The Fear of Islam: French Context and Reaction

Abstract

Western Europe has seen a radical decline of religious practice in its traditional institutionalised forms. This decline for those faiths that once were a dominant part of Europe’s cultural landscape has coincided with the revival of Islam among the second and third generations of Muslim immigrants. The Muslim presence challenges countries to re-examine their pre-existing understandings of secularity, which are no longer compatible with a commitment to pluralism. There is the need to move away from the narrow understandings of secularity pitting rationality against religious irrationality that dominated the nineteenth century. European countries seem deeply suspicious of religious radicalism, which is regarded as complicit with a hierarchical conception of society and as hostile to individual freedoms, as highlighted by the concern with women’s rights. Islam in France has come to be perceived as subscribing to a conception of gender roles totally incompatible with so-called European values. The concern for women’s rights that figures so prominently in all discussions of Islam in France, however, tends to be part of a discourse that considers Muslim women wearing the hijab or burqa/niqab only as victims. Such dress has become the target of Islamophobia, as symbols of a traditional world that is thought to threaten the future of Europe. Yet, Islamisation now partakes of the individualistic search for meaning and self-realisation that characterises Western societies, a search which in the last 20 years or so has been almost exclusively formulated in the language of the market. Individual self-expression, through patterns of consumption, also effects contemporary Muslims in different parts of the world. At the same time, the social profile of European Muslims is overwhelmingly working class and they have been particularly affected by the disappearance of unskilled jobs. Their segregation in particularly badly serviced urban areas has trapped many in the second and third generations in a vicious cycle of social deprivation. For this marginalised section of the population, Islam, often in its fundamentalist form, has been a way of constructing a positive identity, of building supportive social networks and more broadly of acquiring a code of ethics that enables them to live peacefully alongside mainstream society.

This chapter is an expanded and updated version of a paper previously published by Natalie Doyle in 2011 as Lessons from France: Popularist anxiety and veiled fears of Islam, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 22(4): 475–489. DOI:10.1080/09596410.2011.606194. © University of Birmingham, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, www.tandfonline.com on behalf of University of Birmingham. Since that version was published, events that have taken place in France (and Europe more widely) have confirmed the trend which it analysed. Following its introduction of the ‘burqa ban’ discussed below, the French government banned Muslims from using the street for collective prayers, a practice which had developed around some mosques for quite some time in big cities, as a result of the lack of space available which has been documented. Neither the ‘burqa ban’ nor the prohibition of prayers were repealed by the Socialist governments that came into power following the presidential election of 2012. Manuel Valls, first as minister for the interior, then prime minister, have in fact continued to promote a hard interpretation of the French principle of state secularism discussed in this chapter. In neighbouring countries hostility towards Muslims also gathered pace, assuming a variety of forms. The most recent and visible manifestation was the ‘anti-Islamisation’ demonstrations organized in 2014 in the German city of Dresden by the movement PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes).