While liberty, equality and brotherhood are cornerstones of French society, there are Muslims who fear that those ideals are window dressing in a country that refuses to tolerate them. Some are moving on – some to the UAE, reports The National.
When western Muslims make the headlines by moving to the Middle East, it is usually because the destination is Syria, the purpose to join extremists whose capacity for brutality seems limitless.
But for a growing number that attracts relatively little attention, there is another, entirely positive motivation for the relocation. They want to build new lives and careers – and feel valued – in the UAE and neighbouring countries.
A major source of this category of migration is France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim population, unofficially numbered at between five and seven million people.
The French media frequently reports on Jews who abandon lives in France to set up home in Israel.
Just as those émigrés cite a rise in anti-Semitism as an important influence, so is the Islamophobia many Muslims experience in French society a factor in their desire to leave.
France has always struggled to assimilate immigrants from its former North African and sub-Saharan colonies, and their descendants. As a result, many French Muslims feel discriminated against and seen as aliens in the country where they were born or grew up.
Khaled Boudemagh, who runs the Dubai-based Hegire association, with more than 1,300 members among French-speaking exiles in the region, says inquiries from young people considering a move have multiplied in recent months.
“We sense that many are fed-up with discrimination and stigmatisation in Europe,” he says. “In Dubai, there is much less pressure. There’s no need to live a sort of concealed life. One practices one’s religion much more freely.”
Boudemagh, 37, from the northern French city of Lille, finds it refreshing to discuss French Muslims heading for the Middle East when “for once it has nothing to do with Syria, just people making a move to improve their lives and do something good for themselves and their families”.
French estimates suggest at least 15,000 people have gone from France to work in the UAE alone, with thousands more in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. Reliable proportions are difficult to establish but Boudemagh says he would not be surprised if at least 10 per cent were Muslims.