Can Islam be French?1

Can Islam be French? by John R. Bowen is divided into three parts. The first part, which includes chapters one and two, provides a brief overview of Islam in France, addresses issues of migration, the rise of religion, the response of the state, and the distinctive features of the French Islamic landscape.

The second part consists of four chapters. Chapter Three explores Islam in the French suburbs, Islamic networks, and the work of an everyday Imam, as well as mosques and social divisions. Chapter Four examines the forces which shape Islamic knowledge in France, the various rules, schools, and principles used to interpret Islam, Hichem El Arafa’s CERSI, the science of prophetic traditions, and the objectives of Scripture. Chapter Five differentiates between the various schools of jurisprudence in Islam, the differing pedagogical approaches employed in teaching the Muslim faith, the major influence of the Maliki madhhab in France, and the practical training of preachers and scholars. Chapter Six wonders whether Islamic schools can really be republican. It examines the case of Dhaou Meskine’s Success School, how Muslim schools manage to teach a secular curriculum, Muslim family camp, and closes with coverage of Dhaou’s arrest.

Part three includes three chapters. Chapter Seven wonders whether there should be an Islam for Europe, whether there should be different rules for different lands, ideological confrontations in mosques, and the transnational Islamic sphere. Chapter Eight deals with issues such as secular and religious marriages, halal and haram food rules, as well as the attitude of French civil law towards Islamic practices. Finally, Chapter Nine tackles Islamic spheres in republican space, whether religion-based associations impede integration, priorities and values, as well as pragmatics of convergence.

Bowen’s relatively well-written work provides an overview of the Islamic landscape in France, and the problems confronting the Muslim population in the country. Almost exclusively descriptive, the book is virtually devoid of an authorial voice. While the author can be praised for his apparent objectivity, in which he primarily presents the French and Muslim perspectives on various issues, he can also be criticized for providing little to nothing in the way of analysis and commentary. By focusing on presenting the facts, without advancing an overt argument in defense of either the secular French or the French Muslim community, the author essentially says: “Come to your own conclusions.” Rather than bridge the divide or express sympathy or support for a community under attack by racist secularists, the author selects to be silent on many subjects, a passive position that many readers will find frankly infuriating.

The field work completed by the author is certainly of value, but almost exclusively for those who are unfamiliar with the issues at hand. Written primarily for an uninformed American audience, the book provides information that is already well-known to specialists, the French - both secularists and Muslims - informed individuals in the Maghreb, as well as politically-sensitive media watcher from around the world.

Despite providing a good overview of the interpretive chaos which reigns within the French Sunni community - in which opinions range from the extreme fundamentalism of the Salafis to some type of deformed, state-supported, secularized, liberal Islam - the author has ignored the Shi‘ite community in France which has a strong, structured, leadership, with an uninterrupted tradition of ijtihad or interpretation of Islamic law to new and changing realities. If Bowen presented the secularist voice in Why the French Don’t like Headscarves, and wanted to present the Muslim voice in Can Islam be French?, he should have provided a more complete profile of the Islamic community without ignoring the smaller, but equally significant, Shi‘ite perspective.

Although subtle in argument, Bowen suggests that Islamic values and French secularism could be compatible on the condition that both sides make concessions. While it is true that some Muslims hold the most backwards cultural customs which deserve to be denounced, it is clear that it is the Islam as a whole that is under attack in France. If anything, sensitive readers feel a sense of siege when they read Bowen’s book. As the facts presented by the author make explicitly clear, it is not only “religious symbols” like the headscarf that the secular French don’t like. They are now actively attacking the Islamic institution of marriage and divorce (158-64), halal food rules (165-172), and the prohibition against usury (137). They also aggressively oppose the presence of mosques and minarets (193) which are “incompatible” with the French architectural landscape (22). Some French legal scholars believe that Islamic marriages and divorces conducted abroad should not be considered valid when one or both parties come to France (173). As the author exposes, the French government is even pursuing Muslims into the personal realm, accusing them of “assimilation defects” for failing to replace their old Islamic values with new French ones (191). Valuing virginity is viewed as a “retrograde value” (192), requests by Jewish and Muslim women for private swimming sessions are met with anger (195), while wearing a face-veil and opting to be a housewife is sufficient cause for having one’s citizenship denied (192).

Rather than rationalizing the reasons for French anti-Muslimism and addressing issues of Islamic apologetics, scholars should focus more on the historical, sociological, and psychological roots of French anti-Islamism, paralleling the plight of the Muslims in France with the condition of Jews in Nazi Germany. Much like the Nuremberg Laws, which aimed to exclude Jewish people from civic life, the French laws aimed against expressions of Islam seek to exclude Muslims from active participation in French social, economic, and educational life, something Québécois nationalists, American Republicans, and Tea-Baggers seek to replicate in North America. Following in the footsteps of the French, many French Canadians in Québec have brought the battle over “reasonable accommodations” to the province in an attempt to antagonize its Muslim minority. Inspired by the increased tolerance for intolerance seen in Europe and elsewhere, extreme right-wing rhetoric has greatly increased in the United States, reminding many historically-informed individuals of the anti-Jewish hate propaganda spread by the Nazis. Although valuable sources of information, works like those of Bowen miss the critically important issues by a mile.

• 1. This book review of John R. Bowen’s Can Islam be French? (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2010) was originally published in the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 27.4 (2010): 120-122.