Vol. 73/No. 38      October 5, 2009

A resolution calling for such a committee was adopted by the lower house of the legislature. It deplores seeing “imprisoned women in Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia or some other Arabic countries. This is already intolerable. It is unacceptable on the soil of the French Republic.”

The resolution also accuses Islamic imams in France of being “anti-Western, racist against white people, and anti-France.” It supports the 2004 law forbidding Islamic head scarves in schools.

A court decision in June refused French citizenship to Faiza Silmi. Born in Morocco and married to a French citizen, Silmi was denied citizenship because she wore a full veil that covered her face. The resolution judges this to be “incompatible with essential values of the French community.” New legislation now requires candidates for French citizenship to pass an exam on “French values” as well as the French language.

The deputies also point the finger at workers who are Muslim as being responsible for the war in Afghanistan. French participation in the war has come under criticism as casualties have begun to mount. There have been 31 French soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Ten French soldiers were killed last year in one battle alone. Two more soldiers were killed in September of this year.

The committee aims to deepen divisions between workers in the midst of rising unemployment and efforts by the French government to raise the retirement age and shift a larger part of the costs of medical care onto the backs of the working class. There are an estimated 5 million Muslims in France, most of them workers.  
 
CP mayor backs restrictions
French Communist Party leader André Gerin is playing a central role in promoting the anti-immigrant attacks. “How can a Western secular republic accept keeping a woman’s face in a cloth prison?” he wrote in an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Francois Fillon last June. “Aren’t we lending support to Salafism, a radical Islamic doctrine that is waging a struggle that is both anti-France and anti-white? … We see imprisoned women, entirely veiled, in our market places, our stores and places of recreation… . This is something which should be prohibited because it turns its back on a unique and universal France, with its right to asylum and hospitality.”

Gerin is a deputy in the French parliament and for the last 25 years has been mayor of Vénissieux, a major working-class suburb of Lyon. He complains that over half the population of Vénissieux is foreign-born, coming mostly from North Africa.

Gerin has made a name for himself over the years calling young unemployed immigrants in Vénissieux the “Talibans of the suburbs.” He calls for expelling from France the entire families of “young delinquents.” Recently a family in Vénissieux was refused public housing because a woman in the family wore a full veil.

Gerin’s open letter called on the government to adopt measures against the wearing of the burqa.  
 
Further restrictions on Muslims
Gerin chairs the new parliamentary committee, a majority of which is comprised of supporters of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Its members regularly make anti-Islamic statements in the public press while probing the possibilities of imposing further limits on the democratic rights of workers who are Muslims. Committee members have already indicated that they will propose more anti-Islamic legislation in their final report, perhaps including a law to forbid the wearing of the burqa in any public place.

The Communist Party has not disassociated itself from Gerin’s initiative nor criticized the openly racist passages in his open letter and in the resolution to parliament. The party’s daily newspaper, l’Humanité, has joined in the chorus denouncing the burqa as a “social problem” in France. The paper has not said whether the party would support legislation officially banning the garment from public places.  
 
 
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