Can Islam Be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State (review)

After the publication of his 2007 book, Why the French Don't Like Headscarves, John Bowen, a distinguished scholar of Islam in Indonesia, continues the research on France that he began in 2000. In contrast to the anthropology of public reasoning about religion, the law, and the state that was at the center of the 2007 book, Bowen's focus here is on Islam in France and on French Muslims. He asks whether Islam can be accepted as a normal part of the French social landscape given the increased French anxiety about visible cultural differences, such as mosque minarets and public prayers, as well as widespread fears related to the perceived failure of Muslims to embrace secular values instead of religious norms. To answer that question, Bowen sets out to uncover the anthropology of public reasoning about Islam that emerges in the social exchanges and debates among Muslims in Islamic spaces such as mosques, schools, institutes, public lectures, and internet sites. He makes an important contribution to both the anthropology of France and the anthropology of Islam in the West through his detailed discussion of different Islamic schools of religious interpretation and traditions of jurisprudence. These different approaches to Islam form part of an ongoing effort to build knowledge that is legitimate in transnational terms and also relevant to the dilemmas Muslims face when they marry, have children, seek loans, divorce, or perform religious rituals in France. By examining the myriad debates that define a global Islamic space, Bowen challenges stereotypes about the monolithic religion that prevail in the media and across the political spectrum. His careful analysis also attends to the ways in which Islamic values have been influenced by secular institutions in France, as well as the ways that the French state has attempted to accommodate certain Islamic practices—even those that may be deemed repugnant in cultural terms and forbidden by law.

Bowen's book is organized into a series of chapters that provide a basic overview of the history of the immigration of Muslim populations to France, residence patterns, religious identities, state policies regarding Islam, and the Islamic religious authorities in France who claim legitimacy on religious matters. Because mosques and prayer houses have become important spaces in which Muslims shape an Islamic presence in France, Bowen devotes specific chapters to them and to the teachers and imams who lead them. These scholars form an emerging Islamic educational field in great demand among French Muslims who are not sure about how to practice their religion or where to get authoritative knowledge related to it. Bowen does a remarkable job of sifting through and making sense of a vast array of approaches to Islamic norms and of differentiating meaningfully among different Islamic schools. He identifies three broad ways of applying Islamic norms. These include: a set of absolute rules, one among several legal traditions, and a set of principles based on Islamic scripture (62). Bowen introduces us to the application of these norms as he attends classes on Islam. He participates in discussions where teachers from different religious traditions field practical questions from anxious students regarding filiation, abortion, illegitimate children, adoption, daily worship, marriage, and divorce. In these chapters, we see how Islamic norms are shaped in response to different demands and we listen to imams who build on a set of Qur'anic objectives to extend religious knowledge to new domains.

To my mind, chapters 7 and 8 are the most interesting in the book. We see how a commitment to social pragmatism best describes the approach taken by many Islamic scholars working in France. They often differ in their interpretations of Islam but justify their teachings by citing a norm or text and by considering the optimum social consequences for the Muslims who seek guidance. They take account of French laws and social conditions but only as elements that are "normatively external" to the debates (155). Bowen argues that Muslims situate epistemological debates...