Hours after up to 40 000 Muslims marched against a planned ban on Islamic headscarves in state schools, a car-bomb attack on a newly appointed prefect of Algerian origin dramatically underlined the scale of France’s problem in assimilating its immigrant Muslim community.
The 4.30am explosion in the western city of Nantes destroyed the car of Aissa Dermouche (57) an academic and educationalist who was appointed the prefect — or top state representative — of the Jura region last Wednesday.
”There is no doubt that this was a criminal act,” said Jean-Marie Huet, the Nantes state prosecutor. Although the car was empty at the time and no one was hurt, Huet said the plainly well-prepared attack ”targeted the new prefect personally, and the symbol that he represents”.
Dermouche will be responsible for law and order in the region. His was not the first high-profile post to be awarded to a member of an immigrant minority, but it came amid a debate about how France can better assimilate its five million-strong Muslim community.
President Jacques Chirac, defending the values of a republic that supposedly treats everyone equally regardless of their background, has knocked the notion of positive discrimination and spoke last week only of the ”deserved promotion” of a ”talented individual of immigrant origin”.
Police said the explosive, whose nature has yet to be determined, could have been planted by Islamic radicals upset at Dermouche’s ”selling out”, or by far-right militants.
Up to 20 000 people, including women both veiled and bare-headed, marched through Paris on Saturday to protest against the headscarf ban. An estimated 10 000 took to the streets for the same cause in Lille, 2 000 in Marseille and as many in Mulhouse.
Some 400 marched in London, 1 000 in Berlin and 300 in Stockholm.
The ban on veils, Jewish skullcaps and outsized Christian crosses is mainly a response to the demands of an increasingly militant Islam in France. It is backed by most French politicians and voters, who hope it will protect the secular nature of the country’s education system and defend the strict separation between church and state that lies at the heart of the republic.
Even moderate Muslims, however, say the law infringes their individual liberty and religious duty, and risks stigmatising and alienating a disadvantaged community. – Guardian Unlimited Â