear idea about who is a true Frenchman or Frenchwoman. According to Jean Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right party which is posing a challenge to both Sarkozy and Royal, one cannot be considered truly French until the bones of one’s forefathers are dissolved in French soil. Ironically, this definition would exclude Sarkozy from being considered truly French because his father was an immigrant from Hungary.
Clearly, France is facing a major problem in terms of integrating its immigrant population, especially but by no means exclusively its Muslim population. The youth riots of 2005 and more recent disturbances are dangerous signs of a marginalized community growing frustrated and restive. However, the question rarely asked is why this alienation and restiveness is taking place, and to what extent resistance to integration is responsible for it. More to the point, is Islam the main obstacle to Muslims’ integration? If Islam is the main obstacle, then why are non-Muslim immigrants from Africa also being marginalized and alienated from mainstream society? And why are not secular Muslims treated as equals with other French citizens?
Each of these questions demands a specific answer and specific actions and programs to deal with them .More important , posing these questions would require also looking into barriers to integrating in French society as well, even if Muslim and other immigrants were prepared to accept the French cultural and political ethos. After all, “integration” is a two-way street, meaning not only that immigrants must be willing to integrate but also that society must willing to integrate them.
Despite the centrality of the so-called Muslim question in the debate about French national identity, other deeper factors which have nothing to do with Islam and Muslim immigrants are at the root of the French identify crisis and that of Europe, in general. In this respect, it is useful to recall that Sarkozy has also spoken against the common European Union currency, the Euro, as well as some other aspects of EU policies as damaging to France’s interests. Indeed, a main reason for the current debate about immigration is that France has not been able to come to terms either with the loss of empire or the dramatic erosion of the French cultural influence globally. The French obsession with the emergence of English as the global language and with the so-called Anglo-Saxon cultural challenge is the best example of this deeper malaise. It is also interesting to note that the French initially tried to remedy this loss of cultural influence through legislation, such as banning the use of such English words as “weekend,” “shopping,” and “marketing,” and the requirement that French radio stations dedicate at least twenty percent of their musical programming to French songs.
Needless to say, these measures have failed dismally because, as many in France have argued, the main reason for the popularity of non-French terms has been that there are no French equivalents for them. This is particularly true with business and technical terms because, by-and-large, such practices and technologies have developed in English-speaking countries and not in France.
France, of course, is not alone in feeling some loss of national identity. The process of European integration which was speeded up in the 1990s has created anxieties everywhere in Europe about both the costs of integration and the loss of national identities. These anxieties were further exacerbated by the rapid pace of the EU’s enlargement to Central and South-East Europe, and with Turkey looming on the horizon. This is thus part of the context within which the debate about French national identity is taking place. Indeed, it is when national identity becomes diluted that efforts to strengthen it begin, often leading to exaggeration of the role of a single factor –such as immigrants and minorities – in the process of dilution, at the expense of understanding more fundamental causes. After all, it was after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism that President Boris Yeltsin appointed a commission to devise a new definition of the Russian Idea: in other words, a new Russian national identity. Many years and many commissions later there is still no such definition.
It is equally doubtful that a French Ministry of National Identity, if it were to come to pass under a President Sarkozy, would be able to resolve the French identity crisis. What is certain is that even talking about such an institution rather than the real causes of malaise over identity will worsen France’s problems with its immigrant population and delay their integration.
Shireen Hunter is the Director of the Carnegie Project on Reformist Islam at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Chrisitian Understanding.