Why does Islamophobia dominate public debate in France? Islamophobia in France is rising, with Muslims subjected to unprecedented scrutiny of what they wear, eat and say. Championed by Marine Le Pen and drawing on the French colonial legacy, France's 'new secularism' gives racism a respectable veneer. Jim Wolfreys exposes the dynamic driving this intolerance: a society polarized by inequality, and the authoritarian neoliberalism of the French political mainstream. This officially sanctioned Islamophobia risks going unchallenged. It has divided the traditional anti-racist movement and undermined the left's opposition to bigotry. Wolfreys deftly unravels the problems facing those trying to confront today's rise in racism. Republic of Islamophobia illuminates both the uniqueness of France's anti-Muslim backlash and its broader implications for the West.

With the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, France has faced a number of critiques in its attempts to assimilate Muslims into an ostensibly secular (but predominantly Catholic) state and society. This book challenges traditional analyses that emphasise the conflict between Muslims and the French state and broader French society, by exploring the intersection of Muslim faith with other identities, as well as the central roles of Muslims in French civil society, politics and the media. The tensions created by attacks on French soil by Islamic State have contributed to growing acceptance of the Islamophobic discourse of Marine Le Pen and her far-right Front National party, and debates about issues such as headscarves and burkinis have garnered worldwide attention. Downing addresses these issues from a new angle, eschewing the traditional us-and-them narrative and offering a more nuanced account based on people’s actual lived experiences. French Muslims in Perspective will be of interest to students and scholars across sociology, politics, international relations, cultural studies, European Studies and French studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners involved in immigration, education, and media.

Why does Islamophobia dominate public debate in France?Islamophobia in France is rising, with Muslims subjected to unprecedented scrutiny of what they wear, eat and say. Championed by Marine Le Pen and drawing on the French colonial legacy, France's 'new secularism' gives racism a respectable veneer. Jim Wolfreys exposes the dynamic driving this intolerance: a society polarised by inequality, and the authoritarian neoliberalism of the French political mainstream.This officially sanctioned Islamophobia risks going unchallenged. It has divided the traditional anti-racist movement and undermined the left's opposition to bigotry. Wolfreys deftly unravels the problems facing those trying to confront today's rise in racism.Republic of Islamophobia illuminates both the uniqueness of France's anti-Muslim backlash and its broader implications for the West.

A piercing denunciation of Islamophobia in France, in the tradition of Emile Zola At the beginning of the twenty-first century, leading intellectuals are claiming “There is a problem with Islam in France,” thus legitimising the discourse of the racist National Front. Such claims have been strengthened by the backlash since the terrorist attacks in Paris in January and November 2015, coming to represent a new ‘common sense’ in the political landscape, and we have seen a similar logic play out in the United States and Europe. Edwy Plenel, former editorial director of Le Monde, essayist and founder of the investigative journalism website Mediapart tackles these claims head-on, taking the side of his compatriots of Muslim origin, culture or belief, against those who make them into scapegoats. He demonstrates how a form of “Republican and secularist fundamentalism” has become a mask to hide a new form of virulent Islamophobia. At stake for Plenel is not just solidarity but fidelity to the memory and heritage of emancipatory struggles and he writes in defence of the Muslims, just as Zola wrote in defence of the Jews and Sartre wrote in defence of the blacks. For if we are to be for the oppressed then we must be for the Muslims.

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.

Leading legal scholars explore the role of the law in the emergence and rise of Islamophobia in the United States following the events of 9/11.

The treatment of Muslims is the touchstone of contemporary European racism across its many nations and localities. We make a definitive case for two arguments in this book: firstly, the recognition of the accelerating and pervasive nature of Islamophobia in this region; and secondly, recognition that this process is being, can be, and will be challenged by counter-narratives that make the claim for Muslim humanity, plurality, space and justice. This book draws on new evidence from eight national contexts to provide an innovative kit of counter-narratives, which were presented and well received at the European Parliament in September 2018, and subsequently launched across Europe in national workshops in selected states. A synergy between leading academic researchers and the Islamic Human Rights Commission, Countering Islamophobia in Europe will be of value to EU institutions, governments and policy-makers, NGOs and media organisations, as well as researchers of multiculturalism, Islam, Muslims and immigration.