Sexism in the Cités

Housing projects on the outskirts of France's major cities have become a new home to large numbers of Arab immigrants. they have also become home to widespread sexual and physical abuse of young women. This includes gang rapes of even the youngest of teenagers who are unlucky enough to cross religious and social lines of conduct.

According to MSNBC:

Here, young men try to rule their families and neighbors under a macho code drawn partly from Muslim tradition, partly from the violence and porn in the media. Women submit to men, they say. Good girls, good sisters, cover themselves and stay home. Otherwise they are putes, whores, who can be used and abused even if they say no.

Such stories, then, are not just about urban crime and rough neighborhoods. They reflect a core issue of Muslim integration in Europe. Can the young men and women of the cites break out, or will they become ever more isolated, turning inward against themselves? Will they build their lives and relationships on egalitarian values, or on the worst of Islam and the Internet? Young men trapped in a world with no jobs and no future, and violently confused about sex, tend to make women the symbols and the victims of the frustrations around them. Ten years ago, the boys in these hoods burned cars in the streets. Today, they increasingly turn their anger against “their” women in the basements of their apartment blocks.

Living conditions are not good. There are no jobs and little hope for future prospects. How will these young men become integrated into a society in which the basic principles of freedom, tolerance, and feminism are so radically different?

Read More:

• Recent Books on Islam
• Islam