Paris: Immigrant Muslims in Belleville
Anyone wanting to understand the situation of Muslims in Europe should visit Belleville. The rundown Parisian neighbourhood just east of the city centre is packed with couscous restaurants, Islamic bookshops and French citizens of Arab origin. About 1.5 million nominal Muslims live in the Paris region, more than in any other European city.
But the narrow streets of Belleville are also packed with people of Chinese, Jewish, sub-Saharan African and middle-class French origin. A class of children pours out of a kindergarten: toddlers of four different colours hold hands while their teachers issue commands in French.
The Moroccan novelist Abdellah Taïa lives in the Belleville building on whose steps, according to legend, Edith Piaf was born. (In truth, "The Little Sparrow" was born in a local hospital.) "I'm even overjoyed to go to McDonald's," says Taïa, as he pours a version of Moroccan mint tea reinvented by a posh French tea house. "The servers are white, black, Arab, Chinese. It's almost too philosophical-existential an experience, to see this mélange". On Taïa's street, the vagrants are French, Algerian and Portuguese. There is a café for white creative types run by Arabs and frequented in the mornings by Chinese businessmen. By the metro around the corner, older Arab men consort with Chinese prostitutes.
Of course not all Muslim life in France or Europe resembles Belleville. In the ethnic ghettos outside Paris, more of which later, nominal Muslims can grow to adulthood without ever entering a white French person's home. Yet Belleville matters. A commonly depicted future scenario for Europe is of "Eurabia", where a religious Muslim majority runs the continent. But most French political scientists and demographers think the Belleville scenario of "mélange" is more likely.
Certainly "Eurabia" has had more publicity, especially in the US. Bernard Lewis, a famous scholar of Islam, cited the number of immigrants from Muslim countries, and their relatively high birth-rates, to conclude: "Judging by current trends, Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population by the end of the twenty-first century at the latest." The US author Bruce Bawer writes in While Europe Slept: "Many think France will be the first western European country with a majority Muslim population – and thus the first to experience full-fledged sharia law."
The recent Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, by the FT's political commentator Christopher Caldwell, is the most nuanced and sophisticated statement yet of the Eurabia thesis. In the Eurabia scenario, French president Nicolas Sarkozy's recent attack on the burka is just another skirmish in the "clash of civilisations" between east and west. But in the Belleville scenario, Sarkozy's speech means something very different.
(more)
Source: Financial Times
Anyone wanting to understand the situation of Muslims in Europe should visit Belleville. The rundown Parisian neighbourhood just east of the city centre is packed with couscous restaurants, Islamic bookshops and French citizens of Arab origin. About 1.5 million nominal Muslims live in the Paris region, more than in any other European city.
But the narrow streets of Belleville are also packed with people of Chinese, Jewish, sub-Saharan African and middle-class French origin. A class of children pours out of a kindergarten: toddlers of four different colours hold hands while their teachers issue commands in French.
The Moroccan novelist Abdellah Taïa lives in the Belleville building on whose steps, according to legend, Edith Piaf was born. (In truth, "The Little Sparrow" was born in a local hospital.) "I'm even overjoyed to go to McDonald's," says Taïa, as he pours a version of Moroccan mint tea reinvented by a posh French tea house. "The servers are white, black, Arab, Chinese. It's almost too philosophical-existential an experience, to see this mélange". On Taïa's street, the vagrants are French, Algerian and Portuguese. There is a café for white creative types run by Arabs and frequented in the mornings by Chinese businessmen. By the metro around the corner, older Arab men consort with Chinese prostitutes.
Of course not all Muslim life in France or Europe resembles Belleville. In the ethnic ghettos outside Paris, more of which later, nominal Muslims can grow to adulthood without ever entering a white French person's home. Yet Belleville matters. A commonly depicted future scenario for Europe is of "Eurabia", where a religious Muslim majority runs the continent. But most French political scientists and demographers think the Belleville scenario of "mélange" is more likely.
Certainly "Eurabia" has had more publicity, especially in the US. Bernard Lewis, a famous scholar of Islam, cited the number of immigrants from Muslim countries, and their relatively high birth-rates, to conclude: "Judging by current trends, Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population by the end of the twenty-first century at the latest." The US author Bruce Bawer writes in While Europe Slept: "Many think France will be the first western European country with a majority Muslim population – and thus the first to experience full-fledged sharia law."
The recent Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, by the FT's political commentator Christopher Caldwell, is the most nuanced and sophisticated statement yet of the Eurabia thesis. In the Eurabia scenario, French president Nicolas Sarkozy's recent attack on the burka is just another skirmish in the "clash of civilisations" between east and west. But in the Belleville scenario, Sarkozy's speech means something very different.
(more)
Source: Financial Times
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