Le Monde des religions, September-October 2009 —
France has the largest Muslim population in Europe. Yet the rapid growth of Islam in the land of Pascal and Descartes over the past few decades has sparked fears and questions. Let's not even mention the far-right's fantastical rhetoric, which attempts to exploit these fears by prophesying an upheaval in French society under the "pressure of a religion destined to become the majority." More seriously, some concerns are entirely legitimate: how can we reconcile our secular tradition, which relegates religion to the private sphere, with new religious demands specific to schools, hospitals, and public spaces? How can we reconcile our vision of an emancipated woman with the rise of a religion with strong symbols of identity, such as the headscarf—not to mention the full-face veil—which evoke for us the submission of women to male power? There is indeed a cultural clash and a conflict of values that it would be dangerous to deny. But questioning or expressing criticism does not mean transmitting prejudices and stigmatizing in a defensive attitude driven by fear of the other and their difference. This is why Le Monde des Religions has dedicated a major 36-page feature to French Muslims and the question of Islam in France. This question has been a concrete issue for two centuries with the arrival of the first immigrants and has even been rooted in our collective imagination for over twelve centuries with the wars against the Saracens and the famous Battle of Poitiers. Therefore, it is necessary to take a historical look at the issue to better understand the fears, prejudices, and value judgments we hold about the religion of Muhammad (and not
“Muhammad ,” as the media writes it, without knowing that it is a Turkish name for the Prophet inherited from the struggle against the Ottoman Empire. We then attempted to explore the galaxy of French Muslims through reports on five very diverse (and not mutually exclusive) groups: former Algerian immigrants who came to work in France from 1945 onwards; young French Muslims who prioritize their religious identity; those who, while embracing a Muslim identity, first seek to subject it to critical reason and the humanist values inherited from the Enlightenment; those who have distanced themselves from Islam as a religion; and finally, those who are part of the Salafist fundamentalist movement. This mosaic of identities reveals the extreme complexity of a highly emotional and politically sensitive issue, to such an extent that the public authorities refuse to use the
Religious and ethnic affiliations are not used in censuses, which would allow for a better understanding of French Muslims and their numbers. It therefore seemed useful to conclude this dossier with articles analyzing the relationship between Islam and the Republic, or the issue of "Islamophobia," and to give a voice to several academics offering a more objective perspective.
Islam is the second largest religion in the world in terms of adherents, after Christianity. It is also the second largest religion in France, far behind Catholicism, but far ahead of Protestantism, Judaism, and Buddhism. Whatever one's opinion of this religion, this is a fact. One of the greatest challenges facing our society is to work towards the best possible integration of Islam with French cultural and political traditions. This cannot be achieved, for Muslims as well as non-Muslims, in an atmosphere of ignorance, mistrust, or aggression