Naissance médiatique de l'intellectuel musulman en France (1989-2005)

B) The emergence of the figure of the Moslem combatant of the social injustices

Mainly around the question of the veil thus, the problems of Islam are established with the center of the debates on integration. The landscape of the leaders of the movements fighting for integration is seen consequently considerably modified according to this new data. On the one hand, new associations appear which are defined before just like Islamic, asserting to be able to succeed where the old movements of claims citizens failed. In addition, these last by rebound are obliged to reposition itself compared to the Koranic religion. From these new data emergent of new figures of Moslem intellectual : the reference to an Islam, was it laic, becomes carrying.

1) A new figure : the leader of the reislamisation

Since the turning of the years 1990 and the proven breathlessness of the popularity of associations traditional antiracists, some religious associations try to be engulfed in the breach, being based on the idea that a certain number of young Moslems present a will to be different from the attitude of their parents by more strongly asserting their faith, this in order to renegotiate their insertion in French public space. Leaders of these substitutes to the social action of the years 1980 emergent then to form a new media figure : the intellectual preacher.

Among these activists, there is of them one which truly exceeded all the others médiatiquement, it acts of Tariq Ramadan. It is the emblem of the Moslem leader who acquired one will have some thanks to his work of reislamisation of the young immigrants or wire of immigrants whose social integration failed. « The big brother of Beurs lost, the mystical subcontractor of the social action^213(*) », positions clearly for a new type of integration, considering that the republican model with the Frenchwoman is a failure. Tariq Ramadan claims without complex, unlike the laic associations more or less torn on the subject, a right to the difference and a Community integration in rupture with the hexagonal tradition :

« The passion in the Eighties for a standard integration S.O.S-Racism or the company known as pluriculturelle seems to mark time (...) It could be well that the best «integrated» Moslem is not that which practices less his religion or which gets dressed like everyone and which one does not measure the interior tensions and tearings. Quite to the contrary, that to which one gave the means of building a personality «of the interior» will be better capable to adapt to its specific environment^214(*). »

The associative activity in favor of the young people of foreign origin makes it possible Tariq Ramadan to weave a intellectual network some. Since 1992, it creates the movement of the Moslems and Musulmanes of Switzerland. It approaches during years 1990 the Moslem federation of the UOIF (Union of the Islamic organizations of France), but more especially of associations of young Moslems, like the UJM (Union of the young Moslems), very active in the Lyons suburbs. Its work of preacher on the ground, in particular in this area, enables him to weave relationships to personalities of other confessions profiting then from a considerable media visibility, like the father Christian Delorme, celebrates it « priest of Minguettes ». Tariq Ramadan also profits from fasteners in the laic mediums which in particular enabled him to belong to the commission « Islam and secularity » within the League of the teaching of 1995 to 2000.

We can put forth the assumption that the charge of double speech against Tariq Ramadan is partly explained by the fact why it actually plays on two tables : that, as we saw partly II, of the Moslem reformer, but also on that of the guide of an integration by the religion. It is because it publicly appears in these two different roles that its speech appears often adapted to its audience, as proves it its ambiguous bonds with the movement of the Moslem Brothers : «  Tariq Ramadan prefers to make forget his/her grandfather when he wants to be made pass in particular vis-a-vis the journalists, like a Moslem intellectual. But when it is found in front of the young people of the suburbs, it wants to convince that he is the worthy heir to Al Banna^215(*) . «

If Tariq Ramadan has two speeches well, it is because it is based on two distinct intellectual postures. We can also suppose that a certain skepticism of the public opinion with regard to the figure of the intellectual leader of the reislamisation, comes owing to the fact that such a Moslem social accompaniment necessarily makes think of the strategy the islamist ones in the Maghreb.

But this comprehensible mistrust, geared down by a media din out of the commun run, paradoxically made it possible Tariq Ramadan to create a place, certainly disputed, but impossible to circumvent in the French intellectual field. Because the media finally do not cease reproaching him a mediatization of which they are in the beginning, and which they multiply a such vicious circle. At the same time omnipresent and décrié by the traditional press, Tariq Ramadan also finds its safety media on Internet, which reinforces its image of champion besides of « Moslems of in bottom » defending the base vis-a-vis the media and Moslem elites of which it however forms part. The cyberjournal Oumma^216(*) is its principal relay. It is on this site, founded in 1999, that Tariq Ramadan publishes its very polemical Critique article of (new) intellectual Community^217(*) in October 2003, after the large French newspapers refused to publish it in their pages.

Concurrently to this « Tariq brother » invading, There thus remain logically only little place in the field of the Moslem intellectual helping the young people to be integrated by a larger respect of the Islamic tradition. Hassan Hiquioussen, who is in North what Tariq Ramadan represents with the Lyons area and which could have stolen the high-speed motorboat to him, is surely less skilful than its Swiss counterpart and definitively put themselves out of the play « médiatico-intellectual » by remarks openly anti-semites^218(*). Moreover, the majority of the preachers work at the local level and do not have vocation to become strong media icons. It does not remain about it less than some start to understand perhaps that the cumbersome figure of Tariq Ramadan makes them shade. Here why emblematic association UJM decided to return Yamin Makri, marked to undoubtedly be too close to the Swiss intellectual^219(*). 

If the Islamization of the debates on integration allowed to the media irruption new Moslem actors, certain old figures of the traditional social movements were reconverted as Moslem intellectuals of also new type.

2) ex-Beurs become Moslem

The former leaders of the associative movements resulting from Maghrebian immigration carry out, during the Nineties, of the different choices vis-a-vis the new problems which are proposed to them. Some dispute the Islamic turning of their combat by affirming their atheism and their refusal to be locked up in a Moslem identity. It is for example the case of Malek Boutih, the former president of S.O.S Racism, which is even described as « islamophobe^220(*) » by the sociologist Vincent Geisser.

Others make the opposite way. It is about the strategy chosen inter alia by Mouloud Aounit, secretary-general of the MRAP (Movement against racism and for the friendship between the people) since 1989, which makes a priority of the fight against the islamophobie, « behind which the hatred of the populations arabo-Moslem women is dissimulated^221(*) ». The last public exits of this last, to defend of the buckled girls or to claim meat halal in the school canteens underline this change of concerns. This choice is perceived overall with skepticism by the press, which judges that « the MRAP is connected from now on less with the fight antiracist that with the integrist combat^222(*) ». It is true that the call to the penalization of the blasphemy by this association is a new data since the islamophobie is not strictly speaking a form of racism but well the criticism of a religion. And it is behind this subtle distinction between the phobia of a religion and the phobia of the population which is identified there (or that one stigmatizes by this means) that a deep cleavage hides which shakes associations fighting for the integration of the young immigrants.

Because the majority of the stars antiracists of years 1980 chose a different option well. Ni publicly atheistic like Malek Boutih, nor destroyers of the islamophobie like Mouloud Aounit, much of personalities propose the fact that they are Moslem, but this in order to better show than their faith is not incompatible with a republican integration. These laic Moslems thus carry out at the same time an acceptance of the new religious problems- since they are presented from now on in the form of Moslems- and a negation of this one- since they are presented in the form of a republican above all. In order to reorientate their combat, these ex-Beurs converted with the Moslem citizenship then choose to found laic movements of Moslems.

The year 2003 is particularly profitable in the field. It is on May 26 of this year which Tokia Saïfi, Rachid Kaci and Amo Ferhati create the French Council of the Laic Moslems (CFML). Fifteen days earlier, the contractor Yazid Sabeg launches Laic Convention for the equal rights and the participation of the Moslems of France (KEY). As for Aziz Sahiri, who in A « enough which one all the time speaks about islamist, and never of the Moslems citizens^223(*) «, he becomes at the same time president of the very new Movement of the laic Moslems of France (MMLF). In October 2003, it is with the turn of the Council of the Moslem democrats of France (CDMF) to be born under the crook of a principal adviser of education, Abderrahmane Dahmane. This movement, although it autoproclame not «laic», also forms part of republican mobility.

However these laic Moslems are often old movement bor of years 1980 reconverted. We had evoked the case of the Lyons suburbs previously. There still, the figure of Djida Tazdaït president in Lyon of movement JALB (Young Arabic of Lyon and its suburbs), is revealing. This one was a true icon of the movement bor of the years 1980, taking part in particular in a media hunger strike in 1986 to protest against the Pasqua laws. But the JALB finishes by completely being marginalized in the department of the Rhone by the competition of its Islamic counterpart, the Union of the Young Moslems (UJM), which is born in 1987. Conscious of the evolution, Djida Tazdaït was thus let convince of the need for acting as a Moslem citizen and militates from now on within the CFML. Its objective first is not formulated any more like the attempt to integrate the young immigrants into the French company, but to show that « the majority of the Moslems of this country only think of adapting their way of life to the republican rules^224(*) ». In the same way, Rachid Kaci was member of France More, while Tokia Saïfi and Amo Ferhati, old « walkers », were engaged within association citizen « Space Intégration » in the years 1980.

Asserting a laic Islam, this Maghrebian intelligentsia, become publicly Moslem more by need that by choice, has multiplied the petitions for a few years, which multiplies by ten its visibility.  « Call of May 2003 », written by the MMLF, is signed by « Moslem intellectuals opposed to the legitimation of the veil^225(*) » . February 16, 2004 it is with the turn of « Proclamation of freedoms », of the trade unionist Tewfik Al, to be initialed by some six hundreds « women, men, of Moslem culture, believing, agnostic or atheistic^226(*) «. This proclamation, from now on made up in association, seeks to become «a true place of reflection around the Islam, perceived like a geopolitical and cultural whole as much as monk^227(*)». It thus tries also to build bridges with the liberal reformers resulting from the world arabo-Moslem. For this reason the renovating ones of Islam^228(*), like the psychoanalyst Fethi Benslama or the anthropologist Malek Chebel, often find recipients of these engagements of laic Moslems.

This « beurgeoisy » laic partly constituted itself in order to make counterweight with the organic Moslem intelligentsia born from the consultation on the Islam of France organized by the authorities Wishing to create the equivalent of one « Moslem CRIF », the laic Moslems thus think of minimizing the weight of CFCM. But while giving to any person « of Moslem origin » an identity label globalisante, is there no blow a risk of « ethnicisation » of the religion, as Vincent Geisser notes it ?

« When the ministry for the interior supports the emergence of an authority representative of the worship like CFCM, it limits the Moslem community to its smaller expression : a community reduced to believing and practice. While when an association claims to represent laic Islam, the basic unit is not any more the practicing Moslem, it is any person of origin arabo-Moslem woman^229(*) ».

Criticisms are sharp including within the Moslem community known as moderated, as the reaction of Amar Dib, sociologist and national president shows it of « Club Convergences ».

« Those and those which, suddenly, are presented in the form of Moslems, whereas yesterday they did not want to intend to speak about this label, would like they to say to us that Islam is a danger to the Republic and that they only could protect us from the danger^230(*) ? »

Although seeking to fight against the prevalence of the religions, the initiatives of these laic Moslem intellectuals contribute to sow a little more confusion by giving a character including to a religious identity. So much so that all person « of Moslem origin » which criticizes CFCM is seen sticking the label of « laic Moslem ». This way, even Malek Boutih, which however posted its atheism many times, is sometimes compared to one « laic Moslem »^231(*). Curiously, by a conceptual confusion, they to some extent contribute to create a communautarism which they exècrent. Paradox which even makes say to Rachid Kaci, a few months after having created the Movement of the Laic Moslems of France, which « one makes very to marginalize part of the French population, the French of Maghrebian origin, by obliging those to be determined like Moslems and not like citizens^232(*) « !

It does not remain about it less than the existence of this new caste of republican Moslems rather appears reassuring for an opinion skeptic with regard to Islam and than it is largely voted by plebiscite per many French newspapers. Hanane Harrath explains even how this one is a media construction intended to reassure transitory fears of the French company :

« Name [laic Moslems], according to them, is not any more one end nor the result of an identity claim on a religious basis, it is only transitory. It is operational only because it makes it possible to assume the glance of the other and then to exceed it : statute of looked at which undergoes, one would pass thus to that of looked at which assumes to arrive at looked at which exceeds ^233(*) »

If the evolution of the debates on integration led to the reconversion of much Beurs of the years 1980 as laic Moslems in the years 1990, a very similar evolution is noted in the feminist movements. There is well since 1989 and the first business of the veil of new figures which appear, asserting to fight in the name of a new feminism, Moslem feminism.

3) « neofeminists » Moslem

It is also around the religious problems that the feminist movement is divided. A figure of Moslem feminist appears for better showing than Islam is compatible with all republican engagements, including feminism. Some personalities, like Nadia Amiri, enquiring in sociology with the EHESS (School of the high studies in social sciences) and old leading of association France More, from now on vice-president of the Committee Secularity Republic of Paris, defend this characteristic of republican Moslem feminism.

But large gaining media crenel are incontestably the persons in charge for movement NPNS (Neither Subjected Whores Nor). Surfant at the beginning of the years 2000 on some media scandals concerning the suburbs like the return of the problem of the scarf and especially that of « revolving »^234(*), association organizes, following the example walk of Beurs of 1983, one « go of the women for the equality and against the ghettos » from February to March 2003. It tries to dissociate traditional feminism. Under the slogan « Co-education, Equality, Secularity besides», the leaders of NPNS organize their own demonstration at the time of the Day of the Woman 2005 in order to avoid being confused with the traditional feminists, and especially, « because there is no more urgent combat for the emancipation of the women than that of the fight against all the forms of integrism and obscurantism^235(*) ».

In twenty years, Fadela Amara thus passed from the statute of simple militant of S.O.S-Racism to the symbol by definition of the Moslem feminist by taking the head of NPNS. That which is defined as « practicing Moslem woman », but for which the veil is « a tool of oppression imposed by the patriarchal companies^236(*) », part of its efforts devoted sees by obtaining the Price of the Book Policy 2004^237(*). As for the other figurehead of NPNS, which sometimes shares with tension the leadership of the collective^238(*), it is about Loubna Méliane, which is also a vice-president of S.O.S-Racism. 

Opposite, some rare icons, Saida Kada, person in charge for association WOMAN (French Women and committed Moslem women), seem to try to prove that one can be a buckled feminist. Because as Dounia Bouzar explains it, Co-auteure with it work One veiled, the other not^239(*) :

« The women of Moslem reference are especially assigned in preset places : one gives them the choice between the stereotype of the subjected Moslem woman who will be reduced to inferiority and the stereotype of the «Western» woman modern who, to acquire her freedom, her autonomy, should break with any religious reference^240(*) . «

Indeed, if it is true that it « one hears only the voices of the most radical Moslems, however fewer than the moderate ones ^241(*)», as underline it two journalists of the Express train besides surely partly responsible, these extremists find themselves in the two poles of a debate presented like binary. Between these two sliced choices, are moderated positionings, but inevitably less media, like that of the spokesman of the collective « A school for all-your », Hamida Ben Sadia, which is not buckled but whose vision of feminism recommends that the woman is free to carry or not the scarf, including in the public places. But the latter not returning neither in the box of the veiled feminist, nor in that of the non-fogging feminist, his speech remained marginal in the press.

For the only question of the scarf, the problems are complex : to be opposed to the law does not mean for example not that one adheres to the principle regulation. But the majority of the media carried out an exceptional simplification of the controversy, prolonging this aspect Manichean of the debate intra-Moslems in all the fields subjected to discussions.

4) Multiple figures for a binary debate

Among this elite which emerged from the associative world fighting for integration, a certain number of media cleavages curling the caricature were born and seem to be rigidified. We find on a side a pole of integrist intransigent- Moslems for some- which fight the islamophobie like an ordinary racism. Other, côtoient plethoras of laic Moslems- secularists for their adversaries- described even as « Moslems islamophobes^242(*) » by Vincent Geisser, sociologist clearly posted in support of the other tendency. The two camps are opposed systematically on all the contemporary debates having a direct bond or not with the problems of Islam.

The distortion is born, we saw it, around the question of the Islamic scarf. For the laic Moslems having signed  « Call of May », the judgment of the veil is clear :

« The current surrealist debate on the Islamic scarf, true standard of political Islamism, the calling into question of French secularity, should not make lose sight of the fact that it acts there, for France and the French, to refuse and resist the establishment on our territory of a dangerous, perverse ideology and especially mortal for the Republic^243(*). »

The Moslem leaders who chose the combat of the defense of the Islamic religion, like Mouloud Aounit, denounce as for them a qualified legislation of liberticide : « A law prohibiting the religious signs, in the current context of islamophobie, seems a law of exception with regard to the only Islamic religion ^244(*). « Behind the problem of the veil, it is indeed the question of the cultural relativism which is factor of cleavage. For Vincent Geisser , « in the idea of the islamophobes [laic Moslems], this girl [buckled] contradicted universalism, a desire «to carry light» (...). They consider that French of culture or Islamic religion is still carrying on the one hand inferiority of which they should be helped to be delivered^245(*) ". 

This camp compares to some extent republican universalism to racism feeding sedentary paranoia and rejects a supposed assimilation colonialist. If cleavage appeared with the veil, it is unceasingly revived, in particular with the problem of the Middle East. Thus, them « laic Moslems » are shown, as the remarks of Mouloud Aounit illustrate it, of « ethniciser » racism, condemning the fact that one makes anti-semitism « a virus arabo-Moslem^246(*) ». Fadela Amara, figure of much of laic Moslem feminism is regularly made treat « of Arab enjuivée^247(*) ».

We can also note that, a such vicious circle, the speech of each one is radicalized with time. The example of Tariq Ramadan is obvious. That one even which affirms in 2001 « that the anti-semitism is unacceptable and indefensible^248(*) » sign a text in 2003 which takes again all the old stereotypes anti-semites^249(*). In the same way, if it calls in 2001 with « to fight against the feeling of victimization which colonizes many spirits among the Moslem French citizens and in particular among most marginalized^250(*) », it chooses four years later to invest the field of mémorielles frustrations by signing it call « We are the natives of the Republic ! »^251(*).

This call without surprise is condemned besides by the laic Moslems, who judge it « communautarist » and « victimisant » :

« The work of memory must be done, but that should not take part in identity construction (...). Those which want to make us assume the posture of the native voluntarily ignore the history. They instrumentalisent the past to put at bottom freedom and the equality, the values of what they dare to call «chauvinism universalist». Who does not see that while calling with this moral rising of «colonized» they prepare, for the girls, the compost of a kind of «personal statute», to take again the expression of Leïla Sebbar ? It is played the legalization of the multiculturalism. And the dams which protect us name co-education and secularity^252(*). »

More than ever, members resulting from « beurgeoisy » seem summoned to choose a camp, even if it means to accept the drifts of this one, this preventing the introduction of a healthy and plural debate. Since 1989, Djida Tazdaït, emblem bor, declared: « since the Rushdie business, one summons us to position us like «goods» or «bad» Moslems^253(*). » Force is to note that this binary birth of the Moslem intellectual engaged in the life of the city made only be accentuated during these last about fifteen years. The Maghrebian elite of years 1980 was thus divided into two in a caricatural way, between a camp marked national-republican of islamophobie and a camp « differentialist » supposed islamist. In spite of the toughening of the debates, whatever the crenel which was selected, the Islamic reference in any case became almost a way obliged for any militant of Maghrebian origin in the years 1990. This Islamization of the associative leaders has it a repercussion in the French political life ?

* ²¹³ Cynthia Fleury & Emmanuel Lemieux, «  The infiltration of Tariq Ramadan  », Release, 19/11/2003.

* ²¹⁴ Tariq Ramadan, «  For an open secularity  », the World, 13/10/2004.

* ²¹⁵ Soheib Bencheikh, «  Preface  », in Lionel Favrot, Tariq revealed Ramadan, Editions Lyon Mag', 2003, p. 41.

* ²¹⁶ http://www.oumma.com.

* ²¹⁷ Tariq Ramadan, «  Critical of (new) intellectual Community  », Oumma, 3/10/2003.

* ²¹⁸ Cf Cécilia Gabizon, «  The preacher high-speed motorboat of the suburbs professes a virulent anti-semitism  », the Barber, 28/10/2004.

* ²¹⁹ Cf Xavier Ternisien, «  Associations of young Moslems take their distances with Tariq Ramadan  », the World, 24/5/2005.

* ²²⁰ Vincent Geisser, the Islamophobie News, the Discovery, 2003, p. 102.

* ²²¹ «  Claude Imbert the islamophobe  », press release of the MRAP, October 24, 2003.

* ²²² Jacqueline Remy, «  Mrap skids  », the Express train, 24/1/2005.

* ²²³ Claire Chartier, «  Laic Moslems but  », the Express train, 13/12/2004.

* ²²⁴ Dispatch AFP, «  Pro-veil counters pro-law: «silent majority» of the Moslems courted  », 19/1/2004.

* ²²⁵ MMLF, «the Call of May  », the Barber, 12/5/2003  : text signed inter alia by Nadia Amiri, Leila Babès, Soheib Bencheikh, Malek Chebel, Bétoule Fekkar-Lambiotte, Rachid Kaci, Michel Fox, Aziz Sahiri, Mohammed Sifaoui, Djida Tazdait. 

* ²²⁶ Tewfik Al, «  To find the force of an alive secularity  », Release, 16/2/2004  : text signed inter alia by Nadi Amiri, Jamel Eddine Bencheikh, Fethi Benslama, Mohammed Harbi, Kébir Jbil, Michel Fox, Hassan Zerrouky.

* ²²⁷ Tewfik Al, quoted by Claire Chartier, «  Laic Moslems but  », the Express train, 13/12/2004.

* ²²⁸ Cf left II.

* ²²⁹ Maintenance with Xavier Ternisien with Vincent Geisser, the World, T21/5/2003. 

* ²³⁰ Xavier Ternisien, «  Moslem elites in the search of a laic representation  », the World, 21/5/2003.

* ²³¹ Cf Gilbert Charles, Claire Chartier, Vincent Hugeux, Besma Lahouri, Alain Louyot, Eric Furrier, Jean-Marie Pontaut, Delphine Saubaber, «  Lessons of a test  », the Express train, 6/9/2004.

* ²³² Eric Conan and Besma Lahouri, «  Secularity vis-a-vis Islam  », the Express train, 18/9/2003.

* ²³³ Hanane Harrath, «  Moslems and citizens like the others  », in the New Observer out of the ordinary, «  New thinkers of Islam  », April-May 2004.

* ²³⁴ Cf Laurent Mucchielli, the scandal of «  revolving  », The Discovery, 2005, which explains how new feminist movements benefitted from the purely media construction of a wave of collective rapes.

* ²³⁵ «  The Call for a new feminist combat  », available on the site of NPNS  : http://www.niputesnisoumises.com.

* ²³⁶ Fadela Amara quoted by Jean-Pierre Thibaudat, «  Veil  : undulations around a law  », Release, 8/12/2003.

* ²³⁷ Fadela Amara & Sylvia Zappi, Neither whores, nor subjected  , The Discovery, 2003, 172 p.

* ²³⁸ Cf Stéphanie Hammer, «  Movements of mood  », the Point, 2/1/2004.

* ²³⁹  Saida Kada & Dounia Bouzar, One veiled, the other not, Albin Michel, 2003, 216 p.

* ²⁴⁰ Dounia Bouzar, «  It is easier of essentialiser Islam  », Oumma, 16/12/2003.

* ²⁴¹ Besma Lahouri & Eric Conan, «  Secularity vis-a-vis Islam  », the Express train, 18/9/2003.

* ²⁴² Vincent Geisser, the Islamophobie News, the Discovery, 2003, pp. 95-112.

* ²⁴³ MMLF, «the Call of May  », the Barber, 12/5/2003  .

* ²⁴⁴ Mouloud Aounit, «  True challenges of secularity  », Marianne, 27/10/2003.

* ²⁴⁵ Maintenance with Amara Bamba with Vincent Geisser, Saphirnet, 5/1/2004.

* ²⁴⁶ Mouloud Aounit, «  Racism, collective wound  », Release, 21/5/2004.

* ²⁴⁷ Claude Askolovich, «  Anti-semitism  : the Palestinian pretext  », the New Observer, 9/6/2004.

* ²⁴⁸ Tariq Ramadan, «  Exist there an Islamic anti-semitism  ?  », the World, 24/12/2001.

* ²⁴⁹ Tariq Ramadan, «  Critical of (new) intellectual Community  », COp cit.

* ²⁵⁰ Id., «  Exist there an Islamic anti-semitism  ?  », COp cit.

* ²⁵¹  «  We are the natives of the Republic  !  », Oumma, 18/1/2005.

* ²⁵² Fadela Amara, «  Me, girl of immigrants, for the equality and secularity  », Release, 2/3/2005.

* ²⁵³ Maintenance with Sylviane Stein with Djida Tazdaït, the Express train, 27/10/1989.