From the Jewish Question to the Muslim Question. Republican Rigorism, Culturalist Differentialism and Antinomies of Enforced Emancipation

Re-posing the “Muslim Question”

“…Rather, she sees a racialized and Othered Islam positioned as being unassimilable in ways reminiscent of previous heightened anti-Semitism in France and Germany. In the same vein, Sara F Farris (2014) maps similitude between the “Jewish Question” as posed in Germany in the 1870s and the 2004 veil ban in France.…”

“…In response to Bruno Bauer’s work, Karl Marx (1844) depicted the “Jewish Question” in nineteenth-century Europe as seminal to a series of debates around national identity, democracy, capitalism, and modernity. These thinkers held differing views on the question of citizenship: Bruno Bauer as a radical secularist who wanted Jews in Germany to give up their particularity, and Karl Marx as a socialist who saw religion as an obstacle and political emancipation alone as insufficient (see Farris, 2014: 296). More recently, some scholars see the “Questions” as following a continuum, arguing that a European gaze has shifted from anti-Semitism to Islamophobia.…”

“They love death as we love life”: The “Muslim Question” and the biopolitics of replacement

“…More recently, the analytical frame of the “Muslim Question” was brought to scholarly discussions and analyses of Muslims and Islam in Europe (Anidjar, ; Farris, ; Norton, ; O’Brien, ; Mansouri, Lobo, & Johns, ) . This conceptualization further traces the problematization—which, following Michel Foucault (), refers to the processes of how and why something or somebody is turned into a problem—of Islam and Muslims in Europe and seeks to apprehend the systematic character of this process.…”

“…We understand the analytic of the “Muslim Question” to revolve around two dimensions. First, the accusation of being an “alien body” to the nation (Farris, , pp. 296–297) and second, the demands of integration and assimilation (Farris, , p. 296).…”

“…First, the accusation of being an “alien body” to the nation (Farris, , pp. 296–297) and second, the demands of integration and assimilation (Farris, , p. 296). The production of material and symbolic difference is, in other words, entangled with forceful calls, as well as concrete measures, to regulate, control, and refashion Muslims’ lives and subjectivities.…”