The aim of this essay is to reply to these arguments. It starts not from the fantasies circulated about Islam in France but from reality. Islam is not the threat many would have us believe. What characterises any religion is its ambiguity. It is a tool of domination for those who run the system. But it can also be a tool of resistance for the oppressed. Islam is not homogenous. The state Islam of the Middle East should not be confused with that of French immigrants who are subjected to state racism. Olivier Roy, an authority in this matter, underlines the point:

Most of the young are radicalised in the West. Those drawn to radical Islamism are mostly ‘born again Muslims’.⁶ They have become Islamised in the West. What they contest is something very modern: US imperialism, capitalism, etc. In a word, they have taken over domain of intellectual debate which 30 years ago belonged to the proletarian left, 20 years ago to ‘direct action’ and a century ago to the ‘Bonnot Gang’,⁷ etc. We are talking here of a domain of militant debate abandoned by the extreme left. It is the only one available to these young people who wish to ‘break’ the system.⁸

We need a coherent left wing answer to the discrimination from which Muslims, and more particularly Muslim women, suffer. Socialists’ aim is to combat racist divisions and to strengthen the unity of all those whose interest it is to change the world. The real enemy is the system, capitalism, which exploits and oppresses the vast majority of the planet. We need to unite the majority of the exploited and oppressed, no matter their religion or sex, if we are to give ourselves the means to transform the world. In constructing this unity we can forge a genuine political alternative (one which Islam does not offer). It can be the motor for radically overthrowing this society.