Brookings Institution Press, $22.95
Concerns over Islamist extremism in the west have for some time been skewing the debate about the integration of Muslims in Europe. The worst canard is the dystopian vision of "Eurabia": the idea, based on sketchy demographic projections, that the old continent will soon be overtaken by Arabs.
The middle east scholar Bernard Lewis has forecast that Muslims will outnumber non-Muslims in Europe by the end of the century, and that in the meantime western governments will have to contend with the "Wahhabi menace," which is "particularly strong among Muslim communities in Europe and America." Niall Ferguson, too, has lamented "the extraordinary prospect of European demographic decline" while trumpeting the perils of Muslim immigration. "A youthful Muslim society to the south and east of the Mediterranean is poised to colonise—the term is not too strong—a senescent Europe."
But a probing new book on the integration of Muslims in France by Jonathan Laurence, an American political scientist, and Justin Vaisse, a French historian, claims that there is "scant support" for assumptions such as these. The authors show that France has comparatively high fertility rates, which means it counts little on immigration for population replacement, and that just as fertility is rising among non-Muslims, it is dropping among Muslims.
Laurence and Vaisse, both affiliated with the Brookings Institution and writing mostly for US policymakers, are trying to dispel the common perception that French Muslims form a "homogeneous and mobilised community" set on "creat[ing] a society separate from the mainstream." In fact, they point out, France's 5m Muslims are divided along ethnic, socioeconomic, ideological and even religious lines. Three quarters of them originally came from the Maghreb; half are Arab. About half are French citizens, and half of those are of voting age. Citing a 2005 study by researchers at a Sciences-Po think tank, Laurence and Vaisse say that Muslims in France feel closer to other French nationals than to members of their religious and ethnic groups. Study after study also shows that, by and large, France's Muslims endorse republican values, trust the government and wish to integrate further.
How then should one understand signs of marginalisation and defiance, such as the riots of late 2005? The key, in the authors' view, is distinguishing two groups of French Muslims along geographic and socioeconomic lines: "the millions of people" undergoing integration, whose views are reflected in polls and studies, and the marginalised young in poor suburbs, who have little hope of advancement and are rarely heard. The latter in particular suffer from job and housing discrimination and perceive France's courts, media, and political class as Islamophobic. Unemployment, which affects them disproportionately, remains "the biggest obstacle" to full integration, according to Laurence and Vaisse. These difficulties sometimes breed a feeling of exclusion and from that, in turn, sometimes comes a yearning for the supranational community of Islam—hence the "increased religious consciousness" of young Muslim men today compared to their elders.
The book can get bogged down in minutiae and breeze over major facts. It devotes too much space (two chapters and then some) to the French government's efforts to institutionalise Islam and organise believers. And it spends too little (just several scattered pages) on economics and political mobilisation, even though these matters, particularly the doings of the Muslim middle class, are critical gauges of assimilation. But Laurence and Vaisse tackle well three issues that often alarm foreign observers: the influence of Muslims on French foreign policy, their suspected responsibility for the rise of antisemitism, and the connection between Islam and Islamist terrorism.
The accusation that the French government panders to its Muslim electorate by maintaining close ties to certain Arab states is feeble, Laurence and Vaisse rightly argue, because that rapprochement—and the drift between France and Israel—started in 1967, just after the six day war and well before the headcount of Muslims living in France became significant. Moreover, foreign policy is not a high priority for French Muslims. Even if it were, there would be no Muslim voting bloc to influence it effectively; France's Muslim population is simply too diverse. "France's position on foreign affairs," the authors conclude, "would not look much different even if there were no Muslim minority in France."
They are not the only ones to say so. A poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project last summer confirms that on the biggest questions, French Muslims agree with the French population at large. More than 70 per cent of both groups said that they worried about Islamism and that they believed there is no "conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society." The two populations also expressed mutual respect. Some 65 per cent of all French people thought favourably of Muslims—the highest such percentage of any of the western countries polled. Reciprocally, more Muslims had favourable views of Christians and Jews (91 per cent and 71 per cent, respectively) in France than anywhere else. On almost all the indicators, in fact, France did better than even the US.
These findings are especially encouraging given that France is home to Europe's largest populations of Muslims and Jews; they suggest that coexistence eases relations. Indeed, according to the Pew poll, Muslims in the west tend to hold positions that fall somewhere between those of non-Muslims there and those of Muslims in the middle east. The prospect that the two civilisations might clash seems to recede when they actually come into contact.
A half century of immigration from the Muslim world has undoubtedly brought profound changes to Europe. Some of the adjustments have been painful because they have challenged features emblematic of core identities: the Danish cartoons row or the French ban on headscarves in school, for example. But few ordinary people got involved in either controversy, and the incidents subsided in short order. As Laurence and Vaisse point out, for example, only about 1,200 schoolgirls wore a headscarf before the ban was passed, in early 2004; on the first day the law was enforced, 639 girls showed up in a headscarf at school. A year later, the figure had dropped to 12.
None of this is to deny that the rise of Islamist extremism remains a serious concern. The problem of the re-Islamisation of disaffected young French Muslims seems particularly daunting, especially when there is no quick fix for the broader economic problems that afflict them and the rest of France. Of course, as Laurence and Vaisse point out, the revival of faith need not lead to radicalism. But it can. And when it has, a report by the International Crisis Group suggested last spring, it has been because hardline Salafi groups have filled the vacuum left after Muslim civic groups created in the 1980s and 1990s failed to mobilise their constituents. This is a bleak observation, but it carries an implicit recommendation: get young Muslims involved in mainstream politics. Representatives of the Parti Socialiste and the Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire, the two largest parties, have vowed to promote diversity among their ranks and distributive justice in society, but so far have fallen short.
Still, as Laurence and Vaisse argue, "the parameters of French policies toward the country's minorities have changed drastically in the past decades, from a classically republican and 'colour-blind' approach to something more nuanced." And they probably can still. Laurence and Vaisse hope for "the birth of a tolerant, moderate, and 'modern' Islam in France and Europe." It cannot be a coincidence that the sociologists and the political scientists who have studied these problems the longest and the most closely—such as Vincent Geisser, Jytte Klausen, Olivier Roy and Catherine Withol de Wenden—worry about discrete problems but overall are cautiously optimistic.
