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The denunciation of fundamentalism in France, embodied in the law against the veil and the deportation of imams, has shifted into a systematic attack on all Muslims and Islam. This hostility is rooted in the belief that Islam cannot be integrated into French—and, consequently, secular and liberal-society. However, as Olivier Roy makes clear in this book, Muslim intellectuals have made it possible for Muslims to live concretely in a secularized world while maintaining the identity of a "true believer." They have formulated a language that recognizes two spaces: that of religion and that of secular society.Western society is unable to recognize this process, Roy argues, because of a cultural bias that assumes religious practice is embedded within a specific, traditional culture that must be either erased entirely or forced to coexist in a neutral, multicultural space. Instead, Roy shows that new forms of religiosity, such as Islamic fundamentalism and Christian evangelicalism, have come to thrive in post-traditional, secular contexts precisely because they remain detached from any cultural background. In recognizing this, Roy recasts the debate concerning Islam and democracy. Analyzing the French case in particular, in which the tension between Islam and the conception of Western secularism is exacerbated, Roy makes important distinctions between Arab and non-Arab Muslims, hegemony and tolerance, and the role of the umma and the sharia in Muslim religious life. He pits Muslim religious revivalism against similar movements in the West, such as evangelical Protestantism and Jehovah's Witnesses, and refutes the myth of a single "Muslim community" by detailing different groups and their inability to overcome their differences. Roy's rare portrait of the realities of immigrant Muslim life offers a necessary alternative to the popular specter of an "Islamic threat." Supporting his arguments with his extensive research on Islamic history, sociology, and politics, Roy brilliantly demonstrates the limits of our understanding of contemporary Islamic religious practice in the West and the role of Islam as a screen onto which Western societies project their own identity crisis. (8/11/2007)
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S e c u l a r i s m C o n f r o n t s Is l a m Secularism Confronts Is l a m O l i v i e r Roy Transl ated by George Holoc h Co lu m b i a Un i v e r s i t y P r ess N ew York Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Original French edition copyright © Editions Stock, 2005 Translation copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roy, Olivier, 1949– [Laïcité face à l’islam. English] Secularism confronts Islam / Olivier Roy ; translated by George Holoch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-231-14102-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-231-51179-7 (electronic) 1. Islam—France. 2. Islam and secularism—France. 3. Islam and state— France. 4. Laicism—France. 5. Fundamentalism—France. I. Title. BP65.F8R6913 2007 322'.10944—dc22 2007001748 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 contents Preface vii Introduction: Laïcité and the Identity of France 1 1 French Laïcité and Islam: Which Is the Exception? 13 2 Islam and Secularization 37 3 The Crisis of the Secular State and the New Forms of Religiosity 65 4 De Facto Secularization 91 Notes 103 Index 117 p r e fac e Islam’s encounter with the West is as old as Islam itself. The first Muslim minorities living under Western Christi