Muslims In France Research Articles

The Muslims in France and the French Model of Integration

Dominique Maillard is vice dean in charge of international relations and currently teaches at the University of Paris XII-Val de Marne.

From the Élysée Salon to the Table of the Republic: State-Islam Relations and the Integration of Muslims in France

The creation of a representative council for observant Muslims—the Conseil Français du Culte Musulman—is a landmark accomplishment of Fifth Republic France. It is a strong reaffirmation of the republican framework in which the representatives of organized religion are expected to operate in lay France. But it is also an uncharacteristic official acknowledgment of contemporary religious diversity. How did a country whose political system has been notoriously allergic to organized religion decide to assemble and embed Muslim leaders within a state-sponsored institution? Some clues are contained in the remarks above, which hint at the mindset of the ministers in charge of religious affairs. These statements, made by two key actors in the French government's efforts to integrate Islam into French state-church relations, can be seen as rhetorical bookends of a policy process aiming to bring France's Muslim population closer to the state. Over a nearly fifteen-year period, politicians of distinct party traditions drew on competing models of state-society relations to make this politically feasible.

Does French Islam Have Borders? Dilemmas of Domestication in a Global Religious Field

Although many accounts of transnational religious movements emphasize mobility and communication, equally important are efforts by both political actors and religious leaders to carve out distinctive national forms of religion. In this article I examine dilemmas faced by Muslims in France who seek both to remain part of the global Muslimcommunity and to satisfy French demands for conformity to political and cultural norms. I consider the history of immigration and the importance of French notions of laicite but emphasize the structural problem of articulating a global religious field onto a self-consciously bounded French nation-state. I then draw on recent fieldwork in Paris to analyze two recent public events in which attempts by Muslim public intellectuals to develop an “Islam of France” are frustrated by internal, structural tensions concerning religious authority and political legitimacy, and not simply by a conflict between “Muslims” and “France.”

From the Elysee Salon to the Table of the Republic: State-Islam Relations and the Integration of Muslims in France

From the Elysee Salon to the Table of the Republic: State-Islam Relations and the Integration of Muslims in France

An Ethnographic Reflection on Muslim-Christian Dialogue in the North of France: The context of laïcité1

This article argues that laïcité is one of the most important issues facing Muslims in France, and French society as a whole. It contains an analysis of the historical meaning of laïcité, its relationship with secularization and secularity and the effect it has had on Muslims in contemporary France. Although laïcité and some of its interpretations have been causes of tense relations between Muslims in France and the rest of French society, the alliances and divisions which have emerged have not always been along confessional lines. As well as Muslims having a diversity of attitudes towards laïcité, members of other religions are faced with similar challenges. Openness and dialogue between Muslims and Christians in France appear to have increased in recent years, perhaps beyond other countries in Europe, and this article hypothesizes that this is due to the common challenge of laïcité . More precisely, dialogue in France is practical, formal and bilateral, in contrast to the United Kingdom, for example, where it is theoretical, informal and multilateral. These hypotheses are supported by establishing the social significance of Muslim-Christian dialogue, and by citing published experiences and analyses of Muslim-Christian dialogue, qualitative research which I undertook in the Lille area and comparative ethnography (the point of comparison being the United Kingdom, the ethnography concentrated in Glasgow). This article insists on the complexities of relations between Muslims, Christians, French society and laïcité, and examines their nature and significance. The common challenge of laïcité and the process of inter-religious dialogue are themselves complex phenomena, and this contributes to the specific alliances and divisions which can be seen.

Juifs et Musulmans en France : le modèle républicain d'intégration en question

Jews and Muslims in France: the Republican Integration model under debate. Taking in account the changes of pluralism and the transformations of the French State, I propose to compare the process of integration of Jews (during the XIXe Century) with that of Muslims in French society today. I first present the «confessional model» which characterizes the Jewish process of integration during the last century and I show how the Jewish community has moved away from this model. But French society had also changed: religions had followed a continuous process of adaptation to mundane values («internal secularization»); the French «laïcité» is also more opened to true religious pluralism and to public manifestations of religion. Following these changes, Muslims want to participate in them, especially the young generation which is more and more involved in the Muslim leadership and which claims the same rights as other religious groups. Therefore, while adopting the «confessional model», they refuse to be confined to that strict pattern which is the core of the «republican model of integration» they are required to follow.

On Islam in the West and Muslims in France: Views from the Hexagon

Gilles Kepel is one of France's most prominent specialists of contemporary Islamist movements and is well-known outside the walls of academia there, due to his best-selling books and frequent appearances in the media. A number of Kepel's publications have appeared in English translation over the past dozen years, most notably his first-rate work on Islamism in Egypt. The book under review, which was originally published as A l'ouest d'Allah (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1994), represents Kepel's latest effort to chart the 'rise of Islam', this time in the USA, UK, and France: three Western countries with significant and growing Muslim minorities. Two things need to be said straight out about the book. First, it is aimed at a specifically French audience and reflects a peculiarly Franco-centric perspective on its subject. Second, though it takes on the appearance of a scholarly comparison of Islamic movements in its three selected countries, the book is in fact a polemical salvo fired into a noisy debate that has been raging in France for several years now, namely over whether or not Muslim immigrant communities from the Maghrib-and principally Algeria-are assimilating into French society and what policies the French state should adopt to further this goal. Though the book devotes roughly equal space to the three countries, the USA and UK-often lumped together as the 'Anglo-Saxons' in French discourse-essentially serve as foils for the French case, the latter being the main concern of the author and, presumably, his target audience. Kepel's point of departure, as he states, is to examine the 'assertions of community identity' by Muslims in societies that seem to be evolving toward greater cultural homogenisation and which have witnessed an erosion of

Muslims in France: the issue of veiling

(1993). Muslims in France: the issue of veiling. Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs. Journal: Vol. 14, No. 1-2, pp. 102-106.

Religion et politique : juifs et musulmans maghrébins en France

Religion and politics : Jews and North African Muslims in France. The Jewish modes of social integration since the French Revolution cannot be compared summarily with the much more recent ones of the Muslims. In both cases, however, a minority group with a strong historical awareness of its cultural and religions identity tends to assert itself in a sort of collective bargaining with the centralized State. The Jews managed to obtain State protection by giving up much of their specificity, and by confining the religious element within the private sphere. A comparable evolution is beginning for the Muslims, particularly those born in France, familiarly called "beurs ". Some older or culturally less well-integrated groups are still seeking outside protection, while expressing their ambiguous desire to remain within the French space. Torn between their wish to affirm a public religious practice conforming to that of mainstream Islam and the daily compromises necessary if one has to live and work in a country where Islam is not the majority religion and where the State has recognized no religion since 1905, they can find no public agency with which to pursue peacefully a process which might result in the satisfaction of most of their collective demands, in exchange for giving up those which are incompatible with the essential features of France's secular tradition.

Muslims in France: a case report

Muslims in France: a case report

Father's Brother's Daughter Marriage in Kurdistan

THE PREVALENCE of preferential father's brothers' daughter marriage in the Middle East, and its association with Islam, has frequently received reference. Yet no clear picture of the possible structural implications of this form of preferential marriage has emerged, nor of the actual distribution and frequency of the practice. The present paper attempts to analyze the relationship between the Kurdish form of segmentary lineage organization and this marriage pattern. Any chart of unilineal descent in a stable or expanding population constitutes a ramifying system where succeeding generations in many lines tend to be larger and more inclusive than the preceeding. It is this chart, generally in compressed form, which is utilized to organize a descent group in the form of a segmentary lineage organization. This organizational form was named by Gifford and later by Firth, who called it a "ramage," and first analyzed fully by Evans-Pritchard.' Recent work on this type of organization has been lucidly summarized by Fortes.2 In almost all the lineage systems described in the literature, the lineage, or the clan of which it is a part, is an exogamous group. This fact of exogamy has important implications, e.g. for the development of dispersed clans and normalizing of a "daughter's son" relationship as a mechanism for grafting foreign lineages to the dominant lineage of an area (as described for the Nuer), and it is further frequently reflected in the whole construction of kinship terminology.3 Lineage exogamy is, however, no essential feature of lineage systems. No matter what the marriage pattern in a population may be, a strict chart of unilineal descent offers an equally clear framework on which a segmentary lineage organization may be based. In a patrilineal system, matrilineal ties may be regarded as totally irrelevant to the political relations of segments and whole lineages-marriage patterns may, so to speak, be "liberated" from their role in defining the relations between political groups. This lack of association of lineage organization and exogamy is common among Semitic and Iranian tribes of the Middle East,