Programme description
Young,
Muslim, and French
Produced by: Micah Fink &
Kathleen Hughes
Director of Photography: Hervé Cohen
Thursday, August 26, 2004
France's recent decision to ban the wearing of traditional Muslim
headscarves in public schools - a law widely perceived in the Muslim
community as an undemocratic expression of "Islamophobia" - has increased
tensions between the French Republic and its largest minority population,
numbering about five million people. Wide Angle explores this conflict in
the town of Dammarie-les-Lys, a racially diverse, working-class community on
the outskirts of Paris, where young Muslim women face a choice to obey the
ban - or flout it. Also featured is the local high school principal who, as
a member of the commission charged with reviewing the use of religious
symbols in public life, voted for the ban against headscarves. In nearby
Evry, we see the rector of the grand mosque leading Friday prayers and
conducting the conversion of a young French man to Islam. Europe's Muslim
population has doubled in the last decade, with the largest numbers settling
in France. Their presence is challenging traditional French notions of
nationhood and citizenship, and their increasingly vocal demands for
integration and recognition - on their own terms - is creating a crisis in
the republic. Young, Muslim, and French reveals the hopes, frustrations, and
political aspirations of second- and third-generation French-born Muslims -
and explores their potential to alter the landscape of France's national
identity.
