“Next week, all the cafes are empty here, bet Kamel Amza, elected municipal La Courneuve, near Paris. For Ramadan has become the norm in areas with high Muslim concentration. This month of fasting, which begins Saturday, prohibits any food or drink from “daybreak” (about 5 h 15 in the Paris region) to sunset (around 21 hours). It should be especially demanding this year because the days are warm and long.
In 2006, 90% of Muslims but they assured fasted in a CSA poll for the weekly La Vie. A proportion fairly unlikely, especially since children are not reached puberty, pregnant women, the elderly and the sick are not required in the diet. But this statement shows how it is now important to show his respect for Ramadan. “It is the collective practice par excellence. Even those who say they just Muslim origin, provide the following at 40%, “recalls one to the Ifop where analysis of several surveys is closer to 70% the proportion of fasting among the 5 million Muslims in 2007.
Rooted tradition among immigrants, Ramadan began declining from the second generation. But the trend reversed in the 1990s, with the re-Islamization of youth, especially in the suburbs. “There is a real return to the rites of the new generations,” says the rector of the Paris Mosque, Dalil Boubakeur. But the French Muslims are mostly young ….
Ramadan has been invited to the college for several years now and win the primary. “Small want to imitate the great. Parents are not always aware, “says Patricia Truong, director in primary Venissieux. “The air time is clearly in retreat community,” says writer and researcher Abdelwahab Meddeb. “These rings, boosted by the Gulf satellite television, which broadcast religious programming all day with a strong impact on the entire Muslim world, including France.” Those who do not find themselves today “in a position to justify”, sorry Tahar, a computer in Paris. Among teens, peer pressure is strong. There are nagging if they frequent the canteen and many “hiding to eat a sandwich,” says Samira premiered in Lyon.
Since 2004, a report of Education, led by Inspector Obin, highlighting the tensions and the escalation of religious Ramadan around “with the ban to swallow any liquid, including his own saliva, which causes soil pollution by sputum and refusal of the pool. “Students are exhausted,” added the report.
An opaque market
Like employees, who must combine work and fasting. In companies that concentrate many Muslim employees, performance collapses in the afternoon. The owners run this time “according to a power relationship: either employees are Muslim majority and the pace is appropriate. Or the reverse, and more practitioners are ostracized, “says anthropologist Dounia Bouzar, who published an extensive study of Islam in the business at the start.
Whole sectors will therefore live near Ramadan. But this month of religious holidays is also a niche for companies eyeing the segment on “ethnic” promising. In recent years, the supply of products has multiplied. There are nearly 400 references in halal Casino who also created, like other retailers, its own line, hoping to settle on a market still held by grocers and butchers. But the halal market is opaque, with scattered certifications and lack of guarantees, moult rumors are capable of pitching the brand awareness.