No Country for Muslims? The Invention of an Islam Républicain in France and Its Impact on French Muslims

Abstract

Since the beheading of the French teacher Samuel Paty on 16 October 2020, the call for a fight against the so-called ‘Political Islam’ has been heard once again, not only in France, but all over Europe (EU). The politicization of Islam is held to be responsible for the increasing attacks by radical Islamic actors within European metropoles, and the EU states’ call for action and revenge in response to this ideology and its adherents, in order to guarantee public security and democratic values. Starting from the major terrorist attacks in France in the last few years, this paper seeks to compare the interlinking between domestic policy and religious radicalization and its impact on neighboring states. With regard to the attacks on 13 November 2015 in France, the attackers were traced back to radical networks in Belgium and Germany. Based on selected interviews that have been conducted by the author with female adherents of jihadist milieus within the years 2015 and 2016 in France and social media examples of Muslim reactions on the current French law enforcement, the tension between domestic policy and religious freedom related to Islam in France will be highlighted in this article. Among other reasons, the interview quotations and social media reactions can be seen as a result of a specific religious understanding and practice related to Islam by some actors. In addition, the ongoing othering of Muslims by France and other European societies can be seen to be in sum to be responsible for the increasing interest of young Muslims in radical Islamic thought that led to jihadist attacks within France in the not-so-distant past. With respect to the aforementioned development, this article will conceptualize the problematique of a (politically motivated) category formation related to one religion that is currently practiced in France, as seen from the perspective of a religious studies scholar.

A New Approach to the Spatialization of Religion: Changes in the Spatial Distribution of Religious Institutions in Debrecen (Hungary) between the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and 2023

“…In this context, research studies have highlighted the fact that, on the one hand, some of the major world religions (e.g., Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism) have shown a very significant spatial expansion in recent centuries (Stump 2008). Starting from the original core area, Christianity has appeared in Africa and in the Americas (Crawford 2005), Islam in Africa, Europe and the Indonesian Archipelago (Michalopoulos et al 2018;Boms and Aboubakr 2022;Käsehage 2022), while Judaism has appeared in Europe and in North America (Drotár and Kozma 2021). On the other hand, the analyses have shown the spatial consequences of conflicts between (e.g., Christianity-Islam: Fuller 1995; Christianity-Judaism : Abulafia 2004) and within (Ahmed 2022) the major world religions.…”

Indonesian Islamic Students’ Fear of Demographic Changes: The Nexus of Arabic Education, Religiosity, and Political Preferences

“…There has been a continuous discussion on the ability of religious issues to affect political construction. This is observed from the significant debates and frictions created concerning religious identity against secularism by Islamic immigrants in France (Karimi 2018;Käsehage 2022). The Pakistani has also witnessed the rise of Islamic Socialism by Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto during 1970, which was based on the propaganda of achieving better economic welfare but later declared part of the atheistic agenda of the proponent party (Sanghro and Chandio 2019).…”