The context of antisemitism and Islamophobia in France

Abstract

ABSTRACT Silverstein's essay explores the social drama surrounding the reported rise of a ‘new antisemitism’ in France in the context of a history of violence and present discrimination against French Muslims. Eschewing the essentializing approaches to Muslim antisemitism characteristic of many critics and pundits, the essay shows how current categories of ethnicity and religion in France (e.g. Jewish, Muslim, Arab and Berber) developed historically through colonial conquest, anti-colonial struggle and postcolonial racist violence. Focusing on the period of ‘Beur’ activism of the 1980s and more recent anti-police demonstrations by young men from suburban housing projects, Silverstein traces the formation of political subjectivity among Franco-Maghrebis in opposition to French state actors, police forces and those (including, more recently, assimilated French Jews) who appear to benefit disproportionately from the social, economic and political privileges of the national bourgeoisie. In the present period, many of these Franco-Maghrebis have increasingly identified as ‘French Muslims’ as their primary form of belonging, an identification bolstered by their ambivalent interpellation as, on the one hand, suspect members of the French nation under the policing and surveillance procedures of France's ‘war on terror’ and, on the other, objects of state dialogue via the creation of representative Islamic councils. Such politics of exclusion and incorporation, the essay argues, has played out in recent accusations of French Muslim antisemitism, accusations that challenge the right of French Muslims to recognition as a legitimate ‘community’ within France. Moreover, it critically examines statistical evidence for the reported rise in antisemitism and its attribution to French Muslims, paying close attention to schoolyard incidents of violence that constitute a large number of the reported incidents. Finally, Silverstein examines various minority voices among French Muslims—particularly Berber/Amazigh activists—who have enthusiastically adopted a secularist ideology and philosemitic discourse.