Laura Tulchin on Sarkozy's Religious Advocacy

By: Laura Tulchin

February 25, 2008

Two weeks ago, French president Sarkozy unveiled a proposal that, instead of refocusing his first-term away from his tabloid-worthy marriage to the singer Carla Bruni, set off new waves of protest and controversy. Sarkozy’s newest battle is over his plan to introduce an intensive Holocaust educational program, in which every fifth grader in the French public school system would “adopt” the identity of a child killed during the Holocaust, learning about their family and following their story to the concentration camps. Besides the uproar by psychologists and parents who fear traumatizing side effects for their 10-year-olds, Sarkozy’s plan is seen by detractors as part of a troublingly strategic effort to strengthen ties between religion and the state. In a country where intersections between religion and politics are always messy and usually avoided at all costs, Sarkozy’s commitment to religion is seen by many as bizarre, or simply un-French.


Although the Holocaust program is defended as an educational safeguard against genocide, the religious undertones of the Sarkozy presidency invoke ulterior motives. Sarkozy is a self-professed man of religion: he visited the Pope in December and has said that the violence of the twentieth century can be partly attributed to the loss of God in Western European society. France has 15 million agnostics and atheists, and it prides itself of its history of secularism. The frequent American invocation of God in politics is absurd for the French: “Who cares if a candidate is a Mormon—how does he feel about troop withdrawal from Iraq? And why is God mentioned on your dollar bills and in your pledge of allegiance?” But, at this point, most French citizens would admit that upholding the strict divisions between religion and state has become confused, and that the line between the two is increasingly blurry.

Much of the 2007 presidential election between the Socialist Party’'s Segolene Royal and Sarkozy centered on what position the French government should adopt toward the growing Muslim population, the majority of whom are marginalized in the suburbs. In 2004, a year before the riots in the banlieues, the government banned all religious symbols in schools, forbidding “conspicuous” religious apparel like turbans, large Christian crosses, and Islamic headscarves. The law, meant to extract the increasingly visible religious disparities within French society, only added fuel to the fire. As the 2005 riots demonstrated, trying to ignore religion altogether only strengthened differences. During the presidential campaign, Sarkozy took a hard-line stance toward the unrest in banlieues, stressing assimilation and integration. Yet his presidency has been marked by an unprecedented emphasis on religion and its power to transform politics. One must ask, then, whose God is Sarkozy invoking?

Even if his faith is all-inclusive (as interior minister, Sarkozy controversially included the Union of Islamic Organizations, which has ties to Egypt’'s Muslim Brotherhood), a polled 73 percent of French said they’'re uncomfortable with Sarkozy'’s sermonizing. In Rome, he called the banlieues “religious deserts” and heralded religion as a way to calm class tensions within Italy. But the integration and assimilation that Sarkozy unabashedly pushed for during his presidential campaign seem a far way off from his religious undertones. And his Holocaust plan seems just another blur in the line. The program is already being revised, but the original sentiment remains. Sarkozy —and France—–are entering uncharted territory here. To Sarkozy’'s credit, the 2005 riots made it clear that the old way wasn’'t working. But whether such a dramatic shift from avoiding religion at all costs in the public domain to using the presidential podium as a pulpit will strike the right chord is doubtful.
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