Interfaith Dialogue and Faith-Based Social Activism in a State of Emergency: laïcité and the Crisis of Religion in France

Abstract

A significant body of literature demonstrates that the discourse of laïcité has become steadily more politicised in recent years (Gidley, Hajjar et al. 2016, 2017). This has led to the omerta around Islamophobia in the French political sphere. Instead a series of discursive constructs have come to be coupled with the normative rulings of secularism (Kahn 2007). Based on eighteen months (October 2015-May 2017) of ethnographic research in the tense context of Parisian civil society due to austerity and insecurity, this paper shows how interfaith initiatives and faith-based social action figure into a new landscape of state-enforced values under a state of emergency, where one religion in particular is under scrutiny. The primary argument is that while interfaith education and outreach are dialogical vectors for combating discrimination they are constrained by the discourse of laïcité and the implicit targeting of Muslims in the state of emergency (état d'urgence). Seldom explicit, the approach of many of these interfaith associations 2 in terms of dialogue between religions, show a lack of critical space granted to laïcité and its epistemological correlation to anti-clericalism. By contrast, faith-based social action, and its inevitable multifaith encounter, generates more personal understandings about discrimination. Therefore second, I suggest that it is through social action that the recognition of religious identity as a factor acting in favour of a shared secular-religious common good can come about.

Islamic Commodification in Representation of Political Development in Indonesia: A Systematic Literature Review

“…France (Everett, 2018). Likewise, religious life in developing countries can be seen from the unity of religious leaders who can mobilize a spirit of unity and integrity, and become a Hayula, P-ISSN: 2549-0761, E-ISSN: 2548-9860 milestone for the establishment of the country (Jamil, 2012).…”

“This Is Just Where We Are in History”

“…In trying to elucidate the complexity of my interlocutors' engagement with the topic of the relational positionalities of Jews and Muslim in the UK I hope to both build upon and contribute to the following bodies of literature. I suggest my fieldsite offers an important ethnographic and analytical prism for the growing research on Jewish and Muslim experiences in Europe that has emphasized the overlapping histories of antisemitism and Islamophobia, and sought to complicate and unsettle accounts that polarise European Jews and Muslims (for instance, Anidjar 2008, Atshan and Galor 2020, Everett 2018, Everett and Gidley 2018, Katz 2015, Klug 2014, Mandel 2016, Meer 2013, Özyürek 2018, Renton and Gidley 2017, Romeyn 2017, Sheldon 2016, Silverstein 2010.1 It also offers a fruitful site for the scholarship at the intersection of Jewish Studies and postcolonial theory that has examined the differing dimensions of what I describe as a comparative theorization of the minority condition (Cheyette 2013, Goetschel and Quayson 2016, Guttman 2013, Mufti 2009, Rothberg 2009, 2011.…”

“This Is a Head, Hearts, and Hands Enterprise”: Adult Learning in Interfaith Dialogue

“…Discussing difficult topics and learning from someone with a different worldview is a learned skill that takes time to establish (O’Keefe, 2009). Interfaith dialogue can be an opportunity to cultivate these conversational skills, leading to both an increase in interfaith competency and the ability to peacefully participate in interfaith communication (DeTurk, 2006; Everett, 2018). Interfaith activities can help this cultivation.…”