Berkley Center

After just six months in France I can already tell this country has a considerable soft spot for anniversary celebrations. For the French, the anniversaries of the birth—and sometimes even death—of every writer, philosopher, and political leader are worthy of a special honorary day and at least half a dozen commemorative magazine spreads. This spring I witnessed the centenary of the birth of Simone de Beauvoir and am already anticipating the fortieth anniversary of the May 1968 riots that rocked the country.

France recently marked, however, the anniversary of an event much less laudable than the groundbreaking publication of The Second Sex or the launch of widespread cultural revolution. Two years ago this week, 23-year-old Ilan Halimi, a Parisian Jew, was tortured and killed, ostensibly for his religious beliefs. Halimi’s controversial murder took place during a tumultuous period replete with acts of violence and riots across the country. The violence was fueled by widespread opposition to proposed employment legislation as well as a deep-seeded, escalating discontent among the largely unemployed populations in the outskirts of Paris. A significant portion of these jobless suburban-dwellers are second generation North African immigrants, many of whom are dissatisfied with their economic situation and a small minority of whom find fault in another of France’s religious minorities, the Jewish community.

Although always elevated, the tensions between Muslims and Jews in France have recently been ratcheted by the country'’s evolving demographic make-up. France is home to both the largest Jewish and Muslim communities on the European continent. However, other factors in addition to demographics are at play. Both communities frequently evoke their storied pasts, either as former colonial subjects in the Maghreb and the Caribbean or victims of the Holocaust. In both cases, questions of past discrimination, current challenges, and integration into French society are at play.

However, according to Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and member of President Nicholas Sarkozy’'s cabinet, bigotry and discrimination are a much bigger issue for Muslims in France today than their Jewish counterparts, citing the fact that the latter population is “more integrated.” In other words, Veil, herself a Jew, believes that despite Halimi’'s murder and other violent acts that have garnered much attention, anti-Muslim sentiment currently runs much deeper in French contemporary life than anti-Semitism. Despite Veil’'s assessment, anti-Semitism is not a dead letter by any means. The case of Ilan Halimi is not an isolated one. A young Jewish mother was attacked on the metro simply for living in Paris'’ heavily Jewish sixteenth arrondissement. Spearheaded by Sarkozy back in his days as finance minister, a cabinet-level group now meets monthly to address this growing problem.

Altogether, both anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim ideologies remain extremely salient —and thorny— issues, addressed frequently in the media but less so in the classroom, at least in my experience. At my right-wing university, Université Jean Moulin-Lyon III, I have not seen physical evidence of either, but the anti-immigration and sometimes racist ideologies of the political party Front National still have a voice among students and professors alike. Housing and employment discrimination for French residents of Maghrebi descent is well documented. A friend of mine, a Tunisian native and university student in Lyon, has faced this phenomenon, —albeit in a minor way. At the accounting firm where she interns, Yousr was referred to not by name, but as “the Tunisian” for the first several weeks, a qualifier that immediately sets her apart from her peers. Such acts of workplace discrimination, extensive media coverage, and the various steps taken by the Chirac and Sarkozy administrations clearly indicate that intolerance along religious lines remains a hot-button issue in this truly pluralist society.