Islam in France Reconfigured: Republican Islam in the 2010 Gerin Report

Abstract

This paper examines the 2010 Gerin Report on the prevalence and dangers of donning the voile intégral (full-face veils, namely niqabs and burqas) in the Republic to consider the implications of its configuration of Islam in France. With reference to five other recent reports and commissions in France on the visibility and appropriateness of religious signs in the public sphere, I suggest that the Gerin Report differs in two significant ways. First, the Report does not explicitly promote French secularism. While laïcité is underscored as integral to a vivre-ensemble (living together), the document positions full-face coverings not as religious symbols but as political, Islamist signs. Second, the Report singularly focuses on disputed Islamic head-coverings and, with reference to religious experts, carefully constructs niqabs and burqas as outside of theologically “proper” Republican Islam. Following consideration of these two features, I conclude by pointing to how the Gerin Report's politicization of the voile intégral is reflected in recent citizenship decisions and through the interactions of a large French feminist organization with Muslim women in a Parisian banlieue (suburb).