Islam and secularism: the schism of the left

She has not yet really entered the electoral field, but the quarrel looks like the most violent that the left has nurtured within it for a long time. Today, it is no longer over economic programs that the left is torn apart, but over religion and secularism, against the backdrop of terrorism and the rise of radical Islam.

Caught between a National Front which has captured part of the popular categories and a Muslim electorate which is no longer spontaneously won over to it, the French left is lost in a great overflow of invective which threatens to fracture it permanently. “I never would have thought that secularism, the foundation of the Republic, would once again become a political and intellectual issue,” remarks political scientist Laurent Bouvet, close to the Socialist Party.

At the heart of the discussions, the veil, of course (for or against, in particular, its ban on university), nationality (the fight over its disqualification for an act of terrorism has heated people's minds), but also a multitude of subjects of every day, “pork-free” menus in the canteens at headquarters that an RATP machinist refuses to occupy if a woman is seated there, through the headscarf of a mother accompanying school outings. Something to liven up family lunches and conferences – not to mention the ricochets of this dispute over feminist activism, which is also in the midst of a division.

Words, weapons of war

How to name the two camps? This is the first difficulty, as words are one of the weapons of war. Is there now a "relativist left", which would find social or postcolonial excuses for fundamentalism and terrorism, against a "republican and secular left", for which "defending women's rights and secularism makes it possible to to defuse both racist and jihadist propaganda", as journalist Caroline Fourest asserts?

Is the battle being waged between Democratic “multiculturalists” and Republican “identitarians”? Using the terms used by the feminists of the 1970s, the academics rather speak of a split between "universalists", supporters of a one and indivisible Republic, equal crucible of all citizens, and "differentialists", who claim the right to the difference.

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