Sophie Ferhadjian: As a teacher and a member of the High Council on Integration, what I’ve seen and heard from my colleagues makes it clear that significant tensions exist between these communities. In the last ten years, since the publication of Les territoires perdus de la République*, it seems clear to me that these tensions have markedly increased. There is an antisemitic discourse as well as racist remarks that are more and more liberated, the “jeunes” have less and less of a sense that it is something serious. In addition, a communitarian tightening can be seen, a way of recentring on their own rather than opening up. Within each community, a folding in on the religious element can be felt and thus a reaffirmation in the public sphere of the entire religious dimension...
...In public schools, we have noted a flight of pupils of the Jewish faith to private education due, especially in secondary schools, to antisemitic insults and individual violence but also because of a return to the faith. You might think that this return to the faith is due in large part to these acts of violence but if we regard the phenomenon in a more general manner that is not clear.
“Les territoires perdus de la République” was a book written by a French teacher, describing the growing tensions in French schools caused by the children of Muslim colonists. For example, during lessons on the Holocaust, they would laugh or say they supported it.