The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism - Softcover

Fernando, Mayanthi L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822357488 ISBN 13: 9780822357483

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2014

Synopsis

In 1989 three Muslim schoolgirls from a Paris suburb refused to remove their Islamic headscarves in class. The headscarf crisis signaled an Islamic revival among the children of North African immigrants; it also ignited an ongoing debate about the place of Muslims within the secular nation-state. Based on ten years of ethnographic research, The Republic Unsettled alternates between an analysis of Muslim French religiosity and the contradictions of French secularism that this emergent religiosity precipitated. Mayanthi L. Fernando explores how Muslim French draw on both Islamic and secular-republican traditions to create novel modes of ethical and political life, reconfiguring those traditions to imagine a new future for France. She also examines how the political discourses, institutions, and laws that constitute French secularism regulate Islam, transforming the Islamic tradition and what it means to be Muslim. Fernando traces how long-standing tensions within secularism and republican citizenship are displaced onto France's Muslims, who, as a result, are rendered illegitimate as political citizens and moral subjects. She argues, ultimately, that the Muslim question is as much about secularism as it is about Islam.

About this title

About the Author

Mayanthi L. Fernando is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Review

"The Republic Unsettled is a brilliant book, at once a concrete examination of the experiences of Muslim French and a compelling analysis of the structural and discursive obstacles they face. A major contribution to both ethnography and political theory, this provocative, beautifully written work will appeal to those interested in debates about Muslims in Europe and the possibilities for thinking difference differently." (Joan Wallach Scott, author of The Fantasy of Feminist History 2014-03-10)

"This wonderful book about French secularism combines rich and sensitive ethnography with original argument and analysis. Mayanthi L. Fernando contends that the so-called problem of integrating Muslim immigrants from North Africa into French secular society tells us much about the questionable assumptions underlying French nationalist discourse on secular republicanism. This is an important contribution not only to the study of contemporary France but also to the theoretical debates on secularism. Essential reading for anyone interested in either."
(Talal Asad, author of Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity 2014-03-10)

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0822357488
• ISBN 13: 9780822357483
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 328