At funeral for Nahel M. Near Paris, fear, anger and racial tension

PARIS – For two hours, hundreds of members of France’s large Muslim community lined up in an atmosphere of fear and anger outside the Ibn Badis Mosque in Nanterre to mourn a teenager, one of their own, who was fatally shot by a police officer in a traffic stop.

The shooting of Nahel M. took place on Tuesday, followed by four nights of violent rioting in major French cities, and there was no sign of a return to calm as the young man’s funeral unfolded. His uncle, flanked by friends and security guards employed by the mosque, shouted abuse at anyone who tried to film the trial. There were skirmishes.

Police were nowhere to be seen, after 45,000 officers were deployed overnight to deal with the wave of anger sparked by a close-range shooting not far from the mosque caught on video. It would have been a dangerous provocation for a French police officer to appear in uniform.

For Ahmed Djamai, 58, it was a familiar story. The police were lying, he said, referring to initial news media reports that the young man had plowed on officers. They would have gotten away with it, he said, had it not been for the apparently incriminating video that went viral. “The government always protects the police, a state within a state,” he said.

Tensions are running so high that President Emmanuel Macron announced that he would postpone a state visit to Germany that was to start on Sunday. More than 1,300 people were arrested Friday in a fourth night of unrest, violence and looting.

When the mosque, a modern building with unfortunate palm and olive trees in front, was full, about 200 men lined up outside on Avenue Georges Clemenceau, laid their hats and motorcycle helmets and bags and mats before them, and prostrated themselves. They got up and fell to their knees as the sound of prayer rose from the mosque.

It was a vivid image of religious devotion and a reminder of the powerful presence of Islam in France, a presence that a secular and universalist democracy that prides itself on not discriminating among its citizens on the basis of religion or ethnicity, struggled greatly. has had to accommodate. . The toxic legacy of the eight-year Algerian War of Independence that ended in 1962 has never been overcome.

Inscribed on a school behind the long line of Muslim men waiting was the motto of the Enlightenment adopted by the revolutionary French Republic: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

There was consensus in the crowd: if Nahel M., a French national of Algerian and Moroccan descent, had been white rather than Arab, he would not have been killed.

There was anger over too frequent insults. “My name is Usamah,” said a young man, “so of course my high school teacher joked that I was Bin Laden. She thought it was funny.”

There was resignation. Being Arab or black, even with a French passport, was often made to feel second-class.

“If an Arab dies at the hands of the police without video, that’s the end of the story,” he said Taha Bouhafs, an activist who worked with Nahel’s family to publicize the shooting. He said he is in contact with trade unions and human rights organizations in the hopes of organizing a general strike against racism and police brutality later this month.

Fatma Aouadi, a digital marketer of Tunisian descent, aged 26, stood outside the mosque for hours. Why? “Because Nahel was young,” she said. ‘Because he was an Arab. Because I live here. Because I work here.”

She said she couldn’t stop thinking about something similar happening to her, and that she ended up with no family – her parents are in Tunisia – and at a loss. Her mother had just called with warnings to stay home and be careful. “They’re scared,” she said.

This is all a very old story in France: a story of failed integration; of the shortcomings of a social model that has worked well for a long time but has been unable to solve the problems of lost hope and bad schools in the suburban areas where many immigrants live; of the tensions turning into hatred between young Muslims and the police; of government promises to restore social cohesion that are never fulfilled.

The Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that it “has learned with shock and dismay of the brutal and tragic death of young Nahel and the deeply disturbing and worrying circumstances in which it occurred”.

Recent statements from the French government, following an initial expression of outrage over the shooting, have focused on the ensuing riots, which Mr Macron described on Friday as “devoid of any legitimacy”. More than 300 police officers were injured, a handful of them seriously.

The mutual misunderstanding and tensions between the French state and the many citizens convinced that the protests have a legitimacy based on a pattern of police brutality against minorities were felt in Nanterre.

“Nahel helped me carry my groceries upstairs, and I would give him some change,” says Thérèse Lorto, a nurse. “He delivered pizzas. He did stupid adolescent things. But the police are full of hate. It’s far too easy to kill and get away with it.”

After the service, men carried a white coffin out of the mosque and placed it on a vehicle. Behind them formed a long procession of cars, motorcycles and walking people. A young man wearing a ‘Justice for Nahel’ shirt rode a one-wheel motorcycle as the crowd moved towards the Mont Valérien cemetery, which only the men were allowed to enter.

Women sat outside. “It’s terrible,” said one. “Only God may give and take away lives.”

Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle contributed reporting.