TRAPPES, France — All of it started when a high-school instructor warned that Islamists had taken over town. The instructor went on TV, issuing alarms from inside what he known as a “misplaced metropolis” of the French Republic. In Trappes, he mentioned, he feared for his life.
“Trappes, it’s completed,” the instructor said. “They’ve gained.”
The mayor, a powerful believer within the Republic, noticed the instructor on tv and didn’t acknowledge town he described. He knew his metropolis, west of Paris and with a rising inhabitants of immigrants and Muslims, had issues however thought it was being falsely maligned. The mayor additionally occurred to be a Muslim.
“The reality doesn’t matter anymore,” he mentioned.
For a number of weeks this winter, the struggle pitting the mayor, Ali Rabeh, 36, towards the instructor, Didier Lemaire, 55, turned a media storm that, beneath the noise and accusations, boiled right down to a single, indignant query that runs by the tradition wars rippling by France: Can Islam be suitable with the ideas of the French Republic?
No setting was maybe stronger than Trappes to debate that query. It’s a crucible of France’s hopes, and fears. Trappes gave beginning to among the nation’s brightest leisure and sports activities stars, like Omar Sy, the lead actor within the current Netflix hit “Lupin.” However Trappes additionally noticed about 70 of its youths go away for jihad to Syria and Iraq, the most important contingent, per capita, from any French metropolis.
The confrontation between instructor and mayor mirrored broader forces reforging a society the place French identification is being questioned greater than ever. As his positions on Islam hardened following terrorist assaults in France in recent times, the instructor, like many others, moved additional to the precise politically.
Mr. Rabeh, the mayor, belonged to an outspoken era, unafraid to specific its identification and level out France’s failings, whose immigrant dad and mom had most well-liked to cross unnoticed. He took as a right his position in France — and Islam’s place in it.
The struggle turned private, because the instructor, saying his life was in peril, accused the mayor of calling him a racist and an Islamophobe. A lot of the political institution — pulled in several instructions by info, nationwide myths and political imperatives — sided with the instructor. Even after a lot of his story started to unravel.
The conflict left each males extra disillusioned than earlier than, each feeling they’d misplaced one thing vital. And like most cultural and political clashes in France, it ended with none satisfying decision, with none sense of coming collectively.
“You select the philosophy instructor,” Mr. Lemaire mentioned, “otherwise you select the mayor of Trappes.”
The Hussar of the Republic
One night in February, Le Level, a significant conservative newsweekly, posted an article about Mr. Lemaire, who mentioned he was quitting due to Islamists.
Inside a number of hours, a conservative politician eyeing the presidency tweeted her help for Mr. Lemaire and “all these hussars on the entrance line within the struggle for the Republic.” Subsequent, the far-right chief, Marine Le Pen, attacked “sure elected officers” for failing to guard the instructor from Islamists.
That the phrases of a just about unknown instructor resonated a lot was an indication of the instances. A number of months earlier, an extremist had beheaded a middle-school instructor for displaying caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a category on free speech. President Emmanuel Macron was now pushing a invoice to struggle Islamism at the same time as he pledged to nurture an “Islam of France.”
Mr. Lemaire’s phrases additionally resonated due to the outsized position in France of public schoolteachers, who’re answerable for inculcating within the younger the nation’s political values and tradition. Within the Republic’s mythology, lecturers are the “hussars” — the sunshine cavalry as soon as used for scouting by European armies — combating to protect the nation’s sanctity.
Within the article, Mr. Lemaire mentioned he had been below police escort for months. Trappes’s mayor, he mentioned, had known as him an “Islamophobe and racist.” He mentioned he was ready for an “exfiltration” from deep inside “a metropolis misplaced for good.”
In a single day, the soft-spoken, longhaired instructor, who mentioned he most well-liked curling up with Seneca than occurring Fb, was issuing dire warnings on high tv information reveals.
“We now have six months to a 12 months,” he said, “as a result of all these youths who’re educated with the concept the French are their enemies, they’ll take motion sooner or later.”
Mr. Lemaire arrived in Trappes, a banlieue, or suburb, within the outer orbit of Paris, 20 years earlier. As soon as a village that grew round a millennium-old Roman Catholic parish, Trappes is now a metropolis of 32,000.
Mr. Lemaire’s highschool, La Plaine-de-Neauphle, stands on the coronary heart of an space constructed to accommodate immigrant staff from France’s former colonies within the 1970s — a mix of rent-subsidized high-rises, enticing five-story residences and a constellation of parks. The mosque is close by. So is a market the place distributors provide delicacies from sub-Saharan Africa and halal merchandise.
When the immigrants first got here, neighborhood associations funded by the federal government supplied help and companies. However by the point Mr. Lemaire arrived, social applications had been slashed. Factories have been shedding immigrant fathers and providing no jobs to their kids. One crime-ridden neighborhood turned often called “Chicago.”
In an interview with The New York Instances, Mr. Lemaire mentioned he took significantly his mission as a hussar instilling France’s values within the classroom.
“The Republic has all the time been a struggle,” he mentioned.
However the unfold of Islamism sophisticated his work, he mentioned. His college students more and more challenged what he taught. Some, he believed, thought of him an enemy, whereas others hid their radical beliefs.
He mentioned some college students lived “double” lives and described seeing a younger girl wearing a protracted, unfastened costume masking all however her face on the market.
“Earlier than, at school, she was once in tightfitting denims, tightfitting sweaters, frivolously made up, actually female,” he mentioned.
However the instructor mentioned he started actually greedy the Islamist menace solely after the sequence of terrorist assaults in France in 2015. He took a primary step in 2018, writing a letter to Mr. Macron saying the president wanted to take Islamism extra significantly.
In January, he joined a tiny political get together, Parti républicain solidariste, which espouses a tough line on France’s model of secularism, known as laïcité. He now favors taking women away from their dad and mom, after a second warning, if the youngsters violate laïcité guidelines by placing on Muslim veils throughout faculty discipline journeys.
“We now have to guard kids from this manipulation,” of getting used “as troopers or as ideologues,” he mentioned.
‘I See Myself In Them’
As soon as Mr. Lemaire began showing on tv, the mayor realized he wanted to reply and commenced occurring information applications himself to push again towards the portrayal of his metropolis as “misplaced.”
To Mr. Rabeh, the instructor’s feedback have been tantamount to dismissing one other era from the banlieue.
“I see myself in them,” Mr. Rabeh mentioned in an interview.
He grew up in one other banlieue, close to Trappes. His father had been an immigrant from Morocco who labored 38 years on Peugeot’s meeting traces.
The union leaflets his father introduced house sparked his curiosity in politics. He turned a believer within the promise of the Republic and its professed universalism. A person who additionally embraces his religion, Mr. Rabeh is, his supporters say, simply the type of chief to assist construct an Islam of France.
After working because the deputy mayor for youth, Mr. Rabeh gained the mayoral race final 12 months in a decent vote. He has made efforts to widen entry to after-school actions and has been credited with working carefully with nationwide authorities to struggle the type of radicalization that led 70 youths from Trappes to hitch the Islamic State between 2014 and 2016.
Almost all have been killed, and plenty of grieving dad and mom nonetheless marvel why their little kids left.
The dad and mom belonged to an immigrant era shy about asserting its presence in France and working towards its faith, mentioned Naila Gautier, whose dad and mom got here from Tunisia and who has lived in Trappes since 1976. Their kids looked for themselves in a society the place they felt alienated, with some even becoming a member of the Islamic State, she mentioned.
“It gave method to the anger of the youngsters who didn’t know the historical past of their dad and mom and their origins and their faith,” mentioned Ms. Gautier, the founding father of Les Mamans du Coeur, a bunch that counsels households whose kids left for Syria.
The nationwide authorities say that the networks that when recruited jihadists have been weakened or have disappeared. Essentially the most seen indicators of fundamentalism in Trappes have additionally diminished, just like the sporting of full-face coverings in public, which is illegitimate in France.
“However that doesn’t imply that fundamentalism has disappeared,” Mr. Rabeh mentioned. “Possibly the social stress on Islam at this second is such that there’s a better will to cover or be discreet.”
For every week, the mayor and the instructor made dueling media appearances, till the tide appeared to show in Mr. Rabeh’s favor.
The regional training workplace contradicted the instructor’s description of his faculty, saying it had “skilled, in recent times, a decline in delinquent habits and violations of laïcité.”
In remarks to the newspaper Le Monde, the native préfet, the highest civil servant representing the central authorities, praised Mr. Rabeh’s administration for its “whole cooperation” in combating Islamism. The préfet additionally refuted the instructor’s declare to having been below a police escort.
The instructor’s story started wobbling. He admitted to the French information media, as he did to The Instances, that he had “not acquired express loss of life threats.” He had additionally accused the mayor of calling him a “racist and Islamophobe” in an interview with a Dutch tv community.
However the community denied the mayor had mentioned any such factor.
‘France Actually Doesn’t Like Us’
The media duel was like a boxing match with the folks of Trappes watching from exterior the ring. Many have been annoyed that the instructor’s description of a “misplaced metropolis” appeared to stay. The mayor made a passionate protection however typically couldn’t conceal his anger.
“Ali Rabeh — being who he’s, he has slightly fiery and sharp facet — he wished to defend this inhabitants towards humiliation,” mentioned the Rev. Étienne Guillet, the priest of Trappes’s Roman Catholic parish. “He tried his greatest. In the long run, he was slightly weary. He was on edge.”
For Rachid Benzine — a political scientist and author whose father arrived in France from Morocco for building work — the feud diminished the complexity of Trappes into nationwide myths and biases.
“There was the hero, and there was the enemy,” mentioned Mr. Benzine, who has lived in Trappes for many years. “Ali Rabeh was thought of the enemy.”
The mayor might have had the info on his facet, “however he’s an Arab — that’s disturbing,” Ms. Gautier, the founding father of Les Mamans du Coeur, mentioned. Mr. Rabeh didn’t “grovel the best way our dad and mom did,” she added.
Most stinging was the instructor’s depiction of Trappes as a “misplaced metropolis.” Through the years, the precise and much proper had turned “misplaced territory of the Republic” right into a coded phrase alluding to areas with Muslim immigrants the place the federal government’s authority had supposedly collapsed due to Islamists and criminals — a reverse colonization on French soil.
The fact was far totally different, town’s leaders mentioned. Fundamentalism and the specter of Islamism stay, as does crime. However Trappes was principally a hard-working immigrant metropolis the place folks of all cultures and religions blended, they mentioned.
On the mosque, the place 3,400 folks come to hope on Fridays, leaders mentioned that speak of a misplaced metropolis belied the quiet integration of the good majority into French life. The center-class vehicles parked on the mosque on Fridays had changed the earlier era’s “clunkers,” they mentioned.
“How many individuals have utterly built-in and have a social place?” Tahar Benhaddya, the president of the Union of Muslims of Trappes, which manages the mosque, requested rhetorically. Most had, he mentioned.
The mosque and the native Catholic Church, with its 600 parishioners, maintain common conferences and exchanges.
Muslim kids attend after-school actions on the parish, and plenty of are enrolled on the Catholic faculty, Father Guillet mentioned.
He feared that Mr. Lemaire’s feedback would merely deepen the sensation of alienation amongst youths who really feel “France actually doesn’t like us.”
“He additional fostered what he denounced,” Father Guillet mentioned.
No One Wins
Per week after the instructor’s feedback first went public, the mayor wrote a letter to the scholars on the instructor’s highschool.
“Don’t let anyone ever let you know that you simply’re price nothing and that you simply’re misplaced to the Republic,” he wrote.
The mayor and 5 different metropolis officers recalled that, standing simply exterior the varsity, they distributed copies to college students arriving within the morning — by no means anticipating what would occur hours later.
Till that day, Mr. Macron’s ministers had remained quiet however they have been dealing with intense stress from conservative politicians and media retailers to help the instructor.
Because it occurred, a televised debate was scheduled that night between Ms. Le Pen and Gérald Darmanin, the inside minister main the federal government’s crackdown on Islamism. Hours earlier than the talk, he introduced that the instructor could be granted police safety.
That night, Jean-Michel Blanquer, the nationwide training minister, issued a statement supporting the instructor. He additionally accused the mayor of trespassing into the highschool to distribute tracts — the letter — that morning. “Political and non secular neutrality is on the coronary heart of the operation of the College of the Republic,” the minister mentioned.
Town officers on the faculty that morning informed The Instances that no copies have been distributed inside. The regional training workplace and Mr. Blanquer’s workplace refused to make the varsity principal obtainable for an interview. The minister’s workplace declined to remark.
The trespassing accusations led to such an avalanche of threats towards the mayor that he, too, was put below police safety — a shared future, for some time, for the 2 males of Trappes, who had every misplaced one thing.
The instructor was pressured to depart the varsity the place he had taught for 20 years and, regardless of his criticisms of Trappes, mentioned “you actually really feel you’re on a mission.” He mentioned he ought to have been extra cautious with the info and had made “many errors,” however caught by his interpretation of Trappes as “misplaced.”
His phrases, he mentioned, had led to a “clarification of positions as we speak in France.”
The mayor questioned the very Republic that when impressed him. He had believed that “the individuals who embody the Republic will come, the federal government will ultimately categorical its solidarity with me.”
“Surprised,” he mentioned, “I discover that’s not the case.”
He declined his anxious father’s request to resign.
“For a second through the disaster, I informed myself, nicely, if that is the Republic, I’m abandoning the Republic, simply because it’s deserted me,” Mr. Rabeh mentioned. “However the reality is that they’re not the Republic. The youngsters of Trappes are the Republic.”
Gaëlle Fournier contributed analysis.