(in French) "La droite a, depuis plusieurs décennies, organisé un apartheid social et un apartheid spatial qui conduit à l'existence de villes pour gens aisés et des villes populaires, car les villes de droite ne veulent pas loger les ouvriers et les employés." La droite organise un apartheid social, l'Humanité, June 5, 2007.
"A few villains or a handful of Muslim "brothers" can hardly be held responsible for the ghettoization of more than 700 zones urbaines sensibles (ZUS, "sensitive urban areas": government-designated problem areas) and their 5 million inhabitants. As Laurent Bonelli points out, it makes more sense to attribute the recent violence to a process of urban apartheid — a stark contradiction of the French integrationist model — and to the discrimination and racism that afflict young Berbers, Arabs and Blacks. The smokescreen generated by the controversy over Islamic headscarves has blown away, revealing a brutal reality." Vidal, Dominique. "The fight against urban apartheid", Le Monde diplomatique, December 2005.
"We will have a sort of apartheid. Everyone will be proud to defend his own identity — I am a Muslim, I am a Christian, I am a Jew first. And then a Frenchman, second. This is not acceptable." Maceda, Jim. France divided by headscarf debate, NBC News, February 9, 2004.
However, we might at least recognise the problem. As usual a great many people are deliberately avoiding it, in particular by editing the word Muslim out of their debates, as if Islam had nothing to do with the dangerous mood sweeping Europe. Poverty and rejection have played a significant part, but there is an unmistakable sense in which the riots are Muslim, consciously so.
Muslims vary and their beliefs vary. But the response of some Muslims to frustration — whether or not the fault of westerners — has been to retreat into more extreme forms of Islam and into the arms of fundamentalists. Yet although we know this, and despite the Salman Rushdie affair, despite the bombs and assassinations that led up to September 11 attacks, despite the recent atrocities, we seem unwilling to recognise that what this can mean is deliberate separatism — apartheid." Marrin, Minette. Muslim apartheid burns bright in France, The Sunday Times, November 13, 2005.
