Can Islam be French?

In the flow of publications concerning Islam in France, quality academic work is rare enough for it to be reported. John Bowen’s new work – whose title Can Islam be French ? could be an ironic echo to these media arrests on the impossible assimilation of Muslims – is one of those works which shed light on the rigor of research and the originality of the analyzes.

The accommodation of Islam to the Republic

The initial question is falsely simple, because it is not a question of whether it is in the nature of Islam of being or not compatible with French culture or identity. As anthropologist of religions, John Bowen offers a more complex angle of approach which consists in asking how Islamic normativity adapts to the French context. France constitutes a case of school, characterized by, on the one hand, a strong Muslim minority which has the distinction of being largely homogeneous (very large majority of Maghreb origin) and present in France for several decades ; And on the other hand a political system which gives a minimal place to religion – even considers it a threat to the unity of the social body. The specificity of the French notion of secularism – and its uses in the public treatment of the question of the veil – had been the subject of the previous work of Bowen Why the French donation like headdscarves ? (2006, Princeton University Press). It was a question of seeing how Islam was treated in the French public sphere, how the public reasoning shaped by the history of the separation of the Church and the State, of the republican values, of feminism (and, of Less avowable way, by the history of colonial and post-colonial representations) justified the legislative supervision of religious practice in France. In Can Islam be French ?Bowen takes the question by the other end, and questions Muslim actors in their reasoning on the translation of Islam in France: how can we locally anchor his religious practice without renouncing traditions ? What are the justification diets for the chosen accommodation ?

This questioning which relates to the public articulation of religious reasoning aims more broadly a “ Anthropology of public reasoning “(Anthropology of Public Reasoning) whose theoretical lines remain to be explained. The author first hears the qualitative study of social situations by anthropology and this is what he is working on. The proposed method is an ethnography of the establishment of Muslim institutions and debates on the religious practice of Islam in France: Bowen offers, through interviews and observations in places such as mosques, religious institutes And private Muslim schools, to show how Islamic reasoning is developed in the French public sphere. He thus gives the floor to Muslims from France who claim to be as such, and who are confronted with the hard task of defining an Islam of France.

The task is difficult because it is a question of developing justifications in two different reference universes: that of republican France, and that of universalist Islam. The solutions must, in these two spheres, be both to be tolerable – legal as on the moral level – in the two spheres, and practicableoperate in the two spheres (for the case of teaching for example it will be “ build Islamic knowledge that is both legitimate in transnational terms, and relevant for the French situation »).

Institutions and reasoning

The book is made up of three parts: the first is interested in the context of training an Islamic landscape in France ; The second consists of case studies, relating to emerging Islamic institutions ; The third part relates to debates that could be described as scholasticism, in the context of Islam in France. Well conducted, the work articulates field data and analyzes with finesse, and offers a convincing argument.

The Islamic landscape of France, recalls the author, is distinguished by two traits: on the one hand the very great homogeneity of Muslims, and the weakness of their institutions (apart from the Turkish and West African communities, the vast majority of Muslims of France comes from Maghreb immigration, characterized by a similarity of practices but, also, a deficiency of the community organization) ; and on the other hand the strong implication of the State in the supervision and control of Islam, from the colonial period and until the creation of the CFCM (French advice from Muslim worship). A third characteristic of the Islamic landscape in France is, according to the author, its strong exposure to controversies linked not only to the international context (the assimilation of Islam to the terrorist threat), but also to national social crises such as Riots of the suburbs, for which religion has often been denounced as an obstacle to social integration. These “ hot spots From the Parisian suburbs occupy a privileged place in the investigation: we are thus taken to a mosque of Clichy Sous-Bois, an Institute of Islamic Studies in Saint-Denis (Cersi) and a private school in Aubervilliers (success). However, the author never yields to the sensational ; On the contrary, these places are envisaged in their positioning in relation to the field of Islamic institutions in France, in the same way as the major mosques in Paris and Lyon, and the European Institute of Human Sciences (intended for the training of imams) from Château-Chinon.

Each institution is presented through the figure of the leaders who animate it, and their trajectories: true entrepreneurs in religion, they strive to weave networks to assert their legitimacy in the French Islamic landscape, legitimacy so much vis-à-vis the French authorities vis-à-vis the Muslim community as a whole. It is not easy, given competition in the religious field, the institutional entrepreneurs in competition between them, and with other groups, in particular the Salafists, for the capture of the religious market. The difficulties on the side of relations with the French authorities are not less, as the anecdote of the contradictory injunctions addressed to the imam of Clichy undergrowth show, to intervene and not to intervene to calm the neighborhood riots, And the setbacks of the School Director Success, victim of his success. Even though they are the product of local negotiations, with town halls in particular, Islamic institutions are the subject of a constant suspicion of sedition.

However, the attentive ethnography proposed by Bowen tends to refute this fantasy of the risk of political capture of the Muslim public. The book indeed shows, through the descriptions of the courses of religious institutes in particular, that the lessons relate to the daily practice of Islam and its rites, such as prayer, ablutions. The students interviewed indicate that they seek above all to know themselves better through the learning of religion. The market of these institutes would therefore be as much a religious market as an identity market. A further sociology of audiences would have made it possible to better understand how the strategies of distinction of the leaders followed by the anthropologist, and the configurations of a Muslim community in training. We ultimately know too little about the trajectories of audiences that will devote these new institutions as legitimate – or not.

The last part of the book studies the debates in which Muslim public reasoning is deployed. This part could be austere, for whom is not familiar with the mode of theological discussion. It is however there that we can measure the originality of the gaze of an anthropologist of religions on the question of Islam in France: through the staging of the different actors, we see how the tensions between constraints of existence and religious imperatives. Tension is not systematic conflict: certainly the case of the riba ‘, the banking interest, shows a real contradiction between the French system (where banks practice interest loan) and religious prohibition, contradiction which cannot resolve that in non -participation in the system or in pragmatic accommodation with the religious imperative ; On the other hand, in the case of marriage, French legal prescriptions and Muslim religious prescriptions, despite their differences, can easily find points of convergence in order to preserve public order. The contrast between these two cases can be observed at the level of the relevant sphere of discussion which is put forward: in the first case, religious opinions (fatwas) circulate in a transnational way (through television and internet), and ask the question of respect by Muslims of universal standards ; In the case of marriage, however, it is the opinions of local leaders who take precedence, and their concern to register in the French legal framework – even though the faithful may wish to stand out. This tension between more or less co -opted religious elites, and oppositional reasoning of young people sometimes out of ban, is not developed in the work, although it is alluded to it on several occasions. The question overflows, of course, the subject of Islamic normativity, but it is central in the public debate on the question of integration.

Communities and Integration

Can Islam be French ? proposes, despite this reserve, an important contribution to the French debate, concluding the survey with a very stimulating analysis of the concept of communitarianism. Thus, the constitution of a Muslim community, structured around institution, community leaders, of cultural associations, would not sound the death knell for republican unity, but on the contrary would allow the integration of Muslims as a group of citizens in its own right. This is not only a displacement produced by the Anglo-Saxon culture from which the author comes: Bowen recalls that Catholics and Jews were integrated into the Republic via community associations which allowed them to represent their interests. Thus, although strangeness in French ideology, the participation of citizens in public life through intermediate groups constitutes a historical and sociological reality. To the tightening of “ republican values “, And to the rejection of pluralism in the name of national integration (as the recent Burqa affair has shown, it would be necessary, according to the author, to replace a” pragmatic of convergence ».