From The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: August 5, 2013
ROUBAIX, France — Wearing head scarves and long skirts, the women glide along the faded back streets of this poor French town as they make their way to the mosque to hear the last prayer of the evening.
Like their husbands and brothers, fathers and sons, they feel at home here. That is in large part because Roubaix, a small city in northeastern France, has made a point of embracing its Muslim population, proportionately one of the largest in the country.
“I am comfortable in these clothes here in Roubaix,” said Farid Gacem, the bearded president of the Abu Bakr mosque, who was wearing a nearly ankle-length loose brown tunic on a recent afternoon.
In a country where Islamic head coverings are regulated by law and many Muslims say they have been made to feel like outsiders, Roubaix is one of just a handful of cities that have broken with a rigid interpretation of the country’s state secularism. The city stands out for its effort to take discreet but pointed steps to promote an active Muslim community, and in doing so it has diminished the ethnic and sectarian tensions that have afflicted other parts of France, evident again during the holy month of Ramadan this summer.
In Trappes, a heavily Muslim suburb of Paris, an altercation between the police and a woman wearing a niqab, a veil that is illegal to wear in public, turned violent two weeks ago. In another suburb of Paris, the mayor refused a request by Muslims for a prayer room to use during Ramadan. The Interior Ministry says crimes targeting Muslims have increased 28 percent this year.
Yet here in Roubaix, the mood is different. That is despite one of the worst unemployment rates in the country, 22 percent, with the figure far higher among young people, according to the mayor’s office. Nearly half of households have incomes below the poverty line, and many areas are troubled by petty crime and drug trafficking.
