France's Muslim Question

Now that France's Muslims have their own council (Conseil Français du Culte Muselman - French Council of Muslim Faith) through which they can collectively work with the French state, they may want to consider the experience of their estranged cousins - France's Jews. There are some valuable lessons to be learned from the history of France's Jewish community.

For over a thousand years Jews had lived in France at the sufferance of the Catholic Church and the monarchy enduring physical, social, legal, and economic segregation, official derision of their faith, blame for all manner of the country's ills, and routine violence and murder. But in the late eighteenth century, during the French Revolution, the Jews in France were granted civil rights: This was unprecedented for European Jews. In service of those rights, Napoleon Bonaparte convened an Assembly of Jewish Notables in the early nineteenth century charged with figuring out how Judaism as a religion, culture, and way of life could be made compatible with French citizenship. The Jewish community and their leaders were forced to make difficult choices that would have a deep and far reaching impact on them and their descendents, but in the end the compromises that were achieved moved France's Jews into the mainstream of French society. They became not Jews living in France, but French Jews with all the rights of citizenship and the responsibilities of loyalty to the French state that that demands.

There are similarities between France's historical relationship with its Jews and its relationship with its Muslims. Both groups are cultural and religious minorities in an essentially homogenous society. For decades Muslims from France's former colonies in North Africa have settled in France proper. But the French have not made them welcome. Unemployment among Muslim immigrants is high, education is an afterthought, access to mainstream French society is nearly impossible, and being arrested for suspicion of this or that is common.

The Muslims in France today are regarded with fear, suspicion, and, yes, hatred by many French. That was certainly true (and arguably still may be) of France's Jews at the time they were granted civil rights. Many Jews in France at the time preferred to be left to their own devices in terms of religious governance and many were afraid that becoming integrated into French society would result in a withering away of their Jewish character and of Jewish practice. To some extent those fears were not without merit, especially in the early days of emancipation.

As was the case with the Jews the greatest challenge for France's Muslims is to decide for themselves whether they want to remain Muslims in France or become French Muslims. But France's Muslims have challenges to overcome that France's Jews never had. Do they want to transplant their religion, culture, and way of life to La France Profonde without compromise and turn France into another Muslim state with all that that implies? Or do they want to embrace the rights and responsibilities of French citizenship and become part of a French future? The former has grave implications not only for France, but for other countries as well. The latter is a road fraught with emotional pitfalls and uncertainty for those who must travel it. Clearly there are advocates for both positions and Europe and the United States must anxiously await an outcome that is still years in the future. We can only pray that they make the right choice.

About the Author: Toni Kamins is the author of The Complete Jewish Guide to France. She is a freelance journalist and former editor and has covered an array of Jewish and secular subjects for The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Jerusalem Post, New York Magazine, the Village Voice, the Forward and other publications as well as websites devoted to France, travel, and to Jewish topics. She has also contributed articles on the Middle East and the Holocaust to reference books and contributed to a number of major travel guides.

Toni has Jewish heritage in her genes: For generations there have been rabbis in her family, and family legend has it that she is descended from Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, the 16th century creator of the Golem.