穆斯林融入西方社會有多難 Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian Heritage Societies

No reasonable person would claim that the integration of Muslims into western societies is without problems. As the team of social scientists behind Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies reports, 43 per cent of people interviewed in a poll for the newspaper Le Figaro in 2012 considered that the country’s Muslim community constituted a “menace to the identity of France”, while in a German survey conducted in 2013 51 per cent thought Islam posed a threat to their way of life. That year, of a thousand 18- to 24-year-olds in Britain interviewed by Radio 1, 27 per cent said they did not trust Muslims (compared with 16 per cent concerning Hindus or Sikhs, 15 per cent for Jews, 13 per cent for Buddhists and 12 per cent for Christians).

合理的人不會斷言穆斯林在融入西方社會方面沒有問題。撰寫《爲什麼傳統基督教社會的穆斯林融合會失敗》(Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies)一書的社會學家團隊寫道：在法國《費加羅報》(Le Figaro) 2012年所做的一項調查中，43%的受訪者認爲該國的穆斯林羣體構成“對法國國家認同的威脅”，而2013年德國的一項調查顯示，51%的受訪者認爲伊斯蘭教對他們的生活方式構成威脅。同年，在BBC廣播一臺(BBC Radio 1)對1000名英國18至24歲的青年進行的調查中，27%的受訪者稱自己不信任穆斯林（相比之下，不信任印度教徒或錫克教徒的比例爲16%，不信任猶太人的比例爲15％，不信任佛教徒的比例爲13%，不信任基督徒的比例爲12%）。

Disentangling the complex of attitudes behind such findings is the project of Claire Adida, David Laitin and Marie-Anne Valfort in this book — no easy task in the case of the French, among whom most of the research was undertaken. France’s culture of laïcité, a type of radical public secularism with roots in the absolutism of the ancien régime and the anticlerical campaigns that followed the revolution, means that the investigation of faith and religious practice poses methodological challenges far greater than would be met in a more explicitly pluralist society such as the US or even Britain, where ethnic backgrounds and public religiosity are better understood and celebrated. As the authors explain, French republican ideology has no interest in “knowing the ethnic past of any of its citizens”, an attitude that applies — a fortiori — to their religious beliefs or backgrounds.

解讀此類調查結果背後的複雜態度是克萊爾•阿迪達(Claire Adida)、大衛•萊廷(David Laitin)及瑪麗-安妮•瓦爾福特(Marie-Anne Valfort)在本書中的課題，但要在這方面分析法國人（本書的多數研究是在法國人中進行的）絕非易事。相對於美國、甚至英國等更加明顯多元化的社會（這裏的種族背景和公共宗教得到更好的理解和讚美），法國的政教分離文化（一種激進的公共世俗主義，源自舊制度的絕對主義及大革命後的反教權運動）意味着，對法國信仰和宗教活動的調查會遭遇更大的方法論方面的挑戰。正如三位作者解釋的，法國的共和主義意識形態對“瞭解任何公民的種族過往”毫無興趣，這種態度更加適用於他們的宗教信仰或背景。

The idea of “equality through invisibility” is partly a consequence of the shame at the treatment of Jews under the Vichy régime that “republicans do not let their nation forget”. A 1978 law that remains in force, with some amendments, prohibits the collection or processing of data that reveal a person’s racial or ethnic origins, while class actions, common in the US, are not recognised under the French law of torts. Halde (La Haute Autorité de lutte contre les discriminations et pour l’égalité), the state-funded anti-discrimination body that existed from 2005 to 2011, was unable to establish general trends regarding discrimination based on ethnicity due to lack of data, leaving its lawyers to deal with individual cases without supplying material pointing to general trends.

“通過無形實現平等”的理念在一定程度上是對維希政權治下猶太人的遭遇感到恥辱的後果，“共和主義者不讓他們的國家忘記”這一點。儘管做了部分修正，但1978年頒佈的一項法律仍然有效，該法禁止收集或處理任何表明個人種族或民族本源的數據，而法國的侵權法不承認在美國很常見的集體訴訟。由於缺乏數據，國家資助的打擊歧視維護平等高級監督機構Halde（2005年至2011年間存在）無法掌握族裔歧視的總體趨勢，使該機構的律師只能處理個案，而不能提供指明總體趨勢的材料。

These caveats, dealt with somewhat oddly in an extended appendix, help to explain the scrupulous way the researchers approached their task of isolating attitudes concerning religion, while discounting issues such as racial stereotyping or prejudices arising from France’s colonial history. For example, the researchers measured differences of response between two groups of Senegalese participants, one Christian and one Muslim, vis-à-vis a sample of “rooted” (or third-generation) French people chosen randomly in the affluent 19th arrondissement of Paris. The two Senegalese groups, belonging to communities that became established in France in the 1970s, were alike in every respect save their religion, enabling researchers to tease out attitudes that could be attributed to religion exclusive of race or ethnicity.

這些注意事項（有些奇怪地放在長篇附錄中說明）有助於解釋幾位研究者所採用的細緻方式——一方面隔離有關宗教的各種態度，另一方面考慮法國殖民歷史帶來的種族成見或偏見。例如，研究者衡量了兩個人羣的回覆差異：一個人羣由兩組塞內加爾移民（一組基督徒和一組穆斯林）組成，另一個人羣是在巴黎富裕的19區隨機選取的“土生土長”（或第三代）法國人。兩組塞內加爾移民都屬於上世紀70年代在法國落戶的社區，除了宗教信仰不同，他們在其他方面都很相像，這使研究人員能夠甄別哪些態度可以歸因於宗教，而非受到種族或民族的影響。

The results, while hardly surprising, are disturbing, to say the least. Their research, say the authors, “confirms that Muslims qua Muslims are discriminated against” in France. In responses to job applications, for example, one comparison revealed a 13-percentage-point difference in callback rates, suggesting that despite official laïcité, French employers “rely on signals about the religious heritage of applicants and systematically discriminate against those — in this case Muslims — who are from a different religious heritage from that of the majority”.

結果至少可以說令人不安（儘管算不上出人意料）。三位作者表示，他們的研究“證實了穆斯林在法國受到歧視”。以對求職申請的迴應爲例，一項對比數據顯示回覆率方面有13個百分點的差距，這似乎表明，儘管官方實行政教分離，但法國僱主還是“依靠有關求職者的宗教傳統的信號，並對那些在宗教傳統方面有別於主流的的人（在這項研究中是穆斯林）進行系統化的歧視”。

Part of the prejudice, the authors argue, may be “rational” to the degree that the HR personnel perceive a threat to their company’s productivity or esprit de corps in Muslim religious practices. But “non-rational” Islamophobia, based on “grotesquely exaggerated” feelings about Muslims, is just as important, indicating that “even if French recruiters considered Muslim candidates as strictly identical to Christian candidates in terms of productive characteristic, they would still discriminate against Muslims, out of pure distaste”. As a consequence, Muslim families in France are “significantly less endowed with income than matched Christians”. The status quo is thus a “discriminatory equilibrium”, defined by the authors as “a vicious circle in which both [“rooted” French] and Muslims in France are acting negatively toward one another in ways that are mutually reinforcing”.

三位作者主張，這種偏見在某種程度上——人事部門認爲穆斯林的宗教習俗會對公司的生產率或團隊精神構成威脅——是“理性的”。但是，基於對穆斯林“嚴重誇大”的看法的“非理性”伊斯蘭恐懼症也同樣重要，這說明“即便法國招聘人員認爲穆斯林求職者在能力方面與基督徒求職者完全相同，他們仍會純粹出於反感而歧視穆斯林”。其後果之一是，法國的穆斯林家庭“收入顯著低於同等條件的基督徒家庭”。所以，目前現狀是一種“歧視性均衡”，三位作者將之定義爲“一種惡性循環，即“土生土長的”法國人與穆斯林以相互強化的負面態度對待彼此”。

While some of this book’s description of workplace issues affecting Muslims are clearly relevant beyond France’s borders, the title seriously oversells its thesis. The religious cultures and church-state relations of countries in Europe and North America vary too greatly to be captured by the all-embracing category of “Christian-heritage societies”. For example, while the authors make the case that Arab-Americans who are Muslims may face more prejudice than their Christian counterparts, they make no reference to Muslims of mainly South Asian origin who — along with Sikhs and Hindus — enjoy among the highest household incomes of any immigrant group in the US. Canada, a “Christian-heritage society” where the Muslim South Asian minority expelled from Uganda in the 1970s has been highly successful, does not even rate a mention in this book.

雖然本書描寫的一些影響穆斯林的工作場所問題在法國之外也明顯具有參考意義，但書名過分吹噓了其命題。歐洲、北美各國之間的宗教文化及政教關係差異太大，以至於“傳統基督教社會”這種寬泛歸類無法捕捉到其中的不同。例如，三位作者舉例稱，穆斯林阿拉伯裔美國人遭遇的偏見可能比基督徒阿拉伯裔美國人更多，但他們並未提及南亞裔穆斯林，後者（同錫克教徒、印度教徒一道）是美國移民中家庭收入最高的羣體之一。在“傳統基督教社會”加拿大，上世紀70年代被烏干達驅逐出境的南亞裔穆斯林少數族裔取得了巨大成功，但本書隻字未提加拿大。

Nevertheless, the authors propose remedies that make obvious sense in France itself, such as improving educational prospects for Muslims through affirmative action programmes. Whether such initiatives can be considered a realistic prospect in the wake of last year’s jihadi atrocities is another question; right now, the political climate is far from auspicious.

然而，三位作者提出的補救措施對法國本身顯然很有道理，例如通過平權計劃提升穆斯林受教育的前景。這些倡議在去年的恐怖暴行發生後是否還有可能實現是另一個問題；當前的政治氣氛對此顯然不利。