But let us get back to the clothing in question. The abaya is a lose fitting garment which is worn over any dress, the intention being to cover the contours of the body completely. When men put on such a long dress, it is normally called a thobe; the word abaya being restricted to women’s clothing only. It must be stated that while very few Muslim men in France wear the thobe, there is an increasing trend amongst Muslim women wearing the abaya. The French authorities intend to ban it starting 4^th September when schools reopen. This is not the first time the French have moved against apparel which they view as religious.

In 2004, France passed a law which banned any display of religious symbolism within its schools. The ban was not just restricted to the Muslim veil but also to the Jewish kippa and the Christian cross. However, the narrative spun around it was that it was specifically designed to stop the expression of Muslim religious symbols. The narrative got credence because it is actually true that amongst those insisting on wearing such religious symbols, the majority were Muslims.

The 2004 law, though, did not name the abaya. When the concern was raised by school principals, the government gave them discretion to do as they deemed fit. However, in the absence of a clear law, many schools were reluctant to take a firm stand on the issue. This concern now seems to be fulfilled by the new law banning the abaya. Schools were becoming wary about the display of abayas since many years. In a report published in 2022, school principals had argued that abayas were the new means through which religious symbolism was entering the schools. They had also argued that this was being done by a determined minority to create space for their religion in the public sphere, something that should be an anathema to French secularism.

While the French right has welcomed this move by the government, the left is divided on the issue. This is a win-win for the present centrist government as it has signaled a shift to the right but has also made sure that the left is in a disarray. Muslim organizations have predictably opposed the move citing it as another instance of putting curbs on religious expression. Some Muslims and those on the left have argued that the abaya is not a religious but rather a cultural garment, with Muslims from specific regions donning it. However, this does not sound convincing as the vast majority of those who are insisting on wearing the abaya happen to be Muslims.

What the narrative also does not tell us is that the law will only be restricted to state schools. In other words, students are free to wear what they like in private schools. Also, it must be underlined that except in state institutions, Muslims (and other religious groups) are free to wear what they like, including the veil and abaya. The government has reiterated that these restrictions will apply only in state schools.

Why are Muslims insistent on wearing the abaya and other forms of religious signifiers? Why is it that other religious communities are not so particular about this observance? The simple answer to this is that there is marked absence of secularization in Muslim societies and cultures. And one is not talking about countries in which Muslims are in a majority. Even in countries of Europe where Muslims are in a minority and within a secular state, they tend to put a premium on sacralizing the public sphere. The more complex answer might come from answering the question who benefits from such an assertion of religiosity. The veil and the now the abaya seem to be the symbols of political Islam. Scholars who have worked on the issue point out how they became potent symbols of Islamism, first in the context of countries like Egypt and later due to migration in Europe. Behind this simple garment is a very organized attempt, not just to assert political Islam, but also to gradually dismantle the principles on which the secular state is premised.

The Muslim response is also hypocritical. Every nation has its foundational myth; it can be secular or religious but these myths provide nations with a feeling of belonging. Islamists respect the foundational myths of their countries but have no regard for them when they talk of non-Muslim countries. Just take the example of the recent attempt at perestroika which is being undertaken by the Saudi government. The country now is experimenting with music, dance, cinema and other cultural markers associated with the west. The Islamist is up in arms because he thinks that such cultural imports destroy the foundational myths, the principles on which the kingdom was founded. But when it comes to France or any other European country, this observation is suspended as if these countries had no principles to start with. If the principle of the secularism is one of the foundational myths of France, what gives Muslims the right to tinker with it? For the Islamist, Europe is a barren land with naked women and no principles. It is waiting to be conquered by Muslims, as promised by God.

Consider again, the football world cup hosted by Qatar. Some fans raised the issue of non-availability of beer and wanted Qatar to make special provision for it. But Muslims sided with the government of Qatar arguing that the country was well within its rights to formulate and implement its own rule. But the same Muslims are now having a problem when France is wanting its Muslim citizens to abide by the rules it is making.

The Muslim teenagers who are wearing the abaya in France as a mark of resistance to the state are not to be blamed. After all, teens anywhere in the world are non-conformists. But behind this teenage irrational rage, there is also the scepter of Islamism with very different ideas of how society should be organized. In the past and in the present, Muslims themselves have been the biggest victims of societal re-organization by the Islamists. More then anyone else, they should be vigilant against the march of Islamism.

Arshad Alam is an independent researcher.   

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After monitoring France’s enforcement of its free-speech policies over the last few months, the UK-based organisation Amnesty International and its members issued a statement to voice their concern over the country’s counter-terror policies.

On November 3, 2020, the organisation posted a public statement that questioned French Minister of Interior Gérald Darmanin’s announcements, made shortly after the murder of Samuel Paty for showing cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, that seemed to violate principles of non-discrimination, non-refoulement, and the right to freedom of association.

“The right to freedom of expression also protects the ability to criticize the choice of depicting or conceiving religions in ways that may be perceived as stereotypical or offensive. Disagreeing with those choices, for example considering them stereotypical or prejudiced, is also covered by freedom of expression,” said the organisation.

Accordingly, they said that while upholding the right to criticize religions, the government should also ensure that neither Muslims nor refugees face any kind of abuse. The administration should uphold the right to manifest their religion or belief without fear of discrimination and violence.

However, despite this obligation, French authorities have passed laws and policies that discriminate against Muslims in the exercise of their rights to freedom of religion or belief and to freedom of expression. Most notably, former President Jacques Chirac passed a law that banned students from wearing any religious symbols in schools.

Similarly, the organisation observed that many political leaders made explicitly discriminatory remarks against Muslims on national media including the Interior Minister’s own statement regarding the existence of halal shelves in supermarkets as “community separatism” and terrorism.  

“Public officials must refrain from making any stereotypical, stigmatizing and discriminatory comments targeting Muslims and refugees. Those statements feed into a continuing and growing discriminatory environment for Muslims in France,” said Amnesty International.

Another announcement by Darmanin that upset the organisation was the intention to tighten French asylum laws to avoid granting default refugee status to citizens of specific countries.

The Minister had already expelled 16 foreign nationals suspected of “radicalisation” in October. He had previously talked of a plan to expel 231 foreign nationals. The organisation in their statement, said that such expulsions violate the principle of non-refoulement, crucial to international law.

“Amnesty International calls on the French authorities to comply with their international obligations and refrain from expelling any person to a place where they would be at real risk of torture and other ill-treatment,” they said.

According to Amnesty International’s researcher Marco Perolini, the actions of the French government following the murder of Samuel Paty recall the state of emergency after the 2015 Paris attacks.

“At the time, parliament-approved exceptional measures led to thousands of abusive and discriminatory raids and house arrest targeting Muslims. ‘Radicalization’ was used as a euphemism for ‘devout Muslim,’” he said.

Parolini said in an article written on November 11 that the French government is once again in the process of dissolving organizations and closing mosques, on the basis of ‘radicalization’.

Illustrating his point, he said, “Last week, for example, French police interviewed four 10-year-old children for hours on suspicion of ‘apology of terrorism’ [because] they apparently questioned Paty’s choice to show the cartoons.”

In their statement, Amnesty International pointed out that the term ‘apology of terrorism’ should be repealed due to the lack of legal clarity. Following Paty’s death, the Minister of Interior stated that 66 investigations had been opened for apology of terrorism.

Perolini claimed, “France’s record on freedom of expression in other areas is just as bleak. Thousands of people are convicted every year for “contempt of public officials”, a vaguely defined criminal offence that law enforcement and judicial authorities have applied in massive numbers to silence peaceful dissent. In June this year, the European Court of Human Rights found that the convictions of 11 activists in France for campaigning for a boycott of Israeli products violated their free speech.”

Similarly, he cited a court verdict that convicted two men in 2019 for ‘contempt’ after they burnt an effigy of President Macron during a peaceful protest. Officials considered a new law that would criminalize the use of law enforcement officials’ images on social media following the incident.

Lasltly, he also talked about Darmanin’s intention to dissolve the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) organization that combats discrimination against Muslims for being an “enemy of the Republic” and a “back room of terrorism” although he has no evidence to substantiate his claims.

“Amnesty international maintains that the dissolution of associations – including those governing places of worship -must only be carried out in compliance with international human rights law … Otherwise, it constitutes a violation of the rights to freedom of association, and in cases of places of worship, to freedom of religion or belief,” said the statement.

The complete statement by Amnesty International may be read here:

Related:

The Secular onslaught on the Muslim public psyche
Charlie Hebdo Cartoons and Blasphemy Laws in Contemporary Times
Statements by Muslim religio-political leaders condemned
Debate: To blame or not to blame Islam for the Paris beheading?

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Charlotte Houang, FRANCE 24 | Kahina Bahloul hopes to become France’s first female imam by founding the Fatima Mosque, an “inclusive” house of worship.

The proposal, which is in the initial stages of securing financing and a possible site for the mosque, was co-sponsored by Faker Korchane, a freelance journalist and philosophy professor.

Bahloul, 39, has a doctorate in Islamic studies from France’s prestigious École Pratique des Hautes Études. She said she was driven to become an imam because she feels out of step with how Islam is taught in traditional and hardline Salafist mosques.

Read full report here: https://www.france24.com/en/20190205-france-female-imam-islam-mosque-bahloul-fatima-muslim-paris

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With heroism, comes citizenship. Thibault Camus/EPA

That Gassama deserves full recognition for this outstanding act of bravery is surely beyond question. His actions have been lauded around the world. But perhaps the greatest honour came from a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron, who presented Gassama with a medal in recognition of his “bravery and devotion”, a job with the Parisian fire brigade, and also with a promise: French citizenship.

Gassama received residency documents enabling him to remain in France legally, and was told he would be fast tracked to full citizenship.

For an undocumented migrant who risked his life crossing land and sea to reach France, only to find himself living in the shadows as a consequence of being “sans papiers”, or undocumented, citizenship is a highly prized status. It is the prism through which obligations between a state and a person are understood. Without citizenship, a state will likely refuse to recognise any obligation towards a person unless they can prove a special reason for why they should be treated as the exception – for example, because they are fleeing conflict or persecution.
 

A move towards ‘earned’ citizenship

As such, it’s little surprise that Macron viewed citizenship as the ultimate reward for Gassama’s bravery. But the hypocrisy of this in a country with highly restrictive immigration laws hasn’t gone unnoticed. There are also precedents set for this within French law. Article 21-19 of the French civil code states that a person can be granted citizenship as a consequence of performing “exceptional services” for the nation, and has traditionally been applied in the case of Foreign Legion soldiers from other countries who fight for France.

Yet the case is also part of a wider international trend in which citizenship is conceptualised as a reward to be earned through good behaviour. In the context of heavily restrictive immigration laws in Western countries, rewarding migrants with citizenship has become a means through which the state defines the deserving future citizen from the undeserving non-citizen.

This trend can be seen in French citizenship law, whereby prospective citizens, barring some exclusions, are subject to a contract which requires them to prove, over a two-year period, that they deserve to stay. While this reflects the historical importance of the idea of citizenship as a contract between citizens and the state in France, it’s also novel in emphasising the duties of the citizen not only in citizenship itself but also in the process of becoming a citizen.

This trend can also be seen in the UK, where prospective citizens must pass the “Life in the UK” test. They must prove a certain level of English language skills and demonstrate qualities of good citizenship such as obeying the law and paying taxes through employment before they are granted naturalisation. And it also underpinned Barack Obama’s DREAMers scheme, under which undocumented children would be rewarded with citizenship if they attended university or served in the army for at least two years. These are but a handful of examples of a trend which is shaping access to the basic rights of citizenship in countries of high immigration around the world.

Rights at stake

But this trend is concerning. Citizenship once represented a set of rights to be demanded from the state as a form of emancipation, for example in the civil rights and suffrage movements. But increasingly this notion of citizenship is being replaced by citizenship as a reward for loyalty and obedience. It has, in countries such as the UK and the US, become a conditional reward that can be removed, with citizens at risk of being stripped of their rights and rendered stateless should they disobey the state. This means that citizenship status is increasingly hard to access and precarious, and a person’s basic civil, social and political rights are undermined as a result.

Gassama’s actions were near superhuman and they rightly earned him international recognition. He was also, rightly, granted basic citizenship rights in the country in which he resides. But citizenship rights shouldn’t be about being superhuman. Rather, we have to find another way of allocating basic rights to people simply by virtue of their humanity alone.
 

Katherine Tonkiss, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Policy, Aston University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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The flipside of the populism coin is voter ambivalence about “democracy” as we know it.

Though much of the reporting of last year’s US presidential race focused on the “angry” American voter, it has been observed that perhaps the most striking feature of the campaign that led to the election of Donald Trump was not so much that people were angry, as “ambivalent”.

In another surprising 2016 election, in the Philippines, observers also reflected that a shared “ambivalence” about democratic government must in large part have led many middle-class voters to support the firebrand Rodrigo Duterte.

And in France, people explained the record low turnout in June’s parliamentary elections by pointing to the “ambivalent base”. Despite Emmanuel Macron’s election, the new president had “yet to convince many French voters that his ideas and legislative program will make their lives better”.

This French voter isn’t easily won over. radiowood/flickr

These examples suggest political ambivalence is everywhere on the rise, and that these are anxious times politically.

If the appeal of leaders like Trump and Duterte is anything to go on, despite or perhaps because of their peddling of a violent and exclusionary rhetoric, widespread ambivalence among citizens of democracies has potentially dangerous consequences.
 

A wilful, rational response

We often equate ambivalence with indecision or indifference. But it’s a more complex and more spirited idea than that. Ambivalence reflects our capacity to say both “yes” and “no” about a person or an object at the same time.

Eugen Bleuler, the Swiss psychiatrist who coined the term in 1910, wrote:
 

In the dreams of healthy persons, affective as well as intellectual ambivalence is a common phenomenon.

Freud soon picked up the term to describe our capacity to love and hate a person all at once.

We needn’t be Freudians to see that ambivalence reflects our common “inner experience”. While we cannot physically be in two places at once, in our minds it is not only possible but likely that dualities and conflicting ideas or beliefs co-exist at the same time. Think of Hamlet’s soliloquy:
 

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them…

The point is that, rather than reflecting some psychological deficiency or cognitive dissonance, ambivalence is an active and wilful position to take.

Ambivalence is even rational, in that it requires an awareness of mutually exclusive choices and a refusal to choose; just as wanting a bit of both is also rational.
 

Is this a dangerous development?

When it comes to politics, we often hold conflicting, even mutually exclusive visions, of the sort of society we want.

In the Philippines, the middle-class voters I interviewed in 2015 wanted the civil liberties that democracy provides. At the same time, they were concerned that too much freedom was causing social and political chaos.

The two ideas, though contradictory, co-existed in people’s minds. This type of ambivalence at least partly explains why urban middle-class voters came out in numbers to elect someone like Duterte.

As ambivalence is often linked to the victories of populists, there is a general sense that our ambivalence is destabilising, dangerous and needs to be purged. Ambivalent citizens, the reasoning goes, place a heavy burden on their country’s democracy, as by questioning the status quo of the modern democratic state they undermine its very legitimacy.

The failure to reach clarity implies a failed agency on the part of the ambivalent citizen; it is they who carry the burden of resolving their own feelings and returning to a place of undivided certainty.

Commentary after the US election spoke of not letting the ambivalent Trump-voting middle class (who should have known better) “off the hook”.

Yet, as Zygmunt Bauman noted, the more we try to eradicate ambivalence by calling it ignorance and “mere opinion”, the more the opposite is likely to occur.

Furthermore, people who have been reduced to decision-takers will be more likely to see radical, revolutionary, even destructive change as the only way to resolve their ambivalence.

Those in positions of power often view ambivalence on the streets as socially toxic or threatening. jprwpics/flickr
 

Ambivalence can be a check on power

Democracy and ambivalence, rather than being antithetical, may be strange bedfellows. At the heart of the democratic idea is a notion of “the people” as both the source and guardians of power.

Consider the way Ernesto Laclau sees the political as always in conflict, inherent in conflicting identities struggling for dominance.

While the collective identity of “the people” claims to accommodate difference, this is impossible without the constitutive exclusion of “the other”.

If this is the case, democracy should stimulate our scepticism. Who is being excluded in the name of “the people”? And who has gained the power to constitute their particular identity as a unified whole?

Ideally, representative democracy seeks not only to recognise but to institutionalise this scepticism, and to manage our disappointment with democracy. It is our ability to withdraw our support and give it elsewhere that means our contested visions of society don’t lead to its destruction.

The trouble is that the 21st-century democratic state has little tolerance of our scepticism about power. Citizens are pressured to turn their trust over to a bureau-technocratic order led by “experts” in order to deal with complex, contemporary problems. The role of voters is transformed into that of passive bystanders, prone to chaos and irrationality, and not to be trusted.

Matters are made worse by extreme concentration of wealth and income inequality. Thomas Piketty correctly warned that extreme inequality would threaten the democratic order.

Despite observing (and experiencing) the undermining of basic social protections and equity principles, people are expected to stay in their place. It is as if ordinary citizens are not trusted to make their own judgements, unless those judgements endorse the path of little or no change.

Their ambivalence, which may be a purposive response to their evaluation of how democracy is actually working, is deemed toxic and socially useless.

No doubt such widespread ambivalence, as well as this denial of the valid expression of unmet aspirations, has provided fertile ground for populist politicians.

The likes of Trump and Duterte appeal to people’s desire not to be fixed into pre-determined standards of how to think and behave. And in claiming to fill a gap as “true” representatives of “the people”, they enable what often turns out to be a radical expression of voter ambivalence.

Rodrigo Duterte poses with the Philippines military and boxer and senator Manny Pacquiao in 2017. Rene Lumawag/Republic of the Philippines Presidential Communications Office
 

A chance to rethink the status quo

Political ambivalence is more than a flawed tension of opposites. Neither is it a temporary deviance. It is deeply rooted, and likely here to stay.

The more we dismiss and disparage it, rebuking voters who “should know better”, the more we risk its manifestation in destructive ways.

A more constructive first step for managing ambivalence as a society would be to recognise it – even embrace it – as a chance to reflect critically on the status quo.

Kenneth Weisbrode likened ambivalence to a yellow traffic light, the one that exasperates us at the time, but in fact helps us avoid fatal collisions:
 

… a yellow light that tells us to pause before going forward pell-mell with green, or paralysing ourselves with red.

If we heed his advice, the presence of widespread ambivalence should prompt us to pause and look around.

This is more radical than it may sound. Slowing down, and contemplating how our democracy is working for us as a community, potentially limits the power of those who benefit from the status quo.

It could even be seen as one of democracy’s internal safety mechanisms, since being sceptical about the exercise of power and keeping in check those who benefit from it, is what keeps democracy alive.

Bauman wrote:
 

The world is ambivalent, though its colonisers and rulers do not like it to be such and by hook and by crook try to pass it off for one that is not.

Ambivalence may be the most rational response to the fact that, in 2017, the notion of democracy as a politics of self-government and collectively made choices has, in many respects, become a lullaby, mere rhetoric that serves the interests of those who benefit from the persistence of a shared yet elusive ideal.

If not the populist figures, who or what else in our democracies today is claiming to represent “the people”? A living democracy hinges upon this type of circumspection. It could even usher in a new era of democracy.

Adele Webb, PhD Researcher, Department of Government and International Relations / Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney
 

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Drawing by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath. David later became a deputy in the National Convention in 1792

On June 20, 1789, the members of the French Estates-General for the Third Estate, who had begun to call themselves the National Assembly, took the Tennis Court Oath (French: Serment du Jeu de Paume), vowing "not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established." It was a pivotal event in the early days of the French Revolution.

It was just three days before, on June 17, that the ‘Third Estate’ began to call themselves the ‘National Assembly.’ [[The Estates-General had been called to address the country's fiscal and agricultural crisis, but as soon as they convened in May 1789, they had become bogged down in issues of representation—particularly, whether they would vote by head (which would increase the power of the Third Estate) or by order.]]

On the morning of 20 June, the deputies were, however, shocked to discover that the chamber door was locked and guarded by soldiers. Immediately fearing the worst and anxious that a royal attack by King Louis XVI was imminent, the deputies congregated in a nearby indoor jeu de palme court in the Saint-Louis district of the city of Versailles, near the Palace of Versailles.

There, 576 of the 577 members from the Third Estate took a collective oath "not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established".The only person who did not join was Joseph Martin-Dauch from Castelnaudary, who would only execute decisions made by the king.

Tennis Court Oath
Photo Caption:Drawing by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath. David later became a deputy in the National Convent in 1792

Import
This oath would come to have major significance in the revolution as the Third Estate would constantly continue to protest to ensure greater representation. Some historians have argued that, given political tensions in France at that time, the deputies' fears, even if wrong, were reasonable and that the importance of the oath goes above and beyond its context.

The oath was both a revolutionary act, and an assertion that political authority derived from the people and their representatives rather than from the monarch himself. Their solidarity forced Louis XVI to order the clergy and the nobility to join with the Third Estate in the National Assembly in order to give the illusion that he controlled theNational Assembly. This oath would prove vital to the Third Estate as a step of protest that would eventually lead to more power in the Estates General, and every governing body thereafter.

The Oath signified for the first time that French citizens formally stood in opposition to Louis XVI, and the National Assembly's refusal to back down forced the king to make concessions. It was foreshadowed by, and drew considerably from, the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, especially the preamble. The Oath also inspired a wide variety of revolutionary activity in the months afterwards, ranging from rioting across the French countryside to renewed calls for a written French constitution. Likewise, it reinforced the Assembly's strength and forced the King to formally request that voting occur based on head, not power.^{[citation needed]} The Tennis Court Oath, which was taken in June 1789, preceded the 4 August 1789 abolition of feudalism and the 26 August 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
 
Related Articles:

1. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/third-estate-makes-tennis-court-oath
2. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-06-20/news/0306200083_1_new-constitution-supreme-court-mob-associates

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Emmanuel Macron, who will soon become eighth president of the Fifth French Republic. Christian Hartmann/Reuters

Macron’s decisive victory in this pivotal election for France and the European Union showed that the so-called French “Republican front” still holds. Millions of voters from the centre-left and centre-right, who supported other candidates in the first round of presidential voting two weeks ago, rallied around Macron in the run-off, preventing the extreme right from gaining power in France for the first time since the 1940s.

The election caps Macron’s meteoric and improbable rise in French politics. He was still relatively unknown when President François Hollande selected him to serve as economy minister three years ago. And when he announced his bid for the presidency last year, few experts gave him much of a chance.

Though Macron has an impressive pedigree, he has never held elective office. And he ran as a self-proclaimed outsider, unaffiliated with any of France’s mainstream parties.

Now, at just 39 years old, Macron will become the youngest French head of state since Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873), president of France’s Second Republic from 1848 to 1851.
 

Vote results

Macron captured 65% of the vote, performing most strongly in France’s big cities — Paris, Lyon, Marseilles, Toulouse and Nantes.
 

Macron was considered the favourite coming into the run-off, but some experts warned that low voter turnout could lead to a much closer race than many were predicting. After last Wednesday’s television debate between the two finalists, in which Le Pen was widely judged to have performed poorly, the French polling firm Ipsos reported that Macron’s lead over her had widened to 26 points, 63% to 37%.

Macron’s resounding victory also showed that last Friday’s leak of campaign documents and emails had little effect on the election’s outcome. Just before the ban on campaigning went into effect on Friday at midnight, the Macron campaign announced that it was the victim of a “massive, coordinated” hacking attack.

According to a statement released by the campaign, the hack was “an attempt to destabilise the French presidential election” by sowing doubt and misinformation.

There is no firm evidence yet, but French officials suspect that the hackers have ties to Russian intelligence, and are the same group that was behind last year’s attack on the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems in the United States.
 

Ability to govern

Macron must now unite the country after one of the most divisive and polarising elections in recent French history. In his speech to supporters, he said that he understood the anxiety and the doubts that many Le Pen supporters expressed.

He must now also deliver on his reform agenda. But whether he will be able to do so depends on the outcome of the elections to the National Assembly, France’s lower and more powerful legislative chamber, which will take place in June.

Macron’s outsider status could be a liability there. Parliamentary elections in France have traditionally been dominated by centre-left and centre-right parties.

Because Macron launched his En Marche! movement just a year ago, the party currently holds no legislative seats. It is running candidates across the country, but many of them are young and inexperienced, and it remains unlikely that the party will capture the 289 seats needed for a parliamentary majority.

In France, the prime minister as head of government must reflect a parliamentary majority, meaning that she or he may come from a different party than the president. The French call this “cohabitation” and it has happened only three times since 1958.
Such a scenario would make it harder for Macron to propose and implement his reforms. President Hollande had a majority in parliament, but even so was unable to push through his agenda, and his approval rating sunk to record lows.

For now, polls are placing Macron’s movement as the frontrunner in June’s legislative elections. En Marche! is forecast to capture between 249 and 286 seats, centrist and conservative parties are projected to win between 200 and 212 seats, the Socialists 28 to 43 and Le Pen’s National Front 15 to 25.
 

Broader significance

Macron’s win is a clear victory for the European Union. Le Pen had vowed to leave the eurozone, exit Europe’s Schengen border-free travel area, and hold a referendum on France’s EU membership. Macron is a firm believer in the European project of economic and political integration, and has said repeatedly that France is stronger in a united Europe.

But while Europe may have dodged a bullet with Macron’s victory, anti-establishment populism still poses a serious threat to the EU; this was the National Front’s best showing yet in a presidential contest.

When Marine Le Pen’s father was trounced in the run-off against Jacques Chirac 15 years ago, he managed only 18% of the vote. Le Pen fille nearly doubled that total on May 7.
 

If Macron is unable to deliver on his political agenda — in particular, giving a boost to France’s anaemic economic growth and bringing down unemployment – voters may turn to candidates of the extreme right or the extreme left in the next presidential election. After all, in the first round of this year’s election, such candidates captured nearly 50% of the vote.

The election has exposed a deeply divided and polarised France. Macron’s win showed a country that is internationalist, outward looking, pro-EU and free market-oriented; Le Pen’s rise revealed one that is nationalist, protectionist, anti-EU and suspicious of outsiders.

These same fault lines can be seen across Western democracies today. Last year, they propelled Donald Trump to victory in the US presidential election, and compelled British voters to choose to leave the EU.

Macron’s mandate is uncertain. Many people voted for him in the second round not out of conviction but to ensure Le Pen’s defeat. Despite her attempts to “un-demonise” the National Front, many French people still see it as xenophobic and a threat to democracy.

Macron pulled off an incredible personal and political triumph on Sunday May 7. But now the real work begins – and everyone who believes in a strong and united Europe should hope for his success.
 

Richard Maher, Research Fellow, Global Governance Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Polls predict that Marine Le Pen, candidate of the far-right National Front party could take 38% of the vote. Even if she loses on Sunday, some commentators believe that this campaign has paved the way for a victory in France’s 2022 election.

Viewed from Pakistan, this situation is a direct blow to a country which, in our minds, has been the bastion of democracy, rationalism and enlightenment.

France’s embrace of Le Pen is all the more concerning because, in Pakistan, we know exactly what autocratic populism looks like, and what it can lead to.

Pakistan’s first populist ruler
Founded in 1947 during the Partition with India, Pakistan started its journey into nationhood in the turbulent 1950s, after an independence bill liberated the Indian subcontinent from the British empire.

Ordinary Pakistanis were struggling to eke out an existence. But the new nation’s leaders were experimenting with an ideology, inspired by “two nation theory” of Pakistan’s main thinker, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, that advocated for separated nations for India and Pakistan based on religion. To some extent this communal approach prevented the more critical progressive left from developing in Pakistan.

The 1960s gave rise not only to industry but also to numerous economic crises that challenged the fragile young nation. By the end of the decade, frustration was on the rise among the Pakistani people. Widespread protests ultimately brought down president Ayub Khan in 1968, ending Pakistan’s first military dictatorship.

This change opened the doors for Pakistan’s first populist leader, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, whose Pakistan People Party (PPP) emerged at the end of the 1960s atop a rising tide of public approval and support. People loved its slogan, “roti, kapra, aur makan” – “bread, clothing, and a home” – and in 1970 Butto was democratically elected as Pakistan’s fourth president.

That’s how Pakistan entered the age of populist politics: at the ballot box. The PPP expounded the same goals that we hear contemporary populist parties claim, namely that of freeing the state from tyrannical and incompetent rulers.

Zulfikar Bhutto speaks as President of Pakistan on the war with Bangladesh, NFO archive.

In the troubled context of the war with India and the subsequent creation of independent Bangladesh in 1971, Bhutto maintained his grasp on power. In 1973 he was elected Pakistan’s ninth prime minister, claiming that he wanted to bring democratic changes to the country.

His populism took an anti-imperialist guise, which garnered wide domestic support given both Pakistan’s own history and the state of world affairs at the time, which included US atrocities in the Vietnam War.

But when his power was challenged, particularly on labour and trade questions, Bhutto abandoned democracy. In 1977 he imposed martial law and curfews throughout the country.
The civil unrest that followed galvanised General Zia ul Haq. He deposed Bhutto in a military coup that same year and had him hanged in 1979.

A repetitive pattern of populist leaders
This pattern that has been repeated in Pakistan since then. Our shaky democracy never found stability after Zia, who was killed in a plane crash in 1988.

Four successive democratic governments were unconstitutionally ousted by military leaders, truncating their five-year terms and creating a chaotic alternation between civilian and army rule.
Democracy would not return until 2008, when the Pakistan People’s Party won a presidential election on a wave of sympathy for the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto (daughter of Zulfiqar). For the first time in nearly 20 years, a government was able to complete its five-year term.

Imran Khan, populist opposition leader and former star cricket player, leads an anti-government protest in Islamabad, April 28 2017. Faisal Mahmood/Reuters

Today, Pakistan once again stands at the crossroads of civilian and military rule. The unpopular sitting government lost credibility with the Panama Papers scandal – in which the huge financial assets of incumbent Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s children were exposed – and opponents like the former cricket player Imran Khan are now suggesting that the military should take over.
The media’s role in populism

France is still very far from dictatorship, of course. But Pakistan’s history shows that opening the door to populist leaders is a big step towards a dangerous and unknown future.
If you flirt with extremism, you have to be willing to accept its dire consequences.

Today, populism in Pakistan has a broad and idealistic agenda, ranging from sustenance for the poor to changing the world order. Its euphoric 1960s ideals failed because they assumed the possibility of change as a “push-button operation”.

Still, populism has now become a cultural norm here. It grows from the inner contradictions of a democratic power structure that’s corrupted, incapable of solving social and economic issues and prone to passing liberticidal laws. And it thrives on right-wing patriotic, xenophobic and anti-politics rhetoric. France, take note.

Populist rhetoric also suits the sensation-hungry, ratings-seeking corporate media. In Pakistan the media has openly espoused populism by regularly portraying politics as a dirty game of power-hungry politicians. This narrative gives rise to cynical and anti-politics attitudes within the general public.

To make matters worse, the press covers some of the world’s demagogues, in the US as at home, in a very light manner. Such populist extremists are, of course, happy to win more positive media spin.

A dangerous frustration
Some 8,000 kms from Islamabad, frustrated men and women in France are sick of politics, too. Watching their presidential debates and TV talk shows, they want to see someone who will secure the nation to bring back their lost pride.

Le Pen’s nationalist proclamations that France should “not [be] dragged into wars that are not hers” and other Trump-style “make France great again” slogans have become popular simplifications.

When the decision is upon them, will French voters enter the populist realm of “the fantasmatic”?

Populism can be far more dangerous than it seems, taking all forms of constraints, from negating the diversity of society to censoring individual liberties and free speech.

Abstract from Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator Speech’

Are the French ready for that?

It would be devastating to see France – a nation built on the ideals of transparency, equality, freedom, responsibility and compassion – taken down in a tragedy of its own making. Life is not a reality show, and demagogues do not make good rulers.

Take it from a people who know: there is no glorious past waiting to be restored. There is no golden future, either.

As the prophet Zarathustra pithily put it, “Not perhaps ye yourselves, my brethren! But into fathers and forefathers of the Superman could ye transform yourselves: and let that be your best creating!”
 

Altaf Khan, Professor, University of Peshawar

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Campaign posters of the 11 candidates in the French election. Left, right and centre can seem pretty blurred in 2017 France. Eric Gaillard/Reuters

From abroad, the situation seems puzzling to many commentators. According to the newspaper China Daily, for instance, the election is particularly “messy” (because it’s confusing).

While five candidates appear to have emerged as favourites from the 11 who qualified to stand for election, their platforms, the values they promote and their political affiliations (except for a few) are not very obvious.

Indeed, France is witnessing a “political blur”, in which the clash between left- and right-wing ideologies seems long gone. Just ahead of the first round of the polls, 42% of French people have declared that they still haven’t made up their minds.

The second round of voting will take place on May 7.
 

Labels that date to the King

Left and right are old labels, dating back to the French Revolution. In 1789, the National Constitutive Assembly met to decide whether, under France’s new political regime, the king should have veto power. If so, it queried, should this right should be absolute or simply suspensive, for a period of time.

When voting, supporters of the absolute veto sat on the president’s right, the noble side. According to Christian tradition, it is an honour to be seated at the right side of God, or to the right of the head of the family at dinner. Those who wanted a highly restricted veto were seated on the left.

Thus, the layout of the room took on political significance: to the right, supporters of a monarchy that sought to preserve many of the king’s powers; to the left, those who wished to reduce them.

In the 19th century, this vocabulary was increasingly used to describe the political leanings of members of the French parliament.

The great advantage of these labels is their simplicity: they reduce complex political ideas to a simple dichotomy. It also makes it easy for people to identify the “right” side, to which they belong, and the “wrong” side, which they condemn.

From the 19th century onward, sub-categories quickly developed, aimed at placing every politician on a kind of spectrum from left to right. In this way, political parties can be said to be more or less left wing, or more or less right wing, in relation to one another.

Soon, people were talking about “right-wing coalitions”, “left-wing blocks”, “centre-right”, “centre-left”, “far-right” and “far-left”, and the like.
 

‘The clash of two Frances’

At the beginning of the 19th century, the left-right divide essentially distinguished supporters of an absolute monarchy from those of a constitutional monarchy.

It would later set monarchists against republicans, then conservative republicans against the modernists who implemented the major social reforms of the Third Republic that included the freedom of the press, freedom of association, the right to belong to a trade-union and divorce, among other things.

At the turn of the 20th century, the left-right debate essentially covered the divide between the defenders of Catholicism and advocates for the separation of church and state. This shift, which took place in 1905, would often be referred to as “the clash of two Frances” – Catholic and anticlerical.
 

From the 1930s onward, the economic divide came to the fore, with the left advocating for socialism and the right calling for economic liberalisation.

By the 1970s, the liberalisation of social mores had become a key issue, with continuing debates on abortion, divorce, homosexuality, marriage equality and euthanasia. The same is true of immigration and openness to the world, which stood in opposition to cultural, social and economical protectionism.
 

Parties with many faces

In France, the divide grew in several political realms. In his famous work, The Right Wing in France, political historian René Rémond defined three separate right-wing currents: the legitimist and counter-revolutionary right, the liberal right, and the Bonapartist right, authoritarian and conservative.
 

Whether or not these divisions still exist today is open to debate. What is certain is that there is still a significant difference between the conservative, more authoritarian right that favours an economy in which the state plays a regulatory and protective role, and the liberal right that favours deregulation, less restrictive labour laws and more entrepreneurship.

Today’s French Republican party represents the latter position well, from former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

The Bonapartist right – often identified to Gaullism after the former French president Charles de Gaulle (1959-1969) – can now be partially identified with Marine Le Pen’s National Front, which prizes a strong leader, order and patriotism.

In truth, for each overarching area of political debate, there are at least two right wings and two left wings. Concerning family values and gay marriage, for instance, a minority on the right are open to increased tolerance, while a minority on the left are rather reluctant.

The same can be said of immigration. Not everyone on the right is convinced by restrictive immigration policies, while open immigration policies are far from universally approved of on the left.
 

Don’t forget the centre

Centrist positions are often difficult to pin down. Those who self-identify as centrists sometimes occupy the middle ground on certain main political issues but stand to the left on one issue and to the right on another.

Early 20th century radicals, often characterised as defenders of secularism and basic freedoms, were also economically liberal, and generally considered as having “their heart on the left but their wallet on the right”. Centrists from the Christian Democratic tradition, who favoured social protections, dialogue between workers and management, and oppose unchecked economic liberalism, were also conservative on family issues.
 

While it is possible to identify broad schools of thought that can be classified as right, left or centre over the long term, policies vary greatly over time. We cannot ascribe unchanging, universal content to these categories.

These days, we cannot even say that the right is for the status quo or that the left wants change, as has sometimes been claimed. When it comes to the welfare state, people on the right clamour for reform, whereas those on the left want to defend social protections.

Still, in each era, centre, left and right have served as signposts, allowing us to classify political parties, politicians and the ideas they promote.
 

The 2017 presidential election deepens the divide

In the right- and left-wing “primaries” that took place a few weeks ago, French parties selected candidates who clearly illustrated their ideological differences.

But this process also revealed more left- or right-leaning positions within each camp, as demonstrated by the second-round primary between François Fillon and Alain Juppé, on the right, and, on the left, between Benoît Hamon and Manuel Valls.

It’s likely that the majority of those who watched the first televised debate on March 20, prior to the first round of voting, would have similarly placed candidates on the spectrum of left to right.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate for “La France insoumise” (the rebellious France), embodies a type of social protest. He refuses any alliance with the current left-wing government and takes more radical stands on institutions, Europe and economics than the Social Democrat Benoît Hamon.
 

Emmanuel Macron, the former economy minister responsible for a large share of President François Hollande’s economic policy, is running on a centrist platform. A strong proponent of liberal economic policies, he also supports a certain social safety net and the integration of immigrants while opposing discrimination against minorities. He is trying to attract moderates from the left and the right.

In other words, Macron seeks to build an electorate comprised of Socialists who find Benoît Hamon too lefty and of Republicans or centrists who find François Fillon too far to the right. That marks a clear difference between this mainstream right and the populist, protectionist, anti-European extreme right represented by Marine Le Pen’s National Front.
 

Not all the same

So why is the belief that there is no real difference between left and right so commonly held?

This view can be traced back to opinion surveys from the 1980s. A growing number of people now claim that the concepts of left and right have lost all meaning. Yet these same people, in the same surveys, happily self-identify on a continuum of left to right and define their political identity in these dichotomous terms.

They also respond differently to a variety of political issues, as compared to their self-established position on that scale.

This apparent paradox can be explained. Many people who personally feel more left wing or right wing according to their convictions also believe that governments tend to implement similar policies when in power. They therefore expect clear political platforms that can be summarised as left wing or right wing but are ultimately disappointed by the outcomes.

As a result, candidates make promises to attract votes without taking into account how difficult they may be to implement. But selling right- or left-wing ideas during an election campaign also serves to make people dream – capturing hearts and minds at the expense of considering the realities that elected governments must face.

Translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for Fast for Word.
 

This article was originally published in French
 

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Philippe Wojazer/Reuters

One panelist, journalist Sonia Mabrouk, argued that Muslims in France are constantly used by opportunists, from politicians to intellectuals, as a constituency to serve their own purposes.

The incident recalled the final televised debate of France’s 2012 presidential election, when then-candidate François Hollande sparred with incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy over the “Muslim vote”.

Hollande was in favour of extending the right to vote in local elections to non-EU citizens living in France, while Sarkozy argued against it. The president claimed that such a move would lead to “identity-based voting practices” and “divisive sectarian demands”.

Women, it’s worth remembering, were once suspected of voting with their sex.

As the French go to the polls on April 23 and May 7 to elect their new president, the question reemerges: is it reasonable to assume that Muslims’ voting behaviour is based on their religion and on the Quran?
 

The impact of religion on votes

Some 93% of French Muslims cast their ballots for François Hollande in the second round of the 2012 presidential election, according to a poll by OpinionWay. That’s 41% above than the national average, since Hollande was ultimately elected with 52% of votes.

Several attempts have been made to explain why French Muslims voted almost unanimously for the left.

In their 2012 book Français comme les autres? (As French as everyone else?), political scientists Sylvain Brouard and Vincent Tiberj concluded that the impact of religion on the voting practices of believers should not be overestimated.

Catholics in France and in the United States, for example, vote in ways diametrically opposed to each other. In France, people who identify as Catholic are today markedly in favour of the conservative Républicains, particularly since the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2013.

In the US, on the other hand, they tend to vote for the Democrats, a more socially progressive party.

How can this difference be explained? According to Brouard and Tiberj, Catholics in the US vote Democratic for precisely the same reasons that Muslims in France went for Hollande’s Socialist Party: they cast their ballots for candidates who support minority rights.
 

Both groups are often found among racial and religious minorities – American citizens of Latin American origin and people of Maghrebian or African background in France – who have faced economic and social marginalisation in their respective countries.

In France, on the other hand, Catholicism is the main religious faith. Hence the difference in voting orientations (though a bastion of left-wing Catholic voters has also historically existed in France).

In other words, religion is not the be-all, end-all of a believer’s political choices.
 

Identifying as Muslims

Though the impact of faith must be taken with a grain of salt, it is not entirely irrelevant in the context of elections. Qualitative research I conducted in 2012 and 2013 found that the vote of French Muslim citizens I interviewed was indeed influenced by their religious identity.

Being a Muslim did not predetermine their answer to the question, Who should I vote for? But it did lead people to ask, Who shouldn’t I vote for? The impact was negative, helping them eliminate candidates deemed Islamophobic, rather than positive ([I] choose a candidate who defends my values, including religious values).

French Muslims took into account laws banning the headscarf or niqab, a veil that covers the face, as well as public comments against Islam, for instance, when weighing different candidates and their platforms. Candidates’ positions on foreign policy were also considered, with military interventions in Muslim-majority countries particularly frowned upon.

This is similar to how French citizens who identify as Jewish tend to be especially sensitive to antisemitism and to the position of candidates regarding Israel.

According to my study, being a Muslim can have three different effects on a person’s vote: it can consolidate a choice previously made, based on factors unrelated to religion; it can help select among a few candidates on the basis of the Islamophobia criterion; and when a candidate’s attitude towards Muslims is negatively perceived, it can destabilise and change a person’s political orientation.

Take, for example, Youssouf, a self-made man who in 2007 voted for Nicolas Sarkozy, the Republican party candidate. But in 2012, after what he called “the unashamed Islamophobic discourses and public policies targeting Islam made by him and his governement”, Youssouf decided to vote for the left-wing François Hollande. Even though Youssouf didn’t at all like Hollande’s stance on economic and social issues.

Because of their lower socioeconomic status and the marginalisation they face, many French Muslims, especially those living in France’s banlieues (suburbs), might simply choose not to vote.

Some of them justify their abstention with religious explanations, claiming that “voting is not halal”, since France is not a Muslim country.
 

Calls for abstention in 2017

Generally, this position is only held by a minority of highly orthodox Tabligh or Salafist Muslims. But today, several public Muslim intellectuals, including leaders who are not necessarily from those sects are calling for an “active abstention” by Muslims of the 2017 presidential election. The intent is to escape the constant trap of voting for the “lesser of two evils”.

Nizarr Bourchada, leader of the Français et Musulmans (French and Muslim) party, advocates a similar approach. His is one of the first French political parties to claim a strong attachment to both Islamic and French Republican values.

This echoes French author Michel Houellebecq’s prescient 2015 novel Soumission (Submission). Set in 2022, the book imagines the rise to power in France of a Muslim political party that imposes polygamy and prohibits women from wearing clothes that make them “desirable”.
 

Within a few weeks of publication, Soumission had become a bestseller in France, Italy and Germany. It bolsters the idea that a collective vote of French Muslims, or at least their federation into a political party, would be a threat for French society.

The reality is quite different. But whatever the outcome of this election season, it seems that the fantasy of a “Muslim vote” will continue to haunt Europe’s imagination for years to come.
 

Fatima Khemilat, PhD Student, Sciences Po Aix

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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