Respected political scientist Gilles Kepel, a specialist in the Muslim world, led a team of researchers in a year-long project in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, two Paris suburbs that exploded in riots in 2005.
The resulting study − “Suburbs of the Republic” − found that religious institutions and practices are increasingly displacing those of the state and the French Republic, which has a strong secular tradition.
Families from the districts, which are mainly populated by immigrants from north and west Africa and their descendants, regularly attend mosque, fast during Ramadan and boycott school meals that are not “halal.”
With between five and six million Muslim residents and citizens, France has the largest Islamic population in the European Union, and central government often struggles to address the challenges to integration that this poses.
Kepel performed a similar study 25 years earlier, and told the daily Le Monde that the influence of Islam in the daily lives and cultural references of the suburbs has “diversified and intensified” since then.
French schools, which are rigorously non-religious, have traditionally been seen as having the role of training young citizens of the republic, but local officials say Islamic pupils are heading home for a halal lunch.
“A certain number of children don’t come to the canteen any more or, if they come, they only take a starter and dessert,” Xavier Lemoine, the center-right mayor of Monfermeil, told Europe 1 radio. » | AFP | PARIS | Thursday, October 06, 2011
