Why Lunel?

Even before we arrived here, and at intervals since, friends and acquaintances have asked us 'why Lunel?'  For us it was simply a reasonably sized town with good transport links in a part of the country which suits us, with open skies, not far from the sea, and within walking distance of shops and the town centre, health facilities and other useful services.  As we get older the need to drive for everything would be less and less appealing.

But last year began with an unwelcome spotlight on Lunel as the ‘capital of Jihadism’, and soon we as B&B proprietors were host to a journalist from, of all places, Vanity Fair who was here to write about the story of radical islamism which came to light when 10 young men from here were killed in Syria.  The journalist was charming, and his report balanced and enlightening.  The article he wrote is here.  It's in French - but cites another in English on the front of the International New York Times which has appeared in various blogs (this for example).  The attention was the more unwelcome because the accounts are ever more exaggerated - for example the American accounts cite a population one third Muslim.  But the real figure is probably nearer 15% of north African origin, and in reality nobody knows accurately.

Since then other French towns have been highlighted as cradles of extremism.  But Lunel has kept in the spotlight because an expert on the world of Islam, Gilles Kepel, wrote a book at the end of 2015 called Terreur dans l'Hexagone: genèse du djihad français which has a whole chapter on Lunel.  Keppel is a respected academic expert on the Muslim world, and though the French is dense and needs concentration for us to read, it is well worth the effort, painting the background to the links between France and north Africa clearly and in detail.

From it we learn that the café (now closed and reopened under a different banner) 100 m up the road was the seat of the dissent and exodus, that the area just next to where we live was where most of the misguided young men lived before they left to die, and that the lycée just opposite the end of our road was where they went to school.  Who would have guessed?  At various points there were flurries of gendarmes closing roads and patrolling in the area or in the middle of town, but our little street was and is a calm, friendly place.

We also find from the book that the large population of N African Moslems here is mostly from Morocco, many from a town there which has a high security prison.  The few we know here, including the brother who run the halal butchers we go to, are anything but fleeing criminals - one of them is an ex-English teacher who takes pleasure in speaking the rarely used language of his younger days when we drop in.  But as well as a significant Moslem population Lunel has a mosque which attracts people from far and wide and which acquired a separatist if not extremist reputation, partly because it had the unhelpful idea to appoint an imam who did not speak French.  This has now been remedied, but a bit too late.

The other side of our local equation is its right wing politics.  The current mayor, now in his third or 4th term, is what is known as ‘divers droite’, that is not affiliated to a party, but if you add the rising Front National vote (over 35% in the last local election, and 41% in the first round of the regionals last month) then more than three quarters of the town’s population vote right.  We can’t vote except in the local elections, and of course there are people like us, including neighbours and friends, who don’t agree with all that, but it is a sobering thing all the same.  We are members of an ant-racist association, but despite the national goodwill and even money that has followed the publicity about islamist extremists little really seems to be being done to bring people together or to bridge the gap between the traditionalists and the muslim population.

In France it is actually illegal to count ethnic origins.  Because everyone is French first and their cultural and religious origins and preferences are their own business, there are no official figures, so everyone can make unsubstantiated estimates.  We British are not used to this - the census asks a lot of questions about both ethnic origins and religion, and so when I worked and lived in the East Midlands I was well aware of the makeup of the communities I moved among.  We have frequent conversations about laïcité - the secular principle which is at the root of French republican principles, and the danger in the current atmosphere of attacks and threats is simply that secularism becomes simply anti-Muslim.  And of course the political right make much of the threat from people of other origins.  Lots of questions and much more to write about this in future posts.