Islam and the Governing of Muslims in France: Secularism without Religion

by Frank Peter

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Academic

, 2021

Will Islam be able to adapt to France's secularity and its strict separation of public and private spheres? Can France accommodate Muslims? In this book, Frank Peter argues that the debate about “Islam” and “Muslims” is not simply caused by ignorance or Islamophobia. Rather, it is an integral part of how secularism is reasoned.
Islam and the Governing of Muslims in France shows that understanding religion as separate from other aspects of life, such as politics, economy, and culture, disregards the ways religion has operated and been managed in “secular” societies such as France. This book uncovers the varying rationalities of the secular that have developed over the past few decades in France to “govern Islam,” in order to examine how Muslims engage with the secular regime and contribute to its transformation.
This book offers a close analysis of French secularism as it has been debated by Islamic intellectuals and activists from the 1990s until the present. It will influence the study of secularism as well as the study of Islam in the French Republic, and reveal new connections between Islamic traditions and secular rationalities.

Features

Analyzes the emergence of distinctive forms of French Islam
Studies the neglected intellectual production of a major Islamic group in France
Outlines a new conceptualization of secularism beyond regimes of separation or privatization of religion

Contents

Introduction
1 Reconstructing the discursive context of secularism
2 The social Republic
3 Rationalizing integration
4 Islam and society: entwinement and separation
5 Teaching freedom
6 “The history of some is not the history of others”
7 Islam and fiction beyond freedom of speech
8 Islamophobia and the critique of integration
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Praise for Islam and the Governing of Muslims in France

This book is theoretically sophisticated, sociologically and historically detailed, politically engaged, and compellingly argued. Frank Peter commands his subject like no other.

Among recent works on European forms of governance of Islam, Frank Peter's stands out for its breadth and for its strong, consistent theoretical argument.

Product Details

• Title: Islam and the Governing of Muslims in France: Secularism without Religion
• Author: Frank Peter
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781350067929, 9781350214538, 1350214531, 135006792X
• Resource ID: LLS:9781350067929
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-09T02:29:03Z

About the Author

Frank Peter is Research Associate at the Erlangen Center for Islam and Law in Europe, Germany. He has authored and co-edited a number of volumes including Islamic Movements of Europe: Public Religion and Islamophobia in the Modern World (2014) and Impérialisme et industrialisation à Damas, 1908-1939 (2010).