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 Enviar a un conegut |
| Islam in France: Still them and us. Desembre del 2008. |
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| Can Islam Be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a
Secularist State. By John Bowen. Princeton University Press; 230 pages; $35 and £24.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk AT A time when Swiss voters have called for a ban on the construction of minarets and there is widespread alarm over the supposed Islamisation of Europe, John Bowen, an American academic, has written an informed and measured account of whether Muslims can integrate—and are integrating— into one of the continent’s most avowedly secular societies. Some readers will come to this new book as admirers of the author’s last work, “Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves” (2006), an elegant and closely argued study of an issue that divided and preoccupied the country for a decade and a half, and whose effects are still felt today. Mr Bowen’s latest book has a broader and more ambitious canvas. As a good anthropologist, he wants to know not just what the politicians and the media are saying about Islam in France, but what is actually happening on the ground. He has spent months in the mosques, schools and institutes which now provide France’s 5m-6m Muslims with what Mr Bowen calls “Islamic spaces”. He is a good listener, reproducing debates between teachers and students about the questions that concern them most. Should a Muslim get married in a mosque or a town hall (or both)? Should young Muslims be taught about evolution and gay rights? Can a Muslim woman marry a non-Muslim man? Is it legitimate for a Muslim to use an interest-based banking system to get a mortgage? It is these seemingly mundane issues, he argues, that are the stuff of daily life rather than the political dramas that preoccupy the media. The author identifies a new generation of imams, teachers and intellectuals, none of them household names, with the possible exception of Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born Arab Muslim scholar and academic. This new generation is trying to open up the debate about how to be both a good Muslim and a good citizen in a modern secular society. They are not having the argument all their way. Conservatives are suspicious of the very idea of a French or European Islam. The thinkers and activists whom Mr Bowen interviews tend to be at odds with their Salafi counterparts—advocates of the purist Sunni Islam associated with Saudi Arabia—who nowadays have a small but influential presence among Europe’s Muslims. Mr Bowen thinks that Muslim values and French secularism could be compatible. But accommodation requires give-and-take on both sides. He questions how far French policymakers (and the intellectual elite that so fiercely guards laïcité) are really committed to pluralism. He suggests that Muslims are probably getting a rawer deal than the Catholics, Protestants and Jews who have also had to make their historic compromises with secular republicanism. Rather than a growing pragmatism, he detects a “tightening of the value-screws”. Can Islam be French? After reading this book, one is inclined to say, “Yes, but not yet.” |
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| The Economist, England. December 10th 2009. |
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