Why Is France So Afraid of God?
Illustrations by Cristiana Couceiro
What forces hold a liberal democracy together? What forces can tear a liberal democracy apart? These were some of the questions on my mind as I listened earlier this year to the French education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, defend a proposal that had been placed before the nation.
The setting was grand: the French Senate, a chamber as elegant as an opera house. The bill he was presenting was equally grand, at least in name: Principles of the Republic and the Fight Against Separatism. Blanquer spoke under the marble gaze of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the architect of early modern France, who stood high in an alcove behind him. Colbert’s shoulder-length curls made for a contrast with Blanquer’s polished crown. Now enshrined in law, the anti-separatism bill is the latest salvo in a centuries-old battle between the French state and organized religion. Pushed through by the government of President Emmanuel Macron, it was designed to put even more official weight behind the idea of laïcité, a term that loosely translates as “secularism” but is significantly more complicated and politically charged.
Everyone knows about “Liberté, egalité, fraternité.” But it is laïcité that defines the most ferociously contested battle lines in contemporary France. The term has come to express a uniquely French insistence that religion, along with religious symbols and dress, should be absent from the public sphere. No other country in Europe has followed this path. The word itself derives from the ancient Greek term for “the people,” or “the laity,” as opposed to the priestly class. Laïcité is not the same thing as freedom of religion (the free exercise of religion is guaranteed by the French constitution). What it sometimes means is freedom from religion. At a time when religion-fueled terrorist attacks continue to traumatize France, laïcité has become inextricably tangled with questions of national identity and national security.
The bill that Blanquer was discussing in the French Senate that day represented a multifront political maneuver—a classic example of triangulation by Macron, a centrist who founded a new political party and has been trying to draw votes from the right. It was, first, part of France’s efforts to combat Islamist fundamentalism after years of violence. Second, it implicitly pushed back against Turkey, a main supporter of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which is influential in some French mosques. And finally, because it appeals to the lofty notion of “republican values,” it was also a way to deprive the right and the far right of oxygen ahead of national elections next spring. Macron will likely face off once more against Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party, which thrives on fear of immigrants and Islam in a country where Muslims now make up 8 percent of the population.
In September, a network of jihadists went on trial for the 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, including 90 inside the Bataclan concert hall. Those attacks occurred only months after the slaughter by Islamic terrorists of staff members at the satirical magazine . For those who lived through that terrible time in the capital, as I did, the trial has brought back grim memories. It is the biggest trial in French history, with more than 1,000 plaintiffs, and is expected to last for nine months. A more recent tragedy has also darkened the outside Paris of a high-school teacher, Samuel Paty. Paty had shown his class offensive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in order to explain the principle of freedom of speech; he did so after reportedly urging anyone who might be disturbed—who might think the images blasphemous—to leave the room. Paty paid with his life at the hands of an 18-year-old terrorist, an immigrant from Chechnya who was soon cornered and killed by the police. The murder, provoked by Paty’s defense of a fundamental French value, freedom of speech, did not precipitate the anti-separatism bill, but it has haunted the country and weighed heavily on the government. “He wanted to strike the republic and its values,” Macron said of the killer. “This is our battle. And it is an existential one.”
