Ethnoreligious politics in France: Jews and Muslims.

FRENCH IDEOLOGY AND THE PROBLEM OF ETHNORELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES

A preliminary explanation of both the topic and the title is in order. The topic itself is sensitive and politically incorrect, given the Jacobin republican ideology, which is still valid. According to that ideology, lobbies of ethnic minorities are unacceptable because they call into question the belief in a 'France One and Indivisible'. In fact, the very existence of ethnic or religious minorities has been denied for many years, at least officially, (1) This is reflected in the work of political scientists. In a recent study of interest representation, two scholars (Keeler and Hall 2001: (50-67) have rightly argued that 'the traditional portrait of France as a nation without much associational life, governed by a state that pays little heed to organised interests, no longer fits the realities of French politics', and they cite examples of new associational forms and new types of relations with the public authorities. However, they pay little attention to cultural, ethnic or religious groups.

Ethnic and religious minorities do exist, of course, and their lobbying activities, like those of economic and professional associations, can no longer be denied. This applies above all to the Jews and the Muslims. In the present discussion, the terms Muslim, Arab, Maghrebi and Beur are often used interchangeably, although there are distinctions: Muslims adhere to a particular variant of Islam, for the most part either Sunni or Shia; the majority of Muslims in France are Arabs--and most of these originate in the Maghreb, i.e., in North and Northwest Africa (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia). But not all Maghrebis are Arabs; there are also Berbers, who share the Islamic religion with the Arabs but have their own culture and language. This is true, a fortiori, of the Turkish immigrants, who are neither Arab nor Maghrebi. The Arabs in France are commonly referred to as Beurs, an inversion of the word Arabe. The Beurs differ widely in terms of religious observance: some are fully practising Muslims, whereas others are secularised. Some are deeply immersed in traditional Arab culture and remain oriented towards their (or their parents') country of origin, whereas others are culturally and linguistically assimilated and have lost all contact with, or interest in, that country.

This diversity applies equally to the Jews in France. Some Jews can trace the presence of their ancestors there to the invasion of Caesar's Roman legions; others immigrated only a few years ago, or are the offspring of recent immigrants. The Jewish community is divided between two major groups: the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi--the former the descendants of Central and Eastern European Jews, and the latter those of Iberian' origin whose ancestors came to France in the wake of the Inquisition. In addition, there are overlapping internal divisions: between secular and religious, Zionist and anti-Zionist, and cultic and ethnic Jews--the former often labelled israelite, and the latter Juif (Schnapper 1980).

The diversity within both the Jewish and the Muslim categoric groups raises questions about the existence of a Muslim or Jewish community and makes a discussion of its lobbying potential difficult. Nevertheless, these communities have been chosen for analysis because they are comparable: (1) both are 'ethnoreligious' categoric groups, i.e., there is no clear dividing line between ethnicity and religion--the one being a cause, complement or substitute for the other; and (2) the full membership of both communities in the French nation is often not readily accepted, because (a) they diverge from the Christian norm; (b) their presence is not deeply enough rooted, since a large proportion of their members are immigrants or descendants of immigrants; and (c) their collective identities are in some measure 'transnational', i.e., they are strongly marked by a supplementary orientation to ethnic or religious kin in other countries, an orientation that raises the question whether these communities really 'belong' in France in the same way as do more 'authentically' French people. To the extent that religious or cultural otherness has led to imperfect integration and to discrimination, ethnic identities are magnified, and they become the basis of ethnic solidarities, expressed organisationally in ethnic associations.

The denial that ethnolinguistic minorities exist and that their communities have (or should have) a politically significant reality leads logically to the impermissibility of ethnic or religious lobbying. The existence of an ethnic association bespeaks a consciousness of belonging to some social category--often a sentiment of being different from the majority, and often disadvantaged in relation to it--but does not ipso facto connote lobbying, which can be defined by the following elements: (1) common interests shared by communal actors; (2) action clearly oriented towards public authorities with a view to obtaining satisfaction of the claims emanating from the group; and (3) an organisation sufficiently powerful to maintain permanent pressure on public or private institutions (Geisser 1997: 228-9). In terms of these elements, not all Jewish or Muslim organisations are lobbies. For example, the Association Arabisme et Francite was founded in 1992 not to exert pressure on the government, but to safeguard Arab culture and community identity without abandoning the desire to acculturate and without seeking favours from the government (Geisser 1997: 248-53).

The term 'lobby' provokes a particularly negative reaction when applied to ethnic or religious minorities, a reaction that has been interpreted as a desire to exclude them. When Catholic organisations, including churches, take a position on public policies, such as education, birth control, abortion and same-sex marriages, they are not normally regarded as acting as lobbies, because they speak for a large part of the public and their views are shared by significant segments of the decision-making elite. Le lobby juif is particularly problematic, because its existence