Fraternal Critique

Texte du rabat

"The discourse on Islam in the French public sphere and French policymaking presumes that Islam is uniquely incompatible with critical thought and open debate. France's manufactured "Muslim problem" or "Muslim question" is framed variously as a problem of socioeconomic inequality and urban marginalization, of liberal democratic values and gender and sexual equality, and of national security and foreign affairs. Contrary to this narrative, Kirsten Wesselhoeft reveals, French Muslims nurture a lively organizing and intellectual culture. Fraternal Critique explores two sides of Muslim community in France: how Muslims undertake the moral project of shaping their community in a wide range of cultural and political settings and how the French state, in turn, responds. Discontented with existing religious institutions and moral frameworks, beset by gendered and racialized media stigma and state surveillance, and facing urgent social problems, many young French Muslims are focused on the moral and material improvement of their community through grassroots social activism and renewed intellectual culture. Through social critique, Wesselhoeft shows, French Muslims create solidarity through debates over how to live well and what kind of communities to build. At the same time, the French state and political elites use the specter of "communalism" to justify unprecedented restrictions on civil liberties, often in the name of the defense of secularism. Fraternal Critique exposes the ways that secularism in the legal sense has been exceeded in French policy and political discourse, showing how the idea of "Muslim community" has become an object of increasing surveillance under the aegis of public order"--