The Daily Lives of Muslims

Islam and Public Confrontation in Contemporary Europe

Nilüfer Göle, Jacqueline Lerescu

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781783609567
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

For many in the West, Islam has become a byword for terrorism. From 9/11 to the Paris attacks, our headlines are dominated by images of violence and extremism. Now, as the Western world struggles to cope with the refugee crisis, there is a growing obsession with the issue of Muslim integration. Those Muslims who fail to assimilate are branded the 'enemy within', with their communities said to provide a fertile breeding ground for jihadists. Such narratives, though, fail to take into account the actual lives of most Muslims living in the West, fixating instead on a minority of violent extremists. In The Daily Lives of Muslims, Nilüfer Göle provides an urgently needed corrective to this distorted image of Islam. Engaging with Muslim communities in twenty-one cities across Europe where controversies over integration have arisen – from the banning of the veil in France to debates surrounding sharia law in the UK – the book brings the voices of this neglected majority into the debate. In doing so, Göle uncovers a sincere desire among many Muslims to participate in the public sphere, a desire which is too often stifled by Western insecurity and attempts to suppress the outward signs of religious difference.

1

Europe: No Entry for Islam?

The flâneur, an emblematic figure of modernity since Baudelaire, is distinguished by the freedom of walking, observing as a spectator, and experiencing daily life in the urban landscape. In contemporary societies in a migratory flux, the immigrant replaces this figure, displaces himself, traverses boundaries and integrates himself into new landscapes and new cities. But unlike the flâneur, he cannot move without crashing into obstacles, and his freedom of circulation is permanently called into question.

Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author and Nobel laureate, describes in an allegorical way the obstacles that the walker/immigrant encounters. He quickly understands the meaning of discrimination: ‘The inscription is there to remind some that they are allowed to enter, and others that they are not … the message that they wish to share is probably the following: not all may enter here! Just as they authorize some to cross the threshold, they chase away others who wish to enter without being entitled to do so …’1 Behind the banner, we hear the voices of those who fear being invaded by these new arrivals: ‘“Too many people from outside are coming in”, they say. “We cannot accept everyone …” and they reach the logical conclusion: one day, people on the inside will come together to discuss how to limit access.’ People on the inside want to protect their privileges, their material goods, their tastes, and their habits. Orhan Pamuk’s text illustrates the dynamics of interdependence, the definition of an ‘us’ in relation with the Other, the structuring effect the stranger has on European identity. By adopting this double view, the author aims to reveal the emotional register of those who reinforce these boundaries out of fears of identity and those who find themselves in front of closed doors, feeling humiliated and excluded. This quest for identity, this game of opposing forces between those who reinforce barriers and those who transgress them, aptly describes the choreography occurring in European public life. Contemporary public debates and controversies surrounding immigration and Islam shape rules of integration, boundaries of exclusion and conditions for participation in the definition of an ‘us’ among European citizens.

In their countries, controversies surrounding Islam in European countries have occupied the forefront of society for more than a quarter-century. In 1989 both the ‘headscarf affair’ in France and the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, in England, were a prelude. These two very different events – one focused on the religious practices of young French female citizens, the other the act of a state outside the European Union which sought to impose Islamic law beyond its boundaries – made the presence of Islam in Europe readily visible – a threatening presence.

THE FATWA AND THE VEIL: THE IRRUPTION OF ISLAM IN EUROPE

Wearing the veil is for certain young Muslim women a quotidian and peaceful act that concerns only a small minority. The fatwa pronounced against a British author of Indian origin, from a Muslim family, because the book he wrote was seen as blasphemous towards Islam, the Koran and the Prophet, was a death sentence. These two events, while entirely dissimilar and occupying different spaces, put a spotlight on Islam and stirred controversy in the European public sphere. The archaic forces of sharia law and the covering of women entered the collective European imaginary with a bang, as in both cases Islam breached secular European space. The fatwa signaled the collapse of boundaries and the loss of a comforting sense of separation from the Muslim world.

Europeans discovered with surprise and anger that Islam’s power was not circumscribed to distant Muslim lands, but a phenomenon situated in the heart of European countries, which saw this as a threat to intellectuals, writers, artists and women. The headscarf affair – the appearance of a feminine form of Islam – heightened this sense of troubling proximity. The emergence of Islam was seen as a step backwards which threatened women’s rights and freedom of expression and cast doubt on these hard-won rights obtained through battles against the Church’s influence through the secularization of political power. Terms from the religious lexicon, such as blasphemy, submission and corporeal punishment, emerged in the secular European public field.

The fatwa against Rushdie in England and the presence of a minority of young women wearing the veil in France created a conflictual situation that has lasted for decades. In the aftermath of these affairs, the feeling of intrusion produced a change in the repertoire of European public debates. Arguments against the presence of Islam mobilized around two pillars: sexual equality and freedom of thought. From here followed an opposition between sacred laws and freedom, on the one hand, and the values of piety and sexuality on the other. Opinions crystallized around secular values, redefining identity by distinguishing between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ aimed at blocking Islam. In some European countries, ‘No Entry’ signs were raised to prevent Muslims from showing their difference, diminishing their visibility in the public sphere.

The anxiety caused by the alterity of Muslim presence incited European publics – sometimes at the initiative of public powers – to define their cultures’ distinct traits that constitute their national identity in order to establish conditions for the integration of migrants. Principles taken for granted, such as ‘secularism,’ were submitted to rigorous testing in France; didn’t Muslim populations’ religious claims constitute a potential danger for secularism? New themes emerged, such as Leitkultur in Germany, in order to assert the dominance of the ‘culture of reference’ in the face of the establishment of significant foreign communities from majority Muslim backgrounds. Through the debates in these two countries, the notion of secularism was revisited in France and Leitkultur was forged in Germany in order to force an active recognition of the dominant culture’s values. These notions evoke ‘French exceptionalism’ and ‘German cultural essentialism’ and exalt the specificity of national identity, leading to a hierarchization of the relationships between cultures. Over the course of these debates, these notions, potentially models of integration, took on new meaning, becoming exclusionary instead.

SECULARISM AND LEITKULTUR: BASES OF IDENTITY

In France, the strength and richness of secularism as a political principle are derived from its capacity to organize coexistence, as Jean Baubérot,2 a historian of secularism, has written. Secularism is based on the articulation of four principles: the separation of Church and state, the neutrality of public authority with regard to different beliefs, freedom of conscience, and equal rights. In France, according to Baubérot, debates on Islam and the banning of religious symbols in the public sphere led to the hypertrophying of the principle of neutrality: it was interpreted as the neutralization of public space and not as the neutrality of the arbiter who requires all parties to respect the rules. He considers this extensive conception of neutrality as ‘repressive secularism,’ or secularism which suppresses ‘the religious expression that the 1905 law previously authorized.’ Baubérot is the only member of the Stasi Commission3 to abstain from voting on the proposed law on the application of the principle of secularism and the banning of the ostensible wearing of religious symbols in public schools.

A shift occurred in the interpretation and application of the principle of secularism regarding Muslims and the signs that demonstrate their religious affiliation. Secularism conceived in relation to Christianity was confronted with a religion exterior to the Christian vision of the world.4 In this forced encounter with Islam, secularism was reinterpreted so that the question of the visibility of religious symbols, public space and feminism occupy a central place in the discursive field of secularism. At present, secularism – a concept at once remote, philosophical and juridical – has entered contemporary language and occupies a preponderant role in public debates; discussing secularism today implicitly signals Islam. A new oppositional pair has thus been created with two notions which are difficult to compare but which are nonetheless brought together and equated. If the pairing of secularism–Islamic veil was neither thinkable nor pertinent twenty years ago, today these terms are inseparable.5 Despite the indignation of those who opposed the reduction of the principle of secularism to a ‘scrap of cloth,’ the Islamic veil has become dominant in debates on secularism in France.

Unlike the multiculturalist model, the French model has been criticized for its ‘blindness’ to differences. Nevertheless, this capacity to disregard difference is an advantage. In the civic tradition of secularism, a reversal has occurred: Muslims are regarded in particular in order to scrutinize their difference and judge them based on whether they fail to respect the principle of secularism, adopt or interiorize it. The secular tradition has lost its aptitude for indifference and become a standard system of identity; it has become a condition for integration imposed on Muslim immigrants. Political powers have put out circulars to survey the application of secularism in hospitals and public service cafeterias by opposing specific religious requests.

France has witnessed the emergence of an interrogation of identity. Now the question ‘What is a Frenchman?’6 occupies a central place. On television and in newspapers and books, historians, intellectuals and politicians debate this topic. The constitutive elements of national identity – cultural values – are presented as an indispensable condition for the integration of Muslim immigrants. The creation of a ‘Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Codevelopment’ in 2007 is the most explicit illustration of the equation between national identity and the political desire to address the question of integration via culture and identity.7

France is not an exception. In Germany, a similar questioning of national identity has occurred. The 2010 publication of Thilo Sarrazin’s Germany Does Away with Itself, an instant bestseller, and the debates it stirred, was at the root of a restructuring of the public field around the idea of the nation and its relationship to Islam. Considering Islam as an impediment to integration and progress, Sarrazin, an establishment figure, a member of the Social Democrat party (SPD) and director of the Bundesbank, gives an alarmist interpretation of the economic and cultural decline of Germany.8 He uses cultural arguments based on statistics to denounce the failure to integrate the Muslim, Turkish and Arab communities. For him, Germany risks losing its economic competitiveness, cultural heritage, its very ‘substance,’ through the demographic expansion of segments of the population he judges ‘less educated and less intelligent.’9 He deplores the fact that most Turks in Germany don’t recognize Angela Merkel as Chancellor and do not accept Germany as their native land – Heimat.10 Thilo Sarrazin admits his dismay in the face of a Germany whose culture is changing: ‘I don’t want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live in a mostly Muslim country where Turkish and Arabic are widely spoken, women wear headscarves and the day is measured out by the muezzin’s call to prayer.’11

It has been previously noted that ‘Sarrazin’ is ironically one of the names given to the Muslim peoples along the Mediterranean coasts in Europe of the Middle Ages. Thilo Sarrazin’s response to allegations of racism is that he is a European ‘bastard,’ and that his name comes from his paternal ancestors, originally from the South of France, where the term ‘sarrasin’ commonly designated ‘Arab pirates.’ Asked whether he hates Turks, Thilo Sarrazin responds that his physical features, notably his mustache and salt-and-pepper hair, make him resemble a Turk of a certain age and allow him to pass unnoticed in Kreutzberg, Berlin’s Turkish quarter.12

Sarrazin has garnered popular success because he had the ‘courage’ to disobey the law of silence and knock down taboos on questions of immigration at the risk of being accused of racism. He was forced to step down from his post at the Bundesbank, and the SPD began procedures to expel him. Despite the fierce criticism opposing his views, Sarrazin has received international popular support. Not to be outdone, the German media has called him everything from ‘the people’s hero’ in Der Spiegel, a critical weekly news magazine; to a ‘taboo breaker’ in Focus, a right-wing weekly news magazine; but also a ‘living room racist’ in TAZ, a left-wing daily paper.

‘Can you become German?’13 This question implies that access to German citizenship is complex in this nation with its particular history, where, unlike in France, citizenship was defined not by ‘right of birthplace’ but by ‘right of blood’ – jus sanguinis. In 2000, Germany revised its citizenship laws. Restrictions imposed on the recognition of dual citizenship remained in place, but the principle of descent was relaxed. The right wing of parliament stirred a debate on the ‘culture of reference’ – Leitkultur-Debatte – in order to defend a hierarchy between cultures and dispute the dual allegiance of citizens, notably Turkish immigrants. The question of cultural integration, which was a juridical and political issue, was pushed into the field of culture.

Paradoxically, the notion of Leitkultur was forged in 1998 by Bassam Tibi, a professor of political science of Syrian descent in Göttingen and an eminent public figure who defended an enlightened form of Islam and Europe’s reconciliation with Islam. By choosing the term Leitkultur, Bassam Tibi attempted to map the values and norms that he sees as constituting European modernity and which are potential markers in the integration of migrants and Muslims. For him, the acceptance and appreciation of these values by Muslims constitutes a major criterion for choosing allegiance with Europe. In the course of these debates, the idea of Leitkultur took on new meaning according to whether the focus was on the national or the European context. Today, there are multiple constitutive features of Leitkultur: the defense of German culture and the rejection of multiculturalism, the condemnation of cultural relativism and the requirement of absolute loyalty to the dominant culture. The notion of Leitkultur has played a major role in Germany in provoking debates on the question of national identity and especially by reorienting immigration policy as a cultural matter. The adoption of German social norms has become a prerequisite for participation in the national community.

The well-established distinction between the German culturalist model and French universalism has thus been blurred in the course of debates on Islam. In France, these debates have led to the reaffirmation of the principle of secularism, inherent to the notion of French exceptionalism. Currently, the universalist ideal of French civilization has taken on the trappings of cultural particularism, converging with the German model it used to critique. The idea that not all civilizations are equal, which implies that Islam subjugates women and prohibits freedom of expression, is affirmed in opposition to cultural relativism and multicultural policies. In both cases, values are seen as a condition for the integration of Muslims in the national community.

THE INVALIDATION OF MULTICULTURALISM

The return to national identity, the affirmation of the specificity of European cultural values, the necessity to defend the superiority of Western civilization, all this has had as a consequence the abandoning of any approach based on multiculturalism and cultural relativism.

The first criticisms of multiculturalism were formulated in the Netherlands, despite its pride as a model of multicultural society. The writer and journalist Paul Scheffer, an intellectual star of the liberal left, opened the debate in January 2000 with an article entitled ‘The multicultural drama.’14 This articl...