France: new slippage on national identity

PARIS - A minister close to French President Nicolas Sarkozy was accused Tuesday of further slippage in the debate over national identity after requiring young French Muslims that they should feel French, find a job and stop wearing "the cap backwards."

•    "It is not the trial of a young Muslim. His position, I respect it. What I want is that he feels French when he is French," said Monday night the Secretary of State for Family Nadine Morano, questioned on the compatibility of Islam with the Republic during a debate in the Vosges (eastern France)
  
     "What I want is that he loves France when he lives in this country, he finds a job, and stops speaking slang (argot of reversing the syllables of the words). He does not wear his cap backwards. That he tries to find a job, and we will accompany him in his training, "she said.
  
     While the debate in France on national identity, launched October 25, a few months before regional elections, has been repeatedly denounced as opportunistic and conducive to racist slippage political reactions did not wait.
  
     Leaders of the Opposition and the association “SOS Racisme” denounced on Tuesday an "ethnic conception of the nation" and a "further slippage".
  
     "It's very serious, because it confirms the caricatured look of several cabinet members on youth of this country, with about improbable amalgam of young Muslims," told AFP the spokesman of the Socialist Party Benoît Hamon.
  
     "After the veil and the burqa, the caps!", Added Djamila Sonzogni on behalf of the Greens.
  
     "No one in this country is more French than others!" have outraged the young Socialists, demanding the resignation of Ms. Morano and "immediate cessation" of great national debate, challenged even in the ranks of the right.
  
     For its part, the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) was "alarmed" at the comments made by Nadine Morano ruling "intolerable that the debate over national identity is a pretext for the release of bias in the political arena ".
  
     "This trivialization of prejudice is all the more frightening she automatically stigmatizes people of Muslim faith," added UEJF asking Eric Besson "put an end to debate on national identity."
  
     Nadine Morano was defended by criticizing the media for having the sentence out of context. "We talked about the problems of young people who come from neighbourhoods where I come from and where I am from, and I say with this caricature, the stigma that there was, I advised them not only to avoid wearing their caps askew, not to talk slang, "she said.
  
     Ahmed Bellal, a member of the Regional Council of Muslim worship of Lorraine (east), present this Monday evening to debate, flew to her aid Tuesday, asserting that Ms. Morano absolutely did not stigmatize Islam".
  
     "If she did, believe me, I was there and I would have responded immediately," he told AFP.
  
     Still, the place of the debate has contributed to the controversy: it was organized in Charmes, birthplace of Maurice Barres, one of the great thinkers of the French nationalist right, in the Vosges (east). A choice that Ms. Morano said, assuring that it was "not to rehabilitate Maurice Barres.
  
     "I would go anywhere to speak of national identity" No neighbourhood France is exempt from speaking of national identity. Whatever its history, regardless of the personalities who were born or who live there", she said to reporters on the sidelines of the debate.
  
     Nevertheless, the government's silence - no one has come to support Ms. Morano - after the new controversy reveals some embarrassment.
  
     Since late November, the ban of minarets in Switzerland contributed to blur the debate in France, which account 5 to 6 million Muslims, and encouraged to slippages even within the majority: the mayor of a small City has had the particular advantage of one of these debates to warn against the risk of "being eaten" by immigrants.
  
      
  Ennaharonline/ M. O.