France and Islam’s Crisis

At Foreign Policy Mustafa Aykol remarks on French President Macron’s recent comments and the response to them from various Muslim countries:

“Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today.” That is what the French President Emmanuel Macron said on Oct. 2, while announcing his “anti-radicalism plan.” Just two weeks later, on Oct. 16, a devotee of that radicalism killed and beheaded a high-school teacher, Samuel Paty, in a Paris suburb, merely for showing the infamous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in his classroom. And soon after, three worshippers at a church in Nice were savagely murdered by another terrorist who seemed to have the same motivation: to punish blasphemy against the prophet of Islam.

In return, the French authorities initiated a crackdown on anything they deemed to be Islamism, and also projected the controversial cartoons of Prophet Muhammad on government buildings in France—only to provoke mass protests in various parts of the Muslim world.

All these events have initiated an ongoing debate about France, Islam, and freedom. Some in the West now see France as the beacon of Enlightenment values against the dark forces of religious fanaticism. Others argue that the main problem is Islamophobia, racism and the colonial arrogance of France in a world where—except for a handful of extremists—Muslims are the real victims.

As a Muslim who has been writing about these issues for about two decades, let me offer a more nuanced view: First, France—like any target of terrorism—deserves sympathy for its fallen and solidarity against the threat. Moreover, Macron is largely correct that Islam is facing a “crisis”—not “all over world,” but certainly in some parts of the world—and we Muslims need an honest conversation about that. Unfortunately, Macron is doing little to resolve this crisis and could actually be inflaming it, because the sort of freedom he claims to defend is full of painful shortcomings and cynical double standards.

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Although Macron says the target of laïcité is not Islam, but only “Islamism,” the latter term is left quite vague in his rhetoric. In practice, it’s not vague at all. In France it has long been obvious that personal Muslim practices are targeted: For many years, Muslim women in France have been banned from wearing headscarves in public buildings, or so-called burkinis on beaches. Last September, a French politician from Macron’s party protested a young French Muslim woman for merely walking into the National Assembly while wearing a headscarf. And, in October, the French interior minister even took issue with halal food aisles in supermarkets—and kosher ones, too, signaling a threat to the religious freedom of just not Muslims, but other practicing believers as well.

In other words, what France requires from its Muslims is not just accepting the freedom of speech of blasphemers, but also giving up a part of their own freedom of religion. This is not only wrong in principle, but also myopic and counterproductive. It just makes it harder for practicing French Muslims to feel respected, accepted, and therefore fully French—precisely the sort of integration radical Islamists would like to avert.

Since his piece touches on a number of topics I’ve remarked on myself over the years, I thought I would bring it to your attention.

Let’s put his observations in context. Whether saying it is taboo to Muslims or not, Islam has been in crisis for most of the last 800 years, since the Mongols sacked Baghdad and effectively ended the Abbasid Caliphate. That provoked an identity crisis from which Islam has never really recovered. In other words, tell me something new.

Second, laïcité, along with the notion of “Frenchness”, its present form being the acceptance of French culture in language, dress, and manners, are foundations of the present French state. In theory at least you can be completely French regardless of race or ethnicity as long as you speak French (properly, of course), dress like the French, and behave like the French.

The issue with this is that it is completely antithetical to certain extremely conservative interpretations of Islam, e.g. Wahhabi view which, unfortunately, have been spread all over the world over the last half century by wealthy Gulf Arabs. I honestly don’t see how these foundations of the French state can be reconciled with Wahhabism but that’s a problem for the French and Muslims to resolve not me.

Third, for years, at least since the attacks on 9/11 presumably well-intentioned Westerners have been saying that Islam needs a Reformation. IMO to say that is to understand neither the Reformation nor Islam. Suffice it to say that what we are seeing presently is Islam’s equivalent to the Reformation. During Christianity’s Reformation Protestants and Catholics fought each other across much of Europe. It’s not something we should long for, especially not with the ease of modern transportation.

Finally, other presumably well-intentioned Westerners have been saying that Islam needs its own Enlightenment and there are echoes of that in Mr. Aykol’s piece but to say that is neither to understand the Enlightenment nor Islam. Islam had its Enlightenment several hundred years before Christianity’s own Enlightenment. It was ended when Baghdad was sacked by the Mongols in 1258 and it resulted in Islam becoming much more fundamentalist than it had been before. There are no do-overs.