OPINION: Want to start a quarrel in France? Mention Islam

The problem is that, in the present quarrelsome age, it’s not always easy to separate the two. Add the words “Islam” and “Islamism” and the debate rapidly moves from the tricky to the impossible.

My first example is the French government’s proposed law on “reinforcing Republican principles” which will be passed by the National Assembly on Tuesday.

The law is, in all but name, an attempt to curb the advance of radical or extremist Islamic ideology - often known as Islamism. We can return later to what it says or does.

First, let us recall what the law does NOT say or do.

Over 1,700 amendments were tabled. Something like 300, mostly marginal changes, were passed.

The amendments included a proposal, supported by some pro-Macron deputies, to ban the wearing of hijabs or head-scarves by little girls. They also included attempts by centre-right MPs to ban the headscarf in all publicly-owned buildings, such as universities or hospitals, and on all public transport. They included an attempt by Marine Le Pen’s Far Right Rassemblement National to ban the hijab outright in all public spaces (ie streets) in France.

All of these proposals - and others which might fairly be described as an attack on the choices of ordinary, non-radical Muslims - were rejected by the government and voted down by the pro-Macron majority in the Assemblée Nationale.

And yet Macron has been accused in recent weeks of lurching to the Right; of courting Islamophobic voters; of attacking Islam. The allegations have come from some leaders in the Muslim world; from part of the French Left; and - in shrill terms - from some voices in the liberal media in the United States.

It is also worth recalling that the proposed law has been developed in consultation with a representative section of Muslim leaders in France. It is intended, inter alia, to prevent the spread and foreign financing of the violent mutations of Islam.

It will help, not anger, the great bulk of law-abiding French Muslims who wish to practise their faith without being bullied by religious extremists (or the French far right).

My second example of “something that didn’t happen” goes back to a 70 minute TV debate on this same law last Thursday between the French interior minister Gérald Darmanin and Ms Le Pen. It was mostly a tedious affair but it generated running battles on Twitter and elsewhere at the weekend in both French and English. (Complete disclosure: I pitched enthusiastically into these battles.)

All turns on one passage towards the end. If taken out of context, Darmanin appears to accuse Le Pen of going “soft” on Islam and suggests that he is more radical than she is.

Darmanin has dangerous form (as I have written here before) as someone who has in the past strayed towards the Islamophobic rhetoric of the hard or far-right.

Cue indignation among left-wing twitterers in France and some UK and US commentators. Here, they said, was disturbing proof that Darmanin/Macron were playing the anti-Islam card to attract votes in next year’s presidential election.

Turkish state English language TV, TRT, carried a short soundbite, which suggested that Darmanin was attacking Islam per se.

No, he wasn’t. If you suffered through the whole debate, it was evident that Darmanin was teasing/mocking Le Pen for pretending hypocritically that she defended “all religions” while she and her party are habitually and virulently Islamophobic.

Others, I confess, have a different interpretation. Even the august Le Monde got it wrong, I believe, and missed the teasing/mocking context of Darmanin’s remarks.

The interior minister (who has form as I say) was clumsy. He might have been trying to have the best of both worlds - teasing Le Pen while posing as hard-line himself. But it is plain wrong to suggest, as some have, that Darmanin attacked Islam.

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Earlier in the debate, he made it clear that the government’s quarrel was with the radical anti-western distortions of Islam which have led to the 30 or so serious Islamist attacks in France in the last eight years. Or with the growing number of younger French Muslims who say they regard state laws as inferior and sometimes contrary to the laws of their religion.

Earlier in the debate Darmanin had made a strong argument against pressure - which comes from both the Right and part of the Left in France - for a ban on the Islamic headscarf.

Not all women who wear the hijab are radicals or under the thumb of men, Darmanin said. He gave the example of a hijab-wearing Muslim French woman whose soldier son was killed in a terrorist attack and now campaigns against radical Islamism.

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I should point, briefly, to a third current example of the debate about Islam and Islamism in France which has generated a quarrel in which all basic facts are disputed - and maybe distorted.

Didier Lemaire is a philosophy teacher in the Paris suburban town of Trappes and also leader of a radically pro-secular political movement. He said last month that the town was now “definitively lost” to radical Islam and that his life was under threat.

His claims have been disputed by both the left-wing mayor of Trappes, Ali Rabeh, and the Préfet (senior government officer) in the Yvelines département. The rights and wrongs of the case are difficult to follow. I have no reason to disbelieve Mr Lemaire - or Monsieur the mayor.

My point is that everyone has pitched into the debate - far right, right, pro-secular French Left, Macron-is-a-fascist French Left - from previously fixed viewpoints. Few people seem to want to understand what is going on in Trappes. Lots of people want to grow indignant about it.

Maybe my own point of view is equally suspect - slippery; centrist; a fake pragmatic attempt to see all sides.

Here goes all the same.

No, I don’t think Macron has sought to impose an unnecessary law to strengthen his appeal on the hard and far right. He has no appeal on the hard and far right.

No, I don’t think Darmanin (despite his previous offences) was trying to convey an anti-Islam message last Thursday - either directly or subliminally.

Yes, I do think that radicals on all sides - from Islamists; to the Lepennist Right; to the “Macron-is-as-bad-as-Le Pen” section of the Left - are succeeding in making rational debate on Islam in France impossible.

In those circumstances, Darmanin was right to debate Le Pen last week. He was wrong to have tried to be clever-clever and teasingly ironic in a shallow, partisan and literal age.