After Terrorist Attacks, Many French Muslims Wonder: What Now? - NYTimes.comAfter Terrorist Attacks, Many French Muslims Wonder: What Now? - NYTimes.comMain MenuMain MenuType Size:AAANight Mode:DisableEnableAccount:SubscribeLog inThe New York TimesInternational New York TimesSearchGoShareTweetMoreSubscribeSubscribeMy accountLog inWorldAfter Terrorist Attacks, Many French Muslims Wonder: What Now?ShareBy LIZ ALDERMANJanuary 10, 2015PARIS — Last week’s terrorist attacks without doubt set all of France on edge, but the sense of wariness, even siege, has grown increasingly profound among France’s Muslim population — the largest in Europe — which seems braced for a potential backlash, both political and personal.Since the attack Wednesday on the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, several mosques across France have been hit by bullets or small explosive devices. Many more have been tagged by racist graffiti. In Corsica, a severed pig’s head was hung on the door of a prayer hall, the police reported.Those actions followed weekly marches by tens of thousands in Germany, demonstrating against what they call the Islamization of Europe, the firebombing of a mosque in Sweden and warnings by British officials about a rise in Islamophobia.But for France, the bloodletting in and around Paris that left 17 victims dead — including at a Jewish supermarket — has heightened concerns that the country teeters at a tipping point and that there could be a far more open, and potentially more violent, confrontation with its Muslim communities.Hassen Farsadou, the president of a Muslim association, condemned the terrorist attacks.Agnes Dherbeys for The New York TimesOn Saturday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared that France was now at war with radical Islam. “It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity,” he said in a speech.Hassen Farsadou, the president of the Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-Saint-Denis, said the terrorist attacks were “a despicable, criminal act, which we condemn utterly.”“But it’s the rest of us who are paying the bill — that’s the problem now, and we fear it will be a problem in the future,” he said. “The Muslim community is very afraid.” Already, Mr. Farsadou said, he has received more than a hundred calls from average Muslims, mostly women, reporting attacks and insults hurled at them in the streets.Muslims, of course, are not alone in their fears of being singled out for persecution. The nation at large has been gripped by jitters that otherwise mundane crimes could be the start of another attack by jihadists.Interactive Feature | Share Your Experiences After the Paris AttacksThe New York Times would like to hear from Europeans, particularly Muslims, about their experiences.Jewish quarters across the country are on high alert after an attack at a kosher market Friday that President François Hollande described as a “terrifying act of anti-Semitism.” That has only increased the sense of competing communities pitted against each other. The police said the suspect, Amedy Coulibaly, an associate of Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the brothers suspected in the Charlie Hebdo attack, had declared that he wanted to defend Palestinians and target Jews.“It has become extremely serious,” Roger Cukierman, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, said in the French newspaper Le Monde. “I have the impression that this is a war of jihad against the West, whose targets are journalists, the liberty of expression and Jews.”Amid the rising suspicions and animus, and louder calls from the French right for stricter measures against Muslim radicals and immigration in the wake of the attacks, a broader question is emerging as to how France can close the breach.For the time being, the answer may be a retreat to the corners by the mainstream Muslim community, even as prominent voices urge moderation from extremist imams and disenfranchised Muslim youth.Graphic | The Links Among the Paris Terror Suspects and Their Connections to JihadWhere their lives intersected and what may have influenced them.“What needs to happen is that the Muslim elites who are representative of the broader Muslim population in all its diversity must speak out,” said Olivier Roy, an expert on political Islam and a professor at the European University Institute. “We cannot have an opposition between the Islamized part of the population and mainstream society.”France’s leading Islamic groups, led by Dalil Boubakeur, the director of the Grand Mosque of Paris, have called repeatedly in recent days for Muslims to remain calm, and exhorted imams to condemn “violence and terrorism.”Many Muslims were expected to take part in a peace march scheduled for Sunday in Paris, where Mr. Hollande will be joined by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy and other European leaders. But some feared the outreach would be overshadowed by the climate of anxiety, as well as increasingly hard-line rhetoric from the rightist National Front leader Marine Le Pen.France has long had a tense relationship with parts of its Muslim community, rooted in decades of conflict over French rule in Algeria and capped by an insurgency and a raft of Algerian terrorist attacks in France in the 1990s.Interactive Feature | More on the Paris ShootingsThe situation is especially acute in the banlieues, the disadvantaged suburbs that ring Paris and other large French cities, and are populated mostly by Muslims and people with Arab or sub-Saharan family roots. In 2005 and 2007, violent riots broke out amid rising frustrations over social and economic inequality.In the last decade, a small but growing number of young people from the banlieues have been leaving France to answer the call of radical Islam, alarming the government and helping fuel the popularity of the National Front.Saïd Kouachi, 34, had been gravitating toward radical Islam since his teenage years. He traveled to Yemen in 2011, the authorities say, and received training from Al Qaeda’s affiliate there before returning to France.In France’s banlieues, the attraction of radical Islam is a type of “youth movement,” said Mr. Roy, author of a book, “Holy Ignorance,” exploring the lure of Islamic fundamentalism.Graphic | Tracking the Aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo AttackA visual timeline of the attack and the events that followed.“We have a terrible problem in France of disenfranchised young people, with no opportunities,” he said. “Many of them start off in petty delinquency, but for some of them, radical Islam is a way to find a second life — not in society, but in terms of self-image and self-esteem.”Terrorist attacks carry the risk of a “copycat effect,” Mr. Roy said. “We tend to transform them into negative heroes, but what is a negative hero for the rest of society is a positive one for disenfranchised people,” he said.In Gennevilliers, a Paris suburb where Saïd Kouachi lived, neighbors said they were horrified by the attacks and worried about the repercussions for the Muslim community. None would give their names for fear of reprisal.A 24-year-old woman who lived in the same building as Mr. Kouachi said: “My heart aches. I work in France, so this concerns me. We Muslims are used to being labeled.” She said she hoped that people would eventually make sense of things, and that a spiral of violence would not ensue.Others were not optimistic. One man, 24, who also lived in the building, said: “I feel dishonored because of what they did. This is not the religion that we Muslims are practicing.” He said he was worried about the future of France. “I’m afraid that it might have a civil war,” he said.Assia Labbas and Aida Alami contributed reporting.
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