In Attack's Wake, France Grapples With What It Means To Be French

Transcript

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

After the ISIS attacks on Paris, we wanted to hear what Elaine Sciolino has to say. She's an American journalist who has lived in Paris since 2002 when she was appointed The New York Times Paris bureau chief. She knows Paris well and is very experienced covering terrorism. She served as The Times' European investigative correspondent with responsibility for coverage of terrorism in Europe, including attacks in London and Madrid. Her experiences reporting on terrorism and political violence date back long before that, covering the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis. She was in Washington on 9/11 and covered the attack on the Pentagon. She's now a contributing writer to The New York Times. Fortunately for us, she's in New York today so it was easy to get her to the NPR bureau there to record our conversation. Elaine Sciolino has a new book called "The Only Street In Paris," which is about the street in her multicultural neighborhood called Rue Des Martyrs, which translates to the street of martyrs. Elaine Sciolino, welcome to FRESH AIR. How far is your neighborhood in France from the attacks?

ELAINE SCIOLINO: It's very close. It's just an adjoining arrondissement, or neighborhood, of Paris and I know that neighborhood very well - where the - the neighborhood where the attacks took place.

GROSS: Why do you think those neighborhoods were targeted?

SCIOLINO: Because these neighborhoods were ordinary places where normal French men and women celebrate on a Friday night. What do French do on Friday nights? They go to restaurants, they go to clubs, they go to concerts, they watch soccer matches - both in a stadium but in all of the sports bars that are in that neighborhood. It's the banality, the triviality, the ordinariness of this neighborhood that was attractive to the terrorists.

GROSS: You've been covering terrorist attacks for a long time, dating back to - well, you were in Beirut just before the U.S. military barracks were bombed. You covered Sadat's assassination, the Iranian crisis - revolution and hostage crisis - and so on. Do you see a connecting line to the attacks of Friday from those early attacks that you covered?

SCIOLINO: Well, one theme I think we have to explore is an attack on a way of life. In many of these attacks, one of the underlying causes was - get the West or get the friends of the West out of the Middle East. You know, why was Sadat assassinated? He was assassinated because he had made peace with Israel. Why were the Marine barracks and the barracks of the French military attacked in Beirut in 1983? Because these countries had dared to try to reform, recreate, reinvent a country in a Western way. You know, why - if we call the taking of the American embassy in Tehran an act of terrorism in 1979 - it was basically to expel what was perceived as an American spy operation and punish the United States for having made an alliance with the Westernized shah of Iran. So that in all of these attacks, you have some sort of attack on our way of life. And decades ago, it was - we need to establish peace in the Middle East - there is no justice as long as Israel occupies the territories that should rightfully belong to Palestinians. Now it's morphed into something else - it's almost a culture war between Western values and this ideal that uses a distorted, bizarre, extreme form of Islam to create a sort of - a super unnatural caliphate in the Middle East.

GROSS: ISIS is now threatening to attack Washington and any other country that takes part in airstrikes against ISIS. But why do you think France, and not the U.S. or another European country, was the target on Friday?

SCIOLINO: You know, I turn the question around and say, why did it take so long? You know, I covered the terrorist attacks in Madrid in 2004 and the attacks in London in 2005, and at the time of those attacks, I asked myself, is Paris next because Paris is a huge target for all sorts of reasons. First, it is home to the largest Muslim population and the largest Jewish population of any country in Europe. It has been very forward-leaning in terms of using military to attack Islamic extremists in Iraq, now in Syria, before that, in Mali. It has a huge number of radical Muslims living in the country. And these are radical French people. We have to remember that there are two and sometimes three generations of ethnic Arabs, Muslims, sub-Saharan Africans who follow Islam living in Paris - in France and in Paris. Most of them are peaceful but at a time when you've got very high unemployment generally in France and in the troubled suburbs where many of the immigrant communities reside - up to 40 percent, sometimes even 50 percent unemployment - it is a fertile breeding ground for extremism, especially among the young. Also, physically, it is very easy to get from France to Syria - you just go to the edge of Paris and you take a bus to Istanbul and then cross over land into Syria. So it's kind of like, you know, summer camp for terrorism training.

GROSS: Do you think that the French colonial legacy contributes at all to the anger of some Muslims in France?

SCIOLINO: The colonial legacy of France is a partial contributor. But what, I believe, is even more important to stress is that in France you have this idealistic notion of what it means to be French. It's an idealization of the secular Republican ideal that doesn't recognize difference. So that even in the census that the French take every - periodically - you don't count ethnicity, religion or race. Every person who carries a French passport is to look and feel and act as if he or she is French in a very uniform kind of way. It's very different from the United States and very different from Britain where we celebrate multiculturalism, we celebrate difference. You know, I go on my street - my shopping street, the Rue Des Martyrs, in my neighborhood, and I am proud of the fact that I'm what they call an (speaking French), a product of immigration. You know, that all four of my grandparents were Sicilian poor peasants or shopkeepers who came to the United States to create another life. This kind of idea is not really celebrated in France. And those with an Arab-sounding last name or a Muslim-sounding last name are stigmatized.

GROSS: France actually has a - I guess you'd call it a policy called laicite - am I saying that correctly?

SCIOLINO: Laicite.

GROSS: Laicite. Explain what that means.

SCIOLINO: Laicite is a word that's impossible to translate. It basically means laicism, or a lay - a belief in a lay system. You know, if you're brought up in Catholicism, you know that you've got religious people and then you've got laymen. Well, this - I guess the best way to translate it is really secularism. And if there is a national religion in France, it's laicite, or secularism. But what this has done is it has contributed to this divide. And Manuel Valls, the prime minister of France, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks against the Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper - the satirical newspaper - last January, said that France is suffering from a territorial, social and ethnic apartheid. He was the first person in the hierarchy of the French government to tell it like it is - that there is this deep cleavage in French society. And until you deal with this division, you are not going to end the penchant for committing terrorist acts.

GROSS: Well, the policy of laicite also outlaws public display of certain religious symbols. Would you describe what is considered inappropriate in public?

SCIOLINO: This is - what I think is a ridiculous policy because, I think, if you just trivialize issues like - do Muslim girls wear a headscarf to school or do Christian boys or girls wear large crosses or wear yarmulkes? It'll go away. But France is so attached to this Republican ideal, that over a decade ago, it passed a law forbidding what is called ostensible signs of religion. It was basically aimed at Muslims and basically aimed at girls who were wearing headscarves. It caused a complete disruption in the schools. I wrote about it at the time. There were young girls who shaved their heads so that they wouldn't be showing their hair. There was a young girl who started wearing wide bandanas to class. And one of the lawmakers said, we have to have a bandana ban. There was, at Christmas-time in one of the schools in the north, a handout of Saint Nicolas chocolates and there was a big cross above his - and they had to destroy the chocolates. It's absurd. It's gotten even worse in recent years because a few years ago, France passed a ban on wearing the full facial coverage by Muslim women in public space. And it was perceived as an anti-Islam move. Where if the French had been more clever, they could've just said, look, anyone who covers his or her face in public, whether it's with a motorcycle helmet or a ski mask or a facial mask, is breaking the law. We have to do this for security reasons; we have to be able to see the faces of people in public space, whether it's a bank or a post office or a governmental building. But Islam has been stigmatized and that is what is so dangerous and troubling.

GROSS: How has that increased tensions in France between the Muslim community and the historically French community?

SCIOLINO: Muslims feel stigmatized, and it's only gotten worse in the last couple of years with the rise of the radical right. The far-right National Front leader, Marine Le Pen, is brilliant. She's a lawyer, she's extremely clever and articulate and she's able to penetrate the hearts and minds of those franco-francais - the working class, lower and middle-class French, who believe that their country is being taken away from them. And she will run for president in 2017, and she's expected to do quite well. Even Nicolas Sarkozy, who was always center-right and, you know, he was president in France from 2007 to 2012, has created a new party. And he will run again on a law-and-order ticket that will call for much more security, fewer civil liberties and a return to something that will look much more like a French police-state.

GROSS: What are other signs of the far-right's growing power in France?

SCIOLINO: The far-right has won in local elections in some small but crucial cities in the south of France. And there are some absurd manifestations of some of the things they want to do and have done. For example, some of these mayors have said, there are too many kebab shops in France because kebabs - which are Turkish, not even North African Muslim - are not French. So we need to put back our (speaking French) and our little French cafes and ban kebab shops from expanding. Recently, there's been a controversy because some of the far-right political leaders have called for forcible serving of pork in all public schools. Muslim and Jewish students cannot eat pork. So they're being told, if you don't want to adhere to our secular Republican ideal and what is part of the French cuisine, go to your own private schools.

GROSS: Whoa.

SCIOLINO: Oh, even - there's one mayor who said that people should be banned from hanging their laundry out of their windows because this is not French. I mean, tell that to, you know, the memory of my Sicilian grandmother who used to hang the laundry out in the backyard.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Elaine Sciolino. She's lived in Paris since 2002 when she became The New York Times Paris bureau chief. She served as The New York Times European investigative correspondent with responsibility for covering terrorism in Europe and also Iran's nuclear program. And her coverage of terrorism dates back to the assassination of Anwar Sadat and the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis. Now she has a book called "The Only Street In Paris," which is about a street that's next to the street that she lives on. And Elaine, I'm going to ask you to say it in French.

SCIOLINO: (Laughter) the Rue Des Martyrs - the street of martyrs.

GROSS: Thank you.

SCIOLINO: It's ironic, isn't it, that that's the name of the street?

GROSS: It's very ironic because the martyrs that that street was named for has a very different connotation than how the word martyr is used in suicide bombings, like the ones that happened in France on Friday.

Let's take a short break, Elaine, then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is journalist Elaine Sciolino. She's lived in Paris since 2002, when she became The New York Times Paris bureau chief. She's served as The New York Times European investigative correspondent with responsibility for covering terrorism in Europe. She covered the Iranian hostage crisis and revolution. She wrote a book about Saddam Hussein. She knows a lot about terrorism and about life and war in the Middle East and North Africa. She has a new book called "The Only Street In Paris." And it's about the street near the street where she lives. So how is this - or is this increasing alienation among Muslims in France?

SCIOLINO: There has been a generation of alienation among Muslims in France. Many Muslims live not in Paris proper, for example, but live in the suburbs that ring Paris. These are called troubled suburbs. They're often put into these high-rise buildings and - which have been places of alienation. You know, try to get a job if you have an address in one of these high-rise buildings from one of these suburbs and you have an Arab-sounding last name. It just doesn't happen.

In 2005, there were riots throughout the suburbs of Paris and also many of the other cities in France. And I covered those riots for The New York Times. And it was dramatic to see how many young people in these banlieues, or suburbs, just said we don't feel French, where their parents, who had come to France as immigrants from Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, said we feel integrated. You know, we're working as construction workers or nurses or home health care providers, even as, you know, housekeepers or maids. We feel integrated, and we're terrified because our sons and daughters don't feel as if they belong.

GROSS: So you feel like the far right is inflaming tension and not solving the problem?

SCIOLINO: Oh, these attacks were a gift to the far right, wrapped up in a bow before Christmas. This feeds perfectly into the French fear that there's no security on our borders, that immigrants are the enemy, that there aren't enough jobs for normal French people so that we have to prevent the other - the alien, the foreigner - from invading our country.

GROSS: A lot of the Muslims who are living in Europe and in the United States fled dictatorships, or now they're fleeing ISIS or a dictator. And do you see an opportunity for a common cause of everybody uniting, you know, Westerners and Muslim immigrants living in the West against common enemies?

SCIOLINO: Well, it's an interesting question. I feel that the Muslims, as Muslims, have not been united against this hatred, this racism, that is rampant throughout Europe and that now is infecting the American political discourse. Part of the problem is that there's no such thing as one Muslim. I mean, if you look at American Muslims, American Muslims are very well integrated into American society. If you look at the Muslim community in and around Detroit, for example, - you know, they work. They own businesses. They hold elective office. Their children go to universities. They feel American, in part because they can celebrate their difference and because their Muslimness (ph) - their Muslim identity is not somehow suspect.

You know, the Muslims of France are largely North African or sub-Saharan African, in part because of the waves of immigration after the Second World War and after decolonization. If you look at the Muslims in Britain, the majority of them are South Asian. It's a different cultural background and history. If you look at the Muslims in Germany, the majority of them are Turkish. So they come from different cultures, economic backgrounds and political histories. It's very hard to join them together in any kind of common cause and say, you know, we are Muslims. We are proud of being Muslims.

GROSS: My guest is Elaine Sciolino, the former New York Times Paris bureau chief. She's lived in Paris since 2002. After a short break, we'll talk about immigration and open boundaries in Europe and how terrorists can exploit that. Sciolino has a new book called "The Only Street In Paris." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're talking about the ISIS attacks in Paris and related issues with journalist, Elaine Sciolino. She lives in - she's lived in Paris since 2002 when she became The New York Times Paris bureau chief. As the Times' European investigative correspondent, she covered terrorist attacks in Europe including attacks in London and Madrid. She also covered the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis and the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. She has a new book called, "The Only Street In Paris." It's about the Rue des Matyr, which translates to the Street of Martyrs. It's adjacent to the street where she lives. The people who are migrating from Syria into Europe are causing a lot of chaos in European countries. The countries don't know how to cope with the influx. There's a lot of controversy about whether the migrants should be allowed in or not, how many to accept, how to integrate them into society. And what has the policy been in France about how many people to accept and what to do once they get there?

SCIOLINO: The policy in France has been uneven, and it's still evolving. Part of the issue is that migrants from Syria don't want to settle in France. France has never been very welcoming to this kind of refugee, even though France is the country of liberte, egalite, fraternite - liberty, equality, fraternity. There are several hundred, maybe thousands of immigrants stuck in northern France in these horrible sorts of makeshift centers and even in - camping out in woods trying to escape France, flee France and somehow make it across the English Channel into Britain. So that in France, the system - the policy is in movement, in flux. It hasn't been like the policy in Germany where Angela Merkel, the chancellor, has been willing to take so many of these refugees.

I think it's going to get worse in the next few months because there is going to be a desire on many European countries - you already have seen it - to close the borders. When you say close the borders, what does that mean? It means closing the open borders that have existed for some time among European Union countries. Sort of like if you look at the European Union as one United States of Europe that - so that you can cross from one state or one country into another without even having to show your passport. There is a call especially about the far right to close the borders, to reinstate passport controls, serious security checks and to eliminate this open border system. You know, when I think about how we in America could understand what's going on in Europe, imagine if there were a million plus refugees fleeing a war and were just coming up against the Rio Grande. You know, imagine if you had a war in a South American country and a million plus refugees that didn't have necessarily the same religion or the same language as we Americans pushing to come into America. What would our response be?

GROSS: The opening of boundaries between European countries - there's a call on the far right in France and in other countries in Europe to close those borders and have more control over who crosses the border. Is it just the far right calling for that or are law enforcement and intelligence people calling for that as well?

SCIOLINO: I think there are a lot of people calling for it. I mean, I think - I live in Paris, right? I live right in the heart of Paris. I live not far from where these terrorists attacks took place. My younger daughter has eaten at La Petite Cambodge. My older daughter knows the Bataclan Concert Hall. You know, how do I feel as a normal person living in France who wants to protect my life? Do I like the fact that it's really easy for any young Frenchman radicalized or not to take a bus into Turkey and then cross into Syria for military training feeling that he or she is doing God's work because he or she is helping to install a pure Islamic State? I don't feel good about it. And I'm honestly thinking about the extent to which France has to balance a need for more security against a need to protect civil liberties.

GROSS: What's the balance that you're thinking of?

SCIOLINO: Oh, that's the hard question. And it's not one that we can answer now; it's one we really have to think about. You know, how - do you put surveillance cameras in France in every single subway station? In every single train station? In every single government office the way you have them in fancy shops in Rue du Faubourg Saint Honore in Paris' fanciest shopping street. Will French - will the French tolerate that? You know, the French don't like being surveilled. They don't like being monitored like that. They want personal freedoms, but this is going to be a debate that plays out in the next months and in the next year or so as politicians and security forces and intelligence agents start to think, how do we make Paris and France safer? How do we protect our people? But an even larger question is how do we protect all French not just people who are victims of terror but people who are victims of economic inequality, of racism, of separation and of ostracism.

GROSS: President Hollande is the former first secretary of the French Socialist party so he's certainly not from the far right. What has his policy been up to this point regarding ISIS but also just regarding how to deal with the Muslim community that is often alienated from France because France - France's policy of secularism is interpreted as discriminating against them.

SCIOLINO: Well, the French policy has been schizophrenic. On the one hand, he has taken a very robust attitude and stance against ISIS by being in the forefront of military attacks against this evil in our modern world. You know, the French military is very strong. It's very effective. It's very capable. And so he has not shied away from using military force here where President Jacques Chirac did decide not to join the American effort to go to war against Iraq. Hollande - like Sarkozy, like Chirac, you know, three presidents in a row - would say that the American policy to go to war against Iraq is one of the reasons why ISIS was created and that they were justified in opposing that war. But this time France has been extremely courageous in tackling the threat of ISIS. On the other hand, there has been very little that has been done to try to integrate France's large Muslim community into the mainstream public life.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Elaine Sciolino. She's a journalist who has lived in Paris since 2002 when she became The New York Times Paris bureau chief. She's served as The New York Times European investigative correspondent with responsibility for covering terrorism and she - her coverage of terrorism dates back to the assassination of the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Now, she has a new book which is called, "The Only Street in Paris." And it's about the street - near the street where she lives. Let's take a short break, then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is journalist Elaine Sciolino. She is the former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times. She moved to Paris when she accepted that position in 2002. She's also served as The New York Times European investigative correspondent with responsibility for covering terrorism in Europe. She's covered a lot of terrorist actions around the world since the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Now she has a new book, which is called "The Only Street In Paris: Life On The Rue Des Martyrs," which translates to the Street of Martyrs. And it's a street - it's the street where she lives, and it's right near one of the streets in which the terrorist actions took place on Friday - the terrorist attacks.

Do you perceive anti-Semitism as being on the rise in France? On the day of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, there was also a kosher marker that was attacked.

SCIOLINO: That's a hard question to answer. Certainly, there is a new type of anti-Semitism in France. Look, there has always been anti-Semitism in France, and France still suffers from its tragic history as a country that was occupied and collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War. Part of the new anti-Semitism in France is that it's a more generalized anti-Semitism than just, we, the French, hate Israel, hate Israeli policy. There should be a Palestinian state, so death to Israel. I mean, what you heard in France, in Paris, in demonstrations, even before the attack on the kosher supermarket last January, were cries and demonstrations of death to Jews.

GROSS: And there were such demonstrations with people shouting death to Jews in Le Place de Republique, which is near where the attacks took place on Friday and where there have been a lot of memorials over the past couple of days. And anybody watching cable news has seen a lot of reporters talking right there.

SCIOLINO: Yes, but what I really want to say is that the question of anti-Semitism in France is extremely complicated. And I can't say whether there is an increase. What I said is that there's a different manifestation of it that is ugly and evil. But what your listeners need to know is that if you're on the street of Paris and you say death to Jews, that's a crime punishable by prosecution. You know, it is a hate crime, and hate crimes are punished mercilessly in France. If you are a Nazi, if you are a Holocaust denier in France, that's a hate crime. You can be prosecuted for that. And Marine Le Pen's father, who is the founder of the National Front, has been prosecuted for hate crimes. You know, and also, there are sometimes statements made that oh, all the French Jews are leaving France and they're all immigrating to Israel. There are no French statistics on how many French Jews are actually leaving France. And I can tell you, a lot of people are leaving France.

GROSS: You mean not just Jews, yeah.

SCIOLINO: Let me explain. Half my American friends have left France. French people are leaving France. Other Europeans are leaving France and French Jews are leaving France, and it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism or terrorism. It has to do with new tax laws that put such a high tax burden on anyone in France that a lot of smart people are saying I'm going to live elsewhere. As long as you live outside of France six months plus one day, you can avoid French taxes. This isn't a very popular thing to say, but I want to see much more data on who these French people are who are leaving France because of anti-Semitism because the French don't collect that data.

GROSS: You tell an interesting story in your book "The Only Street In Paris" about a Jewish man after Charlie Hebdo, who, instead of shouting, you know, Je suis Charlie Hebdo - I am Charlie Hebdo - was demonstrating and saying Je suis Juif - I am a Jew. And he showed you his Jewish star from the days of the Nazi occupation of France. Can you tell us that story and what you took away from it?

SCIOLINO: Yes, this is an important story because, you know, France is a country where history matters. And people who survived the occupation remember those days, and they look at what is happening now as an ugly manifestation of hatred and fear mongering. But they also say we have suffered before, and we are resilient people and we will prevail. And the character in my book, whose surname is Rosenfeld, is an elderly man who was a child during the Holocaust. And he lived in Paris, and he was forced to wear the Jewish star because he was a Jew. And he still carries that Jewish star in his wallet. And when he pulled it out and showed it to me, it still had ink stains on it from when he was a schoolboy from when his fountain pen leaked. And he wants to be buried with it. And he says it's important to bear witness. He said this after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and the Jewish supermarket. He said I am Jewish, but I am French. And my Frenchness counts as well. And he was out there demonstrating, but he was demonstrating with both identities - his French identity and his Jewish identity, which is not a very popular thing to do. French people generally hide their religion. You know, you don't go to a dinner party in Paris and say so, you know, are you Jewish, or what about - you know, are you Catholic? You don't talk about religion in public.

GROSS: We've been talking about anti-Semitism in France. The street where you live and the street that you write about in your new book, are these multicultural streets? You've been talking about the difficulty of immigrants becoming integrated into the fabric of France.

SCIOLINO: The street where I live is adjacent to the Market Street of my neighborhood, which is called the Rue des Martyrs, the Street of Martyrs and the subject of my book. This is a neighborhood that historically was one of the main Jewish neighborhoods of Paris. The largest synagogue in Paris, the Victoire Synagogue, is in the neighborhood. And on Friday nights, you will see French Jews walking home with their yarmulkes to observe the Sabbath. It's a neighborhood where if you go to the supermarket, you will see matzos and Shabbat candles and matzo meal. And it's populated largely by classic French people with deep roots and immigrants of various different layers and periods of time. So that the greengrocer my neighborhood is a Tunisian Muslim. The florist in my neighborhood is a Tunisian Jew. I have a chapter an antique dealer who wears his Jewishness on his sleeve, which is very unusual in France, and came to our trilingual Passover dinner because he had no place to go for Passover. But it's also a neighborhood where you have French - Franco France - deeply-rooted French people who have been on the street for 50 years, you know, selling cheese, selling meat, selling fish. And all of us live perfectly fine together. You know, it's becoming very, very upscale now as older people are dying or moving away and younger people are moving with their kids. It's this extraordinary push of gentrification. But it still remains a neighborhood of integration and getting on with daily life, no matter what.

GROSS: Elaine Sciolino, thank you very much, and I wish you and your family well. Be safe, be well, thank you so much for sharing. The background that you shared with us today was very helpful.

SCIOLINO: Well, thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Elaine Sciolino lives in Paris and is the former New York Times Paris bureau chief and European investigative correspondent. She has a new book called "The Only Street In Paris: Life On The Rue Des Martyr." Coming up, Ken Tucker reviews a new album by Wreckless Eric, who emerged during the punk rock era. This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.