The Future of the French Language in Light of French Anti-Islamism1

The recent moves by the French government to ban the Islamic headscarf have outraged defenders of human rights throughout the world. Under the guise of secularism, the French want to eliminate all “religious symbols” from the public sphere. In Islam, however, the hijab is not merely a “symbol,” it is a religious obligation. Nonetheless, the French government, with full support, wants to force Muslim women to unveil themselves in government buildings, force them to swim in bathing suits with strange men, and have them consult male doctors instead of female ones - against their will - all in the name of encouraging integration, assimilation and secularization. Secularism, of course, is merely the pretext being used in a vain attempt to stem the tide of Islam in France. Secularism is the division between Church and State. It does not mean that freedom of religious expression is abolished.

France, which was once a bastion of liberalism and tolerance, has been veering increasingly towards the right. The policies and rhetoric coming from France nowadays seem more in line with a repressive authoritarian state than a liberal democracy. In the past, it was extremists like Jean-Marie Le Pen who spoke of an “Arab invasion.” Now, even the French Ombudsman who headed the commission on secularism, Bernard Stasi, says that “There are forces in France seeking to destabilize the republic and it is time for the republic to act,” reminiscent of the Serbian anti-Islamic conspiracy theories that led to the genocide of 200,000 Bosnian Muslims.

The fact of the matter is that the French are threatened by the increase of Muslims in their country and feel that their future is in jeopardy. As a result, they want to deal with the “Muslim problem” before it becomes too hard to handle. Surely, none but the naïve would believe that Islam is not being singled out by Jacques Chirac’s legislation on secularism. The ban on “ostensible displays” of religious symbols like the crucifix and the Jewish skullcap - which have never been at the center of any controversy - were merely added to make the legislation more palatable to those who would denounce it as discriminatory, as is the expansion of the legislation to cover political symbols, including the Palestinian keffiyeh and images of Che Guevara.

The French government, with its antagonistic attitude towards Muslims, is playing with fire. Its new legislation on secularism will only serve to further alienate Muslims and encourage segregation and ghettoization. Many Muslims will remove their daughters from the public school system, home-school them or send them to private, perhaps even Islamic schools; animosity will increase and so will religious extremism. The French, however, who are so attached to their language, seem to have overlooked the possible linguistic ramifications of their new legislation which can easily be interpreted as a “declaration of war” against Islam. If the French language has not ceased to lose power, influence and prestige in the world, the xenophobic policies of the French government will only contribute to this current for, as a matter of fact, the future of the French language is in the hands of the very same Muslims that they mistreat.

According to Camilo José Cela, the famous Spanish writer, the four languages of the future are Chinese, English, Spanish and Arabic. Linguists calculate that between 50 to 90% of the 6000 languages spoken in the world today will disappear within the next century. With more than 885 million speakers, the future of the Chinese language is certainly solid. Although it does not have much influence outside of its borders, it is destined to play an increasingly important role as it opens its market to the outside world. English, the most powerful political and economic language on the planet, is spoken by 594 million people and is the only language that has native speakers on every continent. Spanish, with its 332 million speakers in more than 20 countries, has a bright future thanks to the imperialistic ambitions of the Spanish conquerors which spread the language from Mexico to Argentina. Arabic, with its dialectical divergences, is spoken by 206 million people in over 25 countries in the Maghreb, Africa and the Middle East. Classical Arabic is the liturgical language of over 1.5 billion Muslims. It is the official language of Islam which, according to the forecasts of many scholars, will be the next world culture. The French language, however, is far behind and in decline, having fallen from one of the most important political, economic and cultural language of the world during French colonial times, to the 9th most common language in the world with 172 million speakers - 3.5 % of the world population - spread over Europe (44%), the Americas (7.5%), Africa, Asia and Oceania (48.5%).

While the popularity of English and Spanish continues to grow, the popularity of French continues to decline. In the United States, Spanish has been the most popular second language since the 70s. Out of the 6 million students in grades 7-12 who study foreign languages, 65% of them study Spanish and only 22% of them study French. At the university level, Spanish represents 53% of all language enrolment. The popularity of Arabic has increased enormously since September 11th. Between 1998 and 2002, the number of students studying Arabic grew by 92.5%.

In Canada, even though French is protected as an official language, English continues to make inroads due to the low fertility rate of French Canadians and a policy of multiculturalism that has opened the doors of the country to immigrants who adopt English, the language of power, instead of French, the language of the minority. In 1951, French Canadians made up 30% of the population, in 1991, 24%, in 1996, 23.5% and in 2002 a mere 22.9%. At this rate, the French language and culture will disappear from Canada within the next century unless drastic measures are taken to protect them.

In the traditional lands of the French language like France, Belgium, Switzerland and Québec, the mortality rate of the natives is higher than the birth rate. As a result, native French speakers are gradually exterminating themselves by lack of procreation. To replace them, traditionally francophone nations have been obliged to “import” immigrants from around the world and teach them the language as the only hope of preserving it. If these immigrants speak French, they do so as a second, third or fourth language. They are not francophones, but rather allophones, as they are called in Canada, since they speak neither French nor English as a first language. In France and Canada, the percentage of immigrants has increased tremendously. In 2001, 5,335,000 individuals, or 1/6th of the Canadian population, spoke languages other than English or French. In France, North African Muslims now make up 10% of the population. In Belgium, 57% of children that are born in Brussels are Muslims.

The French government’s paternalistic attitude towards its ex-colonies has already started to backfire. Algeria, the most important francophone country after France, left the Francophony, dropped French as an official language, removed it from the school system, replaced it with Arabic and English - the language of “progress and technology”- and turned its back on France. Algeria’s decision was a disastrous blow for the French language and represents a potential loss of over 20 million francophones - many of whom speak better French than Arabic - in a country of over 30 million.

Although the relationship between Morocco and France has often been sour, Morocco has always had excellent relations with the U.S. In fact, it was the first country to recognize American independence and Washington remembers this fact very well. Morocco has been looking increasingly towards its North American friend and ally, anxious to sign a free trade agreement. If Morocco succeeds in establishing extensive commercial ties with the U.S., it may easily abandon the use of French and encourage the teaching of the English language, amounting to an eventual loss of some 14 million francophones in a country of almost 32 million people.

If North Africa is reconsidering the use of the French language, the French-speaking countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are doing the same. The anti-French attitude in Ivory Coast is not an isolated case but rather a representative expression of nations angry with the French meddling in their economic and political affairs. In many parts of the French-speaking world, more and more disillusioned voices are warning the French: “Beware! Otherwise, we will drop French and adopt the English language.”

Whether it is in Europe or in the Maghreb, Africa or the Middle East, the future of the French language is in the hands of Muslims. Of the 172 million francophones in the world, Europe represents 76 million, many of which are Muslims; the Maghreb, Africa and the Middle East represent 78 million, virtually all Muslims. In France, Muslims represent 10% of the population or 6 million people in a population of 60 million. Muslims are particularly well represented in certain regions of France. In Ile-de-France, Muslims are 35% of the population; in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, they are 20%; in Rhône-Alpes they are 15% and in Nord-Pas-de-Calais they are 10%. In Belgium, Muslims represent 5% of the population in a country of 10 million inhabitants.

Outside of France, the countries with the highest number of francophones include Algeria, Canada, Morocco, Belgium, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Switzerland, half of them countries with Muslim majorities. In North Africa, there are 35 million francophones (62% of Tunisians, 67% of Algerians and 43% of Moroccans), 99% of which are Muslims.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, there are another 40 million mainly Muslim francophones. There are 18 African countries where French is the official language or one of two official languages. Muslims are strongly represented in the International Organization of the Francophony. In fact, out of the 51 members of this organization, 19 of them are nations with Muslims majorities: Albania, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lebanon, Mali, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia.

The time has come for Muslims to use the French language as a weapon or, to be more precise, to stop using the French language as a weapon. Muslims can easily prefer English over French or insist with pride on speaking their own languages and not the relics of their colonial masters. The majority of French speakers in the world are Muslims and they have the power to preserve, protect and promote the French language or condemn it to oblivion. It is high time for this message to reach Paris: “Do not speak to us of liberty, solidarity and fraternity when you take away our human rights and our dignity.”

• 1. This article was originally published in The Message International (March 2004): 43-45.