Our France: Muslims tell their stories

[Surya Gayatri]

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/02998426-a1be-11e4-bd03-00144feab7de.html

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris, how does it feel to be a Muslim in France?





In these interviews we have aimed to stand aside and let some French Muslims speak for themselves. Especially since the terrorist attacks on Paris, western media have been talking about “Islam” and “Muslims”. But the speakers are almost all non-Muslims. In France, the loudest voices belong to people who don’t seem to like Muslims much

The writer Eric Zemmour, the politician Marine Le Pen or the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. French Muslims, says the Algerian-French writer Akram Belkaïd, are forever the subject, almost never the speakers. One of our interviewees here recounts having recently spoken into a microphone for the first time in his life.

True, in the weeks since three jihadis killed 17 people in Paris, Muslims have been interviewed more than before. But often it was simply to respond to the attacks: were Muslims for them or against?

In our interviews, Muslims — or sometimes secular people of Muslim origin — talk about the attacks and the aftermath. They speak about Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, about discrimination and about Jews. But they also speak about what absorbs them most: their daily lives. These people are working or looking for work, raising kids, trying to have fun sometimes.

Our nine interviewees, from the Paris and Lyon regions, are a plethora of voices. We don’t pretend that they are statistically representative of the five million or so Muslims in France. (Nobody knows the exact number, as France does not collect ethnic statistics.) Some of the people we spoke to are unemployed. Others — contrary to the stereotype of Muslims in France — have good jobs and mostly happy lives. Some of them are angry and, especially after the terrorist attacks, many are scared.
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Interesting profiles of diverse members of France's Muslim community, post January 11.