France's Tense Relationship With Their Muslim Population | The Odyssey Online
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France's Tense Relationship With Their Muslim Population

The attack on Nice comes with serious criticisms about France's security and questions about their history with Muslims.

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France's Tense Relationship With Their Muslim Population
Mehdi Fedouach—AFP/Getty Images

Nice, France is left with over 80 dead and 200 injured after the attack by a now-confirmed Tunisian man on Bastille Day. Both the city and the country watch in shock as its leaders look to react and find ways to prevent this from ever happening again.

However, this has happened before.

Bataclan. Charlie Hebdo. Both happened in 2015. Both were strongly linked to terrorist organizations. Both tragedies in their own right - lives lost in horrible and often unspeakable ways that left citizens in a state of mixed shock, fury, fear and harrowing sadness. Much of those elements are echoed today with the attack in Nice. And this fact only furthers the frustration of the French people.

With the deadliest terrorist attack in the Western world this year happening on French soil, many are pointing to their government's lax security and their soft stance on terrorism in general. Deputy mayor of Nice claims that "we cannot make war on terrorism with laws of peace" as he urges for a fiercer reaction to the attack, which has now been claimed by the Islamic State.

Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both responded to the attack in their own rhetoric, detailing hierarchies of priorities to prevent another event like this from happening in France or the U.S. Trump stressed the urgency of restricting immigration even further, as well as denying entire countries from entering the States. Clinton made it known that her priority as president would be to increase counter-terrorism intelligence between the U.S. and allied nations.

While France is criticized for their immigration practices, or lack thereof, Trump seemed to strike an interesting, different chord that resonates on a level of the utmost relevancy.

France's history with Islam has been rocky to say the least. Despite being one of the leading nations in promoting democratic governing and a culture of equality, France and their Muslim population has been nothing short of a tense relationship, with tensions constantly rising. The Algerian War of the 1950s ranks high among the sources of this tension, as it represents France's dark involvement with colonialism and denying smaller nations' independence.

Hostile responses to public shows of faith make it hard for French Muslim citizens to feel integrated into a society that claims the separation of church and state is a "French invention." While many French and European Muslim citizens embrace French government and their insistence on religious privacy, aside from a handful of incidents such as the heavily-contested 2004 ban on veils, it is the radicalized few that reach mainstream publicity. The extreme imbalance of this has shaped an image of Muslims akin to those involved in the Charlie Hebdo attack that has furthered the tension.

This perception, coupled with the attacks of the last 18 months, has fueled the narrative of stronger immigration policies across the entire continent. Europe's right-politicians push for anti-immigrant legislation, specifically with Muslim nations. The sentiment of being at war is a familiar one that has been ringing loudly among idealists these past few years.

But whether this action of isolating France, closing their borders and declaring war on Islam is an appropriate measure does not address the weakening of the relationship between Europe and its neighboring, Muslim nations. In fact it breeds anger and hatred towards a handful of countries that have not gone out of their way to be accommodating to peaceful interaction. It seems reasonable to believe that if there is already a negative connotation to Europe among Muslim people, refusing them access to these countries (who are often fleeing radicalized terror in their own countries) on the basis that a small percentage are terrorists would likely damage that relationship entirely.

With this mentality, events like Nice could happen again. Terrible tragedies will happen, despite any country's efforts to prevent them. But not addressing the issue with a willingness to concede one way or another, whether it be with issue of immigration or counter-terrorism intelligence and those procedures, will keep countries like France and the U.S. reactive rather than preventative. France has just called up 12 thousand reservists as an added level of protection in the event of another attack. Brazil has even decided to strengthen their security for the 2016 Summer Olympics. This, however, does not help either country address their own problems, which seem to be deeply embedded within the fabric of the culture.


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