On 9/20/2010 7:44 PM, Joseph Catron wrote:
> You're making two distinct points that don't really go together. In the
> United States, at least, anti-Muslim sentiment seems to be the strongest in
> regions without any significant Muslim presence. In New York, Detroit, and
> other strongholds, everyone understands that it's really just another
> religion. Which raises an interesting question: why does regular exposure to
> Islam have opposite effects on non-Muslim Americans and Europeans?
Yes, but Dearborn Michigan, however many Muslims it has, isn't comparable to Marseille. In France, the case I know best, what bothers the typical provincial middle-aged anti-Islam type is the feeling that his country is becoming less French. "Why is Quick [a major fast-food chain] selling halal food?" That type of thing. It is *exactly* comparable to the "press one for English" hysteria coming from anti-immigration types in the US. It's a feeling that they "don't recognize their country anymore." In Dearborn, however many Muslims there are you know it's just a local enclave.
As for how that gets translated into politics, I would point out that in the US you have this dynamic where smart Republicans are terrified that their party will be a permanent minority given the projections about Latino population. That restrains some of the worst anti-immigrant rhetoric. In France, it plays out differently. First, Muslims make up probably only half the share of population that Latinos do here. Second, at least until recently, the center-right party (the UMP) wasn't really branded as the "party of Muslim-haters," the way the GOP seems to have been ever since Proposition whatever in CA. That's partly because the FN drained off much of that vote from the center-right. So until recently you could find worse rhetoric in France than in the US, but most of it came from the ostracized far right.
Sarkozy's innovation has been trying to get those voters back with openly hard-right rhetoric. That's new and for a while it opened the floodgates to some awful fucking crap, e.g., during his cynical "debate on national identity" or whatever. But so far the experiment has been a failure and he's come under a lot of fire from leaders in his own party. Many UMP leaders called for the national identity debate to be shut down. Dominique de Villepin (who wants to run in 2012) had an impassioned statement denouncing the roundup of Roma where he said it's a stain on the honor of France, etc.
I don't know if that gets at the differences you're talking about....
SA