If you have no interest in the uneasy relations between different communities in western Europe, and in particular between Muslims and non-Muslim, you may not wish to proceed further.
That the issue is an important one, affecting so many facets of modern life from employment and housing to justice and security, is beyond serious question. It is also hardly open to doubt that stereotypes, prejudice and unfairness can be found on both sides of the arguments that arise.
By coincidence, two minor projects on which I was working for The National in Abu Dhabi came to fruition today when articles submitted at different times towards the end of last month both slotted into the same edition.
On page one, leading to a substantial "turn" (newspaper jargon for that part of an article that continues on an inside page), was my account of a French-Algerian businessman's decision to renounce the French half of his nationality as part of his campaign for next year's presidential elections in Algeria.
Rachid Nekkaz, who I have know electronically for eight or nine years but never met, is the famous or, to some, infamous "Zorro of the niqab". He has no fondness for face-covering veils but even less for a law, making it illegal to wear them in public places, passed by a country that sees itself as the birthplace of human rights.
He set up a group, Touche Pas a Ma Constitution (Hands off My Constitution), with a €1 million fund to pay the fines of women arrested and punished under the 2011 law and already had to dig deep into it.
Here's an extract:
"His presidential ambitions required him to hold solely Algerian citizenship. But Mr Nekkaz met this condition with dramatic flourish, writing to the French president, François Hollande, asking him to cancel his French nationality with immediate effect as a 'serious decision, deliberate and without appeal'.
He declared continuing affection for French values, culture and history but condemned the 2011 law banning the niqab in public places as a departure from the country's principles of freedom.
'For a child who was rocked to sleep to the fables of La Fontaine, for a student who fed on the philosophies of Rousseau and Voltaire, the man I have become cannot breathe the draconian and corrupt oxygen prevailing in France today,' he wrote.
Read the article in full at http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/zorro-of-the-niqab-renounces-french-nationality-for-algerian-presidential-bid
I also took a line from Nekkaz's letter to the French president to close one of two other articles, for The National's business section, on Mr Hollande's plan for yet another boost for housing and employment in the banlieues, which are of course home to populations with origins chiefly in the former French colonies of the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa.
The main article appears at http://www.thenational.ae/business/industry-insights/economics/francois-hollande-has-5bn-peace-plan-for-france#full.
It includes this section:
France's links with North Africa in particular led to massive post Second World War immigration producing Europe's largest Muslim population, usually put at between five and seven million out of a population of approximately 63 million.
For second- and third-generation descendants of the original newcomers, one result has been a serious identity crisis: the young who feel neither completely French nor entirely Algerian, Moroccan or Tunisian.
But there is broad agreement that simply enabling the occasional individual to set up as a baker or fast-food restaurateur is not enough to counter these feelings of alienation. There must be new businesses bringing more significant and sustainable job opportunities; employers and educational institutions outside the banlieues need to abandon their suspicion of those from within them.
Mr Hamza says politicians, the media and activists must also find ways of allowing banlieues to shake of their image as places of systematic crime and violence.
"And we need to persuade young people that burning cars is not the only way they can be heard," he says.
The secondary piece - http://www.thenational.ae/business/industry-insights/economics/french-rugby-success-gives-hope-to-the-marginalised - starts with a interesting comment made by Mourad Boudjellal, the president of Toulon rugby club after Jonny Wilkinson helped them to Heineken Cup triumph in Dublin two or three months ago.
It drew on his own success, as the son of Algerian and Armenian parents who made something of his life after a modest start, and was aimed at Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant Front National: "When access to culture and knowledge is given to the children of immigrants and they are trusted, they get to do a few things for their country and city. When you do not hold them back, they can do good things."
Follow my links if you wish to read more.
And for those who have not heard, there have been another two gangland killings in or near Marseille, one claiming the life of the son of the sporting director of Marseille football club.
The women whose efforts to end this spiral of violence, and about whom I wrote earlier this week, clearly have more work to do.
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