Islamophobia and State Racism in Contemporary France

International Conference

Islamophobia and State Racism in Contemporary France

King’s College London, Bush House, Lecture Theatre 1, London WC2B 4BG

10 May 2024, 10am – 6pm

At the Paris Olympics, only French athletes will be subject to a dress code that prevents them from wearing the hijab. Although the UN Human Rights Office claims ‘no-one should impose on a woman what she needs to wear or not wear’ successive French governments have been doing precisely this for three decades. The way that Muslims dress, pray, eat and organise has been subject to relentless forms of scrutiny and discipline, all in the name of ‘neutrality’. Associations organising against Islamophobia have been identified as ‘enemies of the Republic’ and banned.

This conference will examine the roots, function and extent of Islamophobia and state racism in contemporary France. Discussion will focus on the nature and impact of gendered Islamophobia, on the states of exception created by Islamophobic policies and attitudes and on the relationship between racialisation, authoritarianism and Islamophobia.

Entrance is free but registration is required. Registration will close at noon on Thursday 9th May. 

Programme

10.00 – 10.30 Coffee and Registration

10.30 – 12.00 Gendered Islamophobia

1. Olivier Esteves, Université de Lille, 'France, you love it but leave it: a gendered approach to the silent flight of French Muslims'.

Their names are Mourad, Samira, Karim, or Sandrine and Vincent. They were born and raised all over France, most have higher education qualifications, but they decided to settle in London, Dubai, New York, Casablanca, Montreal or Brussels... Discriminated against in the job market and stigmatized for their religion, their names or their origins, these French people of Muslim culture or faith find the social advancement abroad that was denied to them in France. Here they also find the “right to indifference” which allows them to simply feel French. Based on a quantitative sample of more than 1,000 people and 140 in-depth interviews, this unprecedented sociological survey brings to light for the first time a phenomenon that is quietly affecting French society. These interviews with minority elites detail their training, their feelings as Muslims, and how they are perceived as Muslims, the reasons for their departure, the choice of destinations, the experience of settling and living abroad, their outlook on France, their prospects of return... This work does not only document a brain drain, it also implicitly reveals the deleterious effects of Islamophobia which, seen from elsewhere, does seem to constitute a French exception.

      2. Malika Hamidi, Université Libre de Bruxelles, ‘Feminists and Muslims in Europe : from subordinate to Muslim post-feminism’.

In France, the heated debates surrounding the controversial issue of the ‘Islamic headscarf’ have, on one hand, divided feminist movements and, on the other, highlighted the racist and colonialist undertones in the discourse of certain activists and intellectuals, whether consciously or unconsciously influenced by their country's colonial past, which also shapes their ideas and their relationship with European women descended from immigrants from former colonies. It is in this context that a striking and counter-current phenomenon emerged in France in the early 2000s: collectives of Muslim activists engaged in both an Islamic and feminist perspective, paving the way for the emergence of a Muslim post-feminism whose mobilizations extend beyond religious affiliation into an intersectional perspective. This paper focuses on proponents of this ‘Islamic feminist rhetoric’ in actions and words, who are engaged in genuine theoretical work on Islamic feminist thought on one hand, and on the unprecedented identity reconstruction defining a hybrid identity that combines feminism and religiosity in a postcolonial context on the other.

       3. Nadia Kiwan, University of Aberdeen, ‘Decolonising gender equality, religion and secularism through Muslim feminist anti-racist praxis’

In this paper I will consider the theoretical contributions that a decolonial studies paradigm might bring to the study of gender equality, religion and secularism. I argue that a decolonial conceptual framework can generate critical discussions of key political concepts such as equality and universalism and the ways in which such concepts have, at certain key historical moments been mobilised to inhibit Muslim women’s perspectives in the public sphere. Drawing on examples from ongoing research on Muslim feminist and anti-racist social movements in contemporary France, I will argue that some of the blockages and obstacles that such movements can experience are linked to certain established assumptions about what ‘good’ feminism(s) should strive for. I suggest that such assumptions are embedded within a ‘civilising’ conceptualisation of gender equality, which tends to politically disqualify faith-based feminisms in the French public sphere.

12.00 – 13.00 Islamophobia in HE: towards an Islamophobia research network

A discussion on the problems and possibilities of working on Islamophobia in higher education

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch

14.00 – 15.30 Racialisation, authoritarianism and Islamophobia

1. Amina Easat-Daas, De Montfort University, Leicester, French Islamophobia, the Left and Feminism

Since November 2020, the French government under Emmanuel Macron, has decried the so-called rife nature of Islamo-gauchisme, an alleged but vague alliance between the political left and ‘Islamism’ which in practice ultimately stigmatises decoloniality but also any sympathy and humanising of French Muslimness that does not conform to the state’s desired mode of Islam. Not only are such political claims problematic given the lack of evidence upon which they are based and the socio-political hysteria that they generate, but also in the way in which such claims diminish the role of the left and liberalism in generating and maintaining Islamophobia.

Typically, racisms more broadly have been conceived of as being a fringe far-right issue tied to illiberal ideals. Furthermore, across Europe the left has often found and subsequently relied upon the ethnic minority or Muslim vote in gaining and maintaining political power. Nonetheless, increasingly via its normalisation Islamophobia transcends the political spectrum – in short it is banal in society, politics and legislation. Both the political left and right, and illiberal and liberal ideals are employed widely in legitimising Islamophobia and to generate a ‘common sense’ logic of controlling Muslimness. This paper seeks to critically examine the role of the left and liberalism, and in particular feminisms, in gendered Islamophobia, via an in-depth consideration of historical and feminist perspectives, alongside current legislation and the popular responses to these in the French context.

      2. Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, King’s College London, The Islamo-gauchisme discourse, or the power to create the inner enemy

This paper aims to examine the political functions of the islamogauchisme discourse in the French culture wars and highlight its relevance to an understanding of transnational, particularly transatlantic, opposition to antiracist and pro-Palestinian politics. Additionally the islamogauchisme discourse will be situated within a deeper history of racialised conspiracy thinking.

      3. Jim Wolfreys, King’s College London, Islamophobia and the Macron Presidency

Emmanuel Macron won successive presidential elections by posing as an alternative to the far right. His presidency continues to reflect the ongoing radicalisation of mainstream politics via processes underpinned by racism and authoritarian neoliberalism. This paper will examine the centrality of Islamophobia to these processes, assessing the function of concepts like communitarianism, separatism and ‘Islamo-leftism’ in furthering the stigmatisation, disciplining and political disqualification of Muslims. Pivotal to these developments is the role of state racism and the deployment of laïcité as a means of regulating ‘Frenchness’. The political culture thus fostered is one where racism is protected and anti-racism subject to hostility and censorship.

15.30 – 16.00 Tea and coffee

16.00 – 17.30 Islamophobic states of exception

1. Ibrahim Bechrouri, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, ‘The crackdown on "Islamo-Leftists" post-October 7, 2023’

In recent publications, I have posited that two narratives constructed and propagated by France's political and media elites, namely separatism and Islamo-leftism, serve as vehicles for fabricating an insurgent menace devoid of empirical substance. This fantasized insurgency facilitates the implementation of counter-insurgency tactics with colonial undertones that mostly target post-colonial subjects. Following a succinct exposition of this argument, this contribution will offer a reflection on how, since October 7, 2023, this mode of governance has been wielded to marginalize, discipline and quell advocates of the Palestinian cause in France, while firmly establishing the argument developed by Pierre-André Taguieff in his 2002 book, The New Judeophobia, as a dominant analytical framework.

       2. Fraser McQueen, University of Bristol, Civilian-Led Counterterrorism and the Carceral State in Contemporary French Film

In recent years, the French state has increasingly promoted a model of counterterrorism in which the state outsources counterterrorism duties to individual citizens. This model frames such duties as a civic responsibility to be performed by all. Working in conjunction with a vision of jihadi radicalisation borrowing from anthropologist Dounia Bouzar's understanding of the phenomenon as a 'dérive sectaire', this discourse has individualised responsibility for counterterrorism on two levels. Firstly, guilt is individualised: France's responsibility in creating its own so-called 'home-grown' jihadis, whether through foreign policy or systemic discrimination within the Hexagon, is obscured, with radicalisation instead framed as entirely down to the cultish influence that malevolent recruiters exercise over vulnerable recruits. Secondly, responsibility for 'deradicalisation' is also individualised: citizens are held individually responsible for this work, with the state's role reduced purely to its carceral functions and French citizens visibly marked as Muslim criminalised. This paper will argue that two recent films depicting young women being 'radicalised', Ne m'abandonne pas (Xavier Durringer, 2016) and Le Ciel attendra (Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, 2016) reproduce this highly neoliberalised vision of counterterrorism. This is arguably unsurprising, given that Bouzar advised both directors, even appearing in Le Ciel attendra as herself. However, both directors' uncritical reproduction of exclusionary state discourses around counterterrorism is problematic given that both framed their films as didactic interventions educating viewers about the 'realities' of jihadi radicalisation. Their reproduction of state discourses helps explain why not only reviewers but also state representatives, including then Minister for National Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, accepted that reading and promoted both films as educational resources.

      3. Kawtar Najib, University of Liverpool, From Global Islamophobia to the criminalization of spaces of resistance in France

Islamophobia is a global phenomenon that can be observed in various parts of the world. The spread of this form of racism – more than open and normalized – is impressive and glocalized in the sense that it projects a reality connecting the macro-space of the globe to the micro-space of the body. Indeed, Islamophobia is a spatialized phenomenon demonstrating that global Islamophobia impacts the everyday lives of local Muslims living in a specific context. In France, it also describes a multi-dimensional process since it affects all sectors and places (be it education, workplace, politics, media, justice system, the street, etc.). This country has become an extreme example after crossing many red lines as evidence by significant abusive closures, repressions, intimidations and expulsions. Islamophobia is not only accepted and legitimized in France; it is also legalized as it is legally enshrined in anti-Muslim laws (anti-hijab, anti-niqab, anti-separatism, etc.). French-style Islamophobia is mainly state-run, and therefore any attempt to combat it is incriminated or even destroyed, to the point that we can wonder what spaces against Islamophobia remain in France.

17.30 – 18.00 Tea and coffee

Speakers

Olivier Esteves is Professor of British Studies and Political Science at the University of Lille. He is notably author of The ‘Desegregation’ of English Schools: Bussing, Race and Urban Space (Manchester University Press, 2018) and 'Inside the Black box of White Backlash : Letters of Support to Enoch Powell' (Routledge, 2022). He is also co-author, with Julien Talpin and Alice Picard, of La France, tu l'aimes mais tu la quittes : enquête sur la diaspora française musulmane (Paris: Le Seuil, 2024 ) and of Laissez le feu brûler: terrorisme d'Etat et répression du mouvement MOVE à Philadelphie (Paris : Le Seuil, 2026). He is currently coordinating a collective project on the post-colonial dimension of welfare chauvinism in an international perspective ('De Quelle Race sont les Assisté.e.s ?'), to be submitted to the French 'Agence Nationale de la Recherche in October 2024.

Malika Hamidi holds a PhD in sociology and specializes in Muslim feminisms in Europe. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Catholic University of Louvain - Saint Louis Brussels and an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the Free University of Brussels. Additionally, she is an associated researcher at the L.A.S.P.A.D of Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis, Senegal. 

Nadia Kiwan is Professor of Francophone studies at the University of Aberdeen, UK and founding Director of the Centre for Modern Languages Research. Her research interests focus on European governmental and media discourses about postcolonial migration, secularism, Islam, ‘border control’, as well the contestation of such discourses, via transnational, and intersectional social movements. She is author of Identities, Discourses and Experiences: Young People of North African Origin in Contemporary France (2009); Cultural Globalization and Music: African Artists in Transnational Networks (with Ulrike H. Meinhof, 2011); Secularism, Islam and Public Intellectuals in Contemporary France (2022) and co-editor with Jim Wolfreys of ‘Islamophobia in France’, Modern and Contemporary France (vol. 31, no. 2, 2023)

Amina Easat-Daas is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at De Montfort University. Her recent publications include the co-edited Palgrave Handbook of Gendered Islamophobia (2024) her monograph Muslim Women’s Political Participation in France and Belgium (2020) and the edited volume Countering Islamophobia in Europe (2019). Dr Easat-Daas’ wider research interests include the study of French and Belgian politics, Islam and Muslimness in France and Belgium, gendered Islamophobia and the use of the arts in countering Islamophobia in Europe.

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi is a historian of nationalism and race. His current research analyses the modalities of racialisation of Jews and Muslims in the Western apparatus of representations; and highlights the connection between conspiracy thinking and racism. More broadly, his work aims to retrieve the many points of contact between the histories of antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of racism, which have been ignored, or deliberately obscured.

Jim Wolfreys is Reader in French and European Politics at King’s College London. His research interests include the history of French fascism and the development of an Islamophobic political culture in contemporary France. He has also written about political corruption, social movements and the historiography of the French revolution. His publications include The Politics of Racism in France (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), with Peter Fysh, History and Revolution (Verso, 2007), with Mike Haynes, and Republic of Islamophobia: The Rise of Respectable Racism in France, (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2018). He is co-editor, with Nadia Kiwan, of a 2023 special issue of Modern and Contemporary France on Islamophobia in France.

Ibrahim Bechrouri is a scholar, writer and activist whose academic interests center around terrorism, counterterrorism, policing, colonialism, surveillance, race, and Islamophobia. His doctoral dissertation, completed at Paris 8 University and supported by Columbia University, examined the New York Police Department's counterterrorism policies, their impact on targeted communities, and the resistance strategies they deployed against surveillance and over-policing. Dr. Bechrouri currently teaches at the City University of New York where he hopes to inspire and guide students to become critical thinkers and change-makers in their own right.

Fraser McQueen is a Lecturer in French Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Bristol. He completed his PhD, entitled 'Race, Religion, and Communities of Friendship: Contemporary French Islamophobia in Literature and Film' in November 2021. It explores Islamophobia and community in contemporary France through a corpus of twelve literary and filmic texts. Fraser's research to date has focused on Islamophobia and community in France, and on how debates around both have been refracted through literature and film. In his more recent work, he has explored the novels of the French far right; the mainstreaming of far-right conspiracy theories in France; ecofascism; the racialisation of discourses around geographical inequalities; and the work of Michel Houellebecq. A common thread in all of these apparently diverse interests is an interest in postcolonial and decolonial studies, and in the difficulties both have had in being recognised as legitimate fields of research in France (whether in the academy or public discourse).

Kawtar Najib is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Liverpool (England). Her research interests centre on the geographies of inequality and discrimination using both quantitative and qualitative methods. She explores more broadly issues of social and spatial justice, and her research expertise focuses on Islamophobia and its spatialization. She is the author of the book ‘Spatialized Islamophobia’ (published in 2021 by Routledge) which brings increased recognition of ‘Geography’ and’ Space’ in Islamophobia Studies. Previously, she was a Marie Curie Fellow at Newcastle University where she was the principal researcher of the SAMA project (Spaces of Anti-Muslim Acts in Paris and London, funded by the European Commission). She grew up in France where she obtained her PhD on residential segregation in urban neighborhoods.

This conference is supported by the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France Initiative Fund, King’s College London Arts and Humanities Research Funding, University of Aberdeen Grants Academy.