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CAIRO – French Muslims are facing massive discrimination in the labor market with employers rejecting applicants having Muslim names to their Christian counterparts, a new study has found.

“The results confirm that in the French labor market, anti-Muslim discrimination exists,” says the study conducted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The “Identifying Barriers to Muslims Integration in France” study found that unemployment rates among Muslims were higher than any other religious groups in France.

The study, jointly conducted by Stanford University in California and the Sorbonne in Paris, revealed that employers often reject applicants having Muslim names, favoring their Christian counterparts.   

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Researchers mailed out 275 pairs of fictional job applications with identical job qualifications except for the names of the applicants.

One of the applications carried a traditionally Christian first name “Marie Diouf”, while another had a Muslim given name, "Khadija Diouf".

The results found that Khadija Diouf received a response rate of 8 percent while Marie Diouf's response rate was 21 percent.

“A Muslim candidate is 2.5 times less likely to receive a job interview callback than is his or her Christian counterpart,” the study says.

The scientifically validated study is part of efforts to look into reasons behind the high unemployment rates in the Muslim minorities in the West.

Researchers now want to study whether there is a similar bias in Britain, where unemployment among Muslims is higher than in any other religious group.

"It amounts to massive discrimination. The agenda is to try to find out what is driving it," Marie-Anne Valfort from the Sorbonne in Paris, told The Independent.

France is home to some 5-6 million Muslims, the biggest Muslim minority in Europe.

Stumbling Integration

Researchers lament that the anti-Muslim bias in the French labor market amounts to massive discrimination.

“What is surprising is the intensity of the discrimination,” said Valfort from the Sorbonne.

“If anything we have underestimated it, partly because we made the job applicant female and we know that Muslim males face higher discrimination.”

The study warned that the anti-Muslim bias in the job market hinders efforts to integrate Muslims into French society.

“Muslims have faced barriers to economic integration in France that are higher than they would have been if everything about them were the same save for their religion.”

An earlier study in 2009 examined 511 migrant Senegalese Christians and Muslims who lived in France. It found that second generation Muslim households earned an average of 400 euros less per month than comparable Christian households.

“A high-n survey reveals… that second-generation Muslim households in France have lower income compared with matched Christian households,” the study said.

“The paper thereby contributes to both substantive debates on the Muslim experience in Europe and methodological debates on how to measure discrimination.”

The integration of Muslim immigrants has become the center of a heated debate across Europe recently.

Last month, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said attempts to create a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed", adding more fuel to the controversy over the integration of Muslims in the country.

Earlier, a German banker has accused Muslim immigrants of undermining German society.

via onislam.net