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Study of Secularisms article

Reconfiguring the Discourse of Power


Slava Jakelic’s presentation on the productive collaborations between religious and secular civil society activists provides a trenchant critique of the attempt by those some call the “Asadians” to inscribe powr, particularly secular power, as the be-all and end-all constitutive characteristic of modernity. Jakelic agrees with Talal Asad (among others) in his historical deconstruction of the terminology of the religious and the secular, but argues that Asad and his followers end up reinscribing the divide by insisting that the secular has taken the upper hand in an oppositional power struggle with the religious. This focus on power, Jakelic further contends, prevents our understanding alternative constructions of religious/secular boundaries, including historically significant religious/secular alliances such as occurred in South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle and Poland’s Solidarnosc.

Jakelic is a prominent sociologist of secularism and religion, and her work has done much to advance our understanding of and knowledge about secular and religious humanisms and pluralism in collectivist societies and beyond. Her Kroc presentation was no exception to the quality and persuasiveness of her thinking. Both Jakelic’s analysis of the tensions underlying the scholarship on secular power and her employment of world-altering examples of secular/religious collaborations in South Africa and Poland illuminate the promise of challenging the idea that secular and religious categories are inevitably and exclusively problematic. She shows that, in civil society practice, these categories generate both ethics and identities that activists struggle with precisely because they make sense to them. They have decided to accept or reject some aspects of what they understand as the religious or the secular, and they wrestle with others. (In my own work, I call this “popular casuistry.”) Moreover, they clearly identify themselves as actors on one or the other side of the binary. We cannot ignore, in other words, the internalization of these categories in productive ways by these (and presumably other) activists. Recognizing their existence, moreover, and delving into actors’ own conceptual struggles, allows us to emerge from the fray with new possibilities for productive collaboration.

This is rich material. I learned a lot from it and can’t wait to read the ensuing volume. In addition to admiration, however, Jakelic’s talk has prompted two other reactions, which I hope are also productive. First, I differ with her on the role of “power” — in particular, her desire to move “beyond the discourse of power,” and I question whether her activists move beyond it, too. Second, I would ask her to address in more detail the problems and possibilities of fluid boundaries between religious and secular categories and identities.

First, the issue of power. Jakelic’s prescient analysis, in my view, does not move “beyond power” itself, but rather relocates it to a more productive place than being stuck in the historical vacuum of the construction of religion and secularism as descriptive terms (and the consequent victory of the secular over the religious in the inevitable march to modernity). Her secular/religious collaborative exemplars, it seems to me, do not ignore power in two ways. First, their very existence is predicated on the conviction that oppressive power can be replaced with alternatives that incorporate racial, religious and secular egalitarianism and democracy. This is very much about struggle, and struggle is still inherently about power relations. But instead of an ultimately static and reified religious/secular battle, Jakelic’s actors are engaged in high-stakes struggles to transcend the powers that practice and institutionalize violence.

Second, many of the resources that Jakelic’s activists bring to bear on their struggles are founded on their experiences of the “power” of religious and/or secular ethical constructs, and their ability to see past the divide even as they define themselves on one or the other side of it. It is critical to note for those who would blame secularism (or religion) for all of our ills, that it is not this divide that causes the high stakes of these activists’ struggles; instead, deploying religious/secular differences allows them to appreciate the “power” of concepts and practices (spiritual, ethical, material) that they themselves locate on one or the other side, such as the necessity and yet the futility of sacrifice.

I am not saying that the work of Jakelic’s activists is reducible to power alone; rather, I argue that it is impossible to excise power out of their struggles completely. However, by relocating power away from the religious/secular binary, and instead understanding what constructive as well as constitutive role religious/secular differences can play in these movements, Jakelic is providing us with a tremendously important insight. We do not need to remove power from the scene to make that insight work productively.

Second, and more briefly, I ask Jakelic to expand on her critique of the idea that religious/secular categories are fluid, and the implications of that critique for her work. As someone who has frequently written about the fluidity of these categories, I agree with her that both scholars and activists make political decisions when they conceptualize religious/secular categories as either fluid or static (or something in-between). But, it seems to me, it is critical precisely to see when and how actors interpret and re-interpret these boundaries, and to understand that they can evolve and even alter radically. I think that Jakelic’s excellent analysis allows for this kind of approach, but I would like her to say more on the subject and its importance (either way) for peacebuilding.

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Cecelia Lynch
Cecelia Lynch is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. She is an expert on international relations, religion and ethics, humanitarianism, and civil society, and has researched and published extensively on topics related to peace, security, international organization, globalization, humanitarianism, and religion. She co-edits the Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in Africa (CIHA) Blog, at www.cihablog.com.
Study of Secularisms article

St. Hedwig’s or St. Casimir’s and Why the Difference Matters


Just as the identification ‘religious’ says only little in itself, there’s no such thing as the secular person. The Asadians are correct that these words come to life – have salience – in mutual tension. Like other identity categories, ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ are defined through historical use. The fact that someone is religious may seem unimportant to that person. Perhaps what matters in time x, place y is membership in St. Hedwig’s Polish Catholic Parish versus St. Casimir’s, a church equally Polish and Catholic.

Jakelić’s presentation disrupts the religious-secular binary because she looks in detail at the stories of particular persons. Lambelet points out that further investigation of the moral sources drawn upon by the actors in her cases would reveal hybridity in addition to collaboration. I agree, but disagree that this need be “surprising.” Surprise is an affective response cultivated by the very binary that Jakelić is disrupting. People who share socio-cultural space often directly or indirectly share myriad moral sources with complex genealogies. It is only in the less common instances of violent segregation that communities develop in vacuum-like conditions. As advocates of interreligious collaboration have explained for years, the ‘dialogue of life’ often results in cross-connections regardless of the success of textual and doctrinal dialogues.

In the cases portrayed by Jakelić, focus on the common enemy was more compelling than the religious-secular divide – again noted by Lambelet. It is important to note also that these enemies were themselves a mix of religious and secular actors. Namely, Solidarność and the anti-apartheid movement struggled against those wedded to the status quo – whether as a result of bourgeois complacency, elite power maintenance, ideological fervor, religious commitment, fear of change, or a combination of these and other motivations.

Looking at the South African case, it matters that the secular actors Jakelić profiled were communists (and that the religious ones were the social justice, not the authoritarian, types). This belies Asad’s definition of the secular. As Jakelić mentioned, he has said that the secular is characterized by an aversion to all pain and suffering, understood as inherently meaningless. Yet, these secular communists were willing to risk their lives for a new society. Was this because of an exchange among religious and secular actors? In itself it seems only to indicate that Asad’s ethnography of the secular was limited to its bourgeois and elite forms.

Is the religious-secular binary and its power analysis sufficient for all societies in all times? No, and Jakelić demonstrated that clearly. The next questions might include when is this binary opposition used, by which actors, in which social locations, to what ends? In terms of the cases already at hand: Was the discursive binary completely missing? Or was it operative and defused? And has it emerged in some forms subsequent to the fall of those common enemies?

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Heather DuBois
Heather DuBois teaches at Florida State University, specializing in political theology, critical theory, conflict transformation, and religion and peacebuilding. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 2018.
Study of Secularisms article

Secular, Religious Engagement beyond Power?


Can secular and religious actors engage each other beyond the discourse of power? Prof. Slavica Jakelić argued that they can in a lecture given at the University of Notre Dame on March 1, 2016. Speaking at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Jakelić recast the religious-secular binary as not merely one of contention, but also one of “enriching and chastening” exchange.

Jakelić’s lecture began with a critical rejoinder to the work of Talal Asad (Genealogies of Religion and Formations of the Secular), Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (The Politics of Secularism in International Relations), and Markus Dressler (Writing Religion). Each of these thinkers have conceptualized the relationship between religious and secular actors as principally, if not exclusively, transacted on fields of power.

The secular, according to Asad, is neither continuous with nor a break from the religious, but the two are irreducibly connected in a process of mutual construction (See Formations of the Secular). For Asad, Shakman Hurd and Dressler, religion is marginalized and constrained by the secular, the process is active and coercive.

While Jakelić affirmed the contributions of this critical project that has unmasked the progressivist narrative of secularism, she objected to the premise that secularism is the modality of power in the modern world. Historicizing the “subtraction story” that masks the secular’s inevitability, Jakelić argued that Asad and his followers have reinstated the religious-secular binary as an oppositional power struggle. By developing their critique of secularist power within the realm of secular power they reproduce the secular as a stable opposition to religion. No where is this more clear than in their representation of secularism’s alliance with the nation in which the secular organizes politics while religion is the marginalized other, used only instrumentally if at all.

Conceptualizing the relationship between the secular and religion as moving only in the register of power fails first as a description of significant cases of secular-religious collaboration and second as a normative project.

Regarding the first, Jakelić presented two cases—Solidarność in Poland and the Anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa—as locations of religious-secular engagement and collaboration. Solidarność, the first independent labor union in the Soviet bloc, was populated by both secularly and religiously identified actors who were committed to collaborative work. For example, Fr. Jozef Tischner, friend of Pope John Paul II and the chaplain to Solidarność, worked with secular thinkers like Adam Michnik who argued in The Church and the Left: “Let us judge them [religious actors] by their deeds, not by their words…” (128)[1]

In complementary ways, the Anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa was the site of significant religious and secular collaboration. Figures like Chris Hani argued that “certain ethical values that bind us [religious-secular partners] together” but we need to continue to “openly debate our differences.”

The alliance politics of both of these movements serve as evidence for the possibility of religious-secular collaboration that neither is premised on a thin overlapping consensus or total agreement on sources of ultimate value. Nor, Jakelić argued, are these cases about strategic resistance alone. Rather, they model a pluralistic politics of religious-secular coalition.

According to Jakelić reducing religious-secular engagement to the field of power not only fails descriptively, it also limits the constructive, normative potential of our theorizing. Jakelić drew upon William Connolly’s notion of “deep pluralism” to indicate a relational politics that holds the possibility of mutual transformation of identities (See Why I Am Not a Secularist). Such transformation requires engagement on, what Connolly calls, the “visceral registers” of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, which entails not merely intellectual sparring or legislative power plays but practices like planning joint actions, or more mundanely, eating and drinking together. Such a deep pluralism allows for differences in the “final sources of morality” even as there might be the possibility of mutual learning and development of those final sources.

Jakelić’s lecture offered not only a challenge to Asad and company’s totalizing analysis of power, but also a constructive proposal to analyze the possibilities of religious-secular collaboration. The discussion after the lecture invited Jakelić to develop these ideas further. While I will not summarize that rich discussion here, two particularly critical questions emerged.

First, while Jakelić’s normative proposal allows for diversity on the final sources of morality, I wondered what sources Jakelić found operating in the cases she highlighted and beyond? What’s the nature of these moral sources? Are they principles, practices, commitments derived from history, metaphysics, sacred texts? I suspect that when digging more deeply into a genealogical account of the development of these sources, we would find surprising locations of hybridity.

Second, can this model of enriching and chastening religious-secular engagement illuminate societies that are experiencing lower levels of social turmoil? While Jakelić intends to move “beyond the discourse of power” it is not coincidental that in her two exemplary cases religious and secular actors find common cause in the very act of building oppositional power to hegemonic forces of oppression and exclusion. Are these merely strategic alliances that work when facing off against a common enemy? Or, can these models of alliance politics constructed through collaborative power travel to other contexts?

[1] Significantly, Michnik makes this commendation in order to force religious actors to offer the same charity to their secular interlocutors.

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Kyle Lambelet
Kyle Lambelet, PhD is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Emory University's Candler School of Theology and a Research Associate with Contending Modernities. His research focuses on the intersections of religion, ethics, conflict, and peace with particular attention to the ethics of nonviolence.
Authority, Community & Identity article

Introducing ACI Africa


In its broad conception the Authority, Community, and Identity (ACI) Research project is about Africa’s complex modernities. Modernity is not one thing (see, for example, Eisentadt’s multiple modernities thesis). African individuals and communities find themselves at the intersection of multiple modern, global, local, traditional, secular and religious forces. In Africa, the legacies of colonialism and post-colonial liberation contend with the processes and mechanisms of international development, all the while challenging and being challenged by religious flows of people, practice, and belief. The ACI research seeks to shed light on the complex ways in which individuals and communities in Africa negotiate the challenges and opportunities at that intersection. More specifically, through the ACI project researchers will investigate how various religious (Christian, Muslim, traditional) and secular forces collaborate, compete, contend and at times implicate each other in configuring, re-configuring and/or  shaping new models of authority, community, and identity, both within and across traditions, and within the context of nation-state modalities.

The driving assumption of the research project is that these notions of “authority”, “community” and “identity” (both in their shifts and continuities) not only provide a good lens into the complex ways of negotiating the modern condition in Africa (with both its opportunities and challenges), they provide an apt and dynamic platform for exploring the relationships between secular and religious forces in modern Africa. By focusing on these three nodes of inquiry, the project will investigate questions of belonging, tradition, and change all within the particular flux of specific African contexts.

In addition to a shared sense of the complex ways in which contending modernities shape contemporary Africa, the ACI team shares a commitment to the particular, the local, by grounding our research in specific contexts. While the project takes up perennial issues of land, identity, family, and leadership, we do so in ways that honors the particularities of place by utilizing methods that help us to attend to the everyday lives of Africans. Through the diverse interests and identities of the ACI Africa research team, this attention to particularity is placed in a comparative context that allows us to engage the global-local dynamics of modernity in Africa.

It gives me great pleasure to introduce the four initial projects of the ACI Africa team:

Elias Bongmba’s (Rice University) research in Cameroon analyzes the land dispute between Ntumbaw and Njirong and the ways that it reflects a postcolonial encounter between religious and secular traditions. While paradigmatically Western and modern conceptions have tended to view land as a commodity, traditional Cameroonian practice has been to view land as a sacred trust from the ancestors. Bongmba plans to explore how these two villages develop their own understandings of the land, within the context of these competing visions of what land is.

Also in Cameroon, Cecelia Lynch (University of California Irvine) shifts the lens from land to gender to look at how religious women (Christian, Muslim, and “Traditional”) deploy their religiosity as resources for asserting rights, growing spiritually, and empowering themselves economically. By examining women’s organizations, Lynch will explore the ways the practices of scriptural study, economic development, and even eco-tourism provide platforms for women’s empowerment.

In a study complementing Lynch’s analysis of women’s organizations in Cameroon, ACI team member Ludovic Lado (Jesuit Institute of Human Rights and Dignity; Centre de Recherche et d’Action pour la Paix) will lead research examining the construction of the family in Cote d’Ivoire. International NGOs and agencies have exercised considerable influence over the construction of family, marriage gender and sexuality in this post-colonial state. Yet, other forces, often aided and supported by traditional religious authorities have contested these constructions as impositions. Lado and his team will research these cross-cutting influences to show how these competing forms of authority influence the actual construction of family life.

Finally, filling out the focus on Catholic, Islamic and secular discursive traditions, Ebenezer Obadare (University of Kansas) will study the explosion of Pentecostalism in Ghana and Nigeria and analyze its political impact in the face of deteriorating state institutions. Particularly Obadare will hone in on the Pentecostal pastor to examine the way charisma authorizes the pastor’s leadership, and whether and how that charisma travels across the lines of different discursive traditions (Catholic, Muslim and secular).

We are still expecting two or three more research projects; on youth identity in Northern Uganda; on Islam, violence and gender in Senegal; and on ecology and creation care in select African communities. Together these diverse yet complementary research projects will illuminate the dynamics of modernity as it impacts particular African communities and, in comparative perspective, the ways these dynamics impact the continent as a whole. We look forward to sharing more of our findings as the research progresses.

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Emmanuel Katongole
Katongole, a Catholic priest ordained by the Archdiocese of Kampala, is a core faculty member of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Previously, he has served as associate professor of theology and world Christianity at Duke University, where he was the founding co-director of the Duke Divinity School’s Center for Reconciliation. He is the author of books on political theology, the Christian social imagination,  and Christian approaches to justice, peace, and reconciliation. His most recent book is Who Are My People: Love, Violence and Christianity in Subsaharan Africa (2022).  
Authority, Community & Identity article

Introducing ACI Indonesia


Coordinator of the Contending Modernities ACI Working Group on Indonesia

After a careful process of selecting the core research team, the Contending Modernities Authority, Community, and Identity (ACI) working group on Indonesia formally launched last year to begin a three-year research project to better understand the complex issues facing plural societies and to foster possible collaborations among various actors, religious and secular, at different levels: local and global, individuals and communities. The working group first convened in April, 2015 to think boldly and imaginatively together about conceptualizing an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration by scholars, religious leaders, educators, and activists at the highest level of achievement.

While the working group addresses broad issues of the changing dynamics of authority, community, and identity, at this early stage we focus on the largest Muslim majority country in the world: Indonesia. Given that Indonesia is the third largest democratic country (after India and the United States), it has much to teach about managing religious diversity. Indonesia is a laboratory for research on the changing dynamics of authority, community, and identity with diverse religions and more than three hundred different ethnicities and languages spread across over six thousand islands. Now home to more than 200 million Muslims–and with a significant number of Christians, including Catholics–Indonesia is a newly consolidated democracy in which new models of pluralist coexistence are today reformulated, promoted, and contested.

There are at least three issues that inform the shared vision of the Indonesian working group. The first is how to generate and energize a broad conversation about the changing patterns of authority, community, and identity in the modern context. Second, how to situate this working group within a broader framework of research and, third, how to translate our research into a broader public discourse.

The first shared vision is informed by the very idea of “contending modernities” to understand the ways in which Christian, Muslim, and secular forces interact, collaborate, negotiate, and contend with one another in the modern world. While each member of the working group engages different issues, their overarching concern revolves around problems of coexistence, which involves at least some degree of interaction, cooperation, and collaboration across the lines of religious and ethnic divisions. However, in the process we can expect some tensions, contention, and contestation.

The topic of coexistence is itself of obvious importance in the context of our working group. Coexistence can be seen as a lens through which we seek to understand themes of contending authorities, communities, and identities in plural and dynamic interaction. We take seriously the rich and contending varieties of religious as well as secular actors and the ways in which they work together or contend with one another in addressing the most pressing problems at various levels.

We envision this working group to be a catalyst for conversations among various research institutes and think-tanks that will open new paths forward for constructive collaboration across religious communities and between religious and secular actors. In order to energize and shape a serious conversation–not only among a small group of scholarly academics and researchers, but with broader and diverse participation from opinion leaders–it is important for the Indonesian working group to bring other local research think-tanks and representative thinkers from the three discursive communities (Christian, Muslim, and secular) into direct conversation and collaboration.

This leads us to the last vision, namely, how to translate our research into a broader public discourse. While this working group is first and foremost a scholarly enterprise, it is also designed to impact public discourse, influence educational content and practice, and place scholarship in the service of informed policymaking. With external actors and opinion-leaders as our interlocutors, the Indonesian working group will be in position to promote deeper intercultural and interreligious conversations on issues of peaceful coexistence so as to improve the quality of public discourse and policy making.

Given the complexity of “contending modernities” in general, and the shifting nature of the authority, community, and identity in particular, the working group seeks to foster public deliberation through dialogue between Muslim and Catholic scholars, along with representatives of other religious traditions and secular perspectives. The goal is to stimulate learned public discourse, improve education, and enhance the project of peaceful coexistence through shared perspectives within pluralized societies–both locally and globally–by providing accessible information, analysis, evaluation, and policy-relevant studies.

Therefore, we anticipate that the outcomes and products of our working group will represent an unusual effort to marry theory and practice in fostering multiple forms of coexistence.

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Mun’im Sirry
Field Notes article

Review – Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report


Full review can be found at the Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Saba Mahmood’s Religious Difference in a Secular Age examines how the institution of the modern secular liberal nation-state has impacted and transformed the regulation of religious difference in Egypt. Unlike the mythology of the modern liberal nation-state as a framework that enables the resolution of conflict based on religious identification, the discourse of state secularity undergirds and at times even intensifies interreligious conflict. Mahmood’s thesis likewise rejects the tired Orientalist lens that attributes the plights of minorities in the Middle East to Islamic values and principles as supposedly inhibiting the development of full-blown secularism. Instead, Mahmood’s book redirects attention to the very paradoxes and logic inherent in the institution of the modern secular liberal state (an analysis of the “nation”—the authorizing narratives of identity—is bracketed in favor of a focus on the “state”). Hence, Religious Difference in a Secular Age constitutes the most recent installment in the growing subfield of “secularism studies.” Yet, at the same time, the book also demonstrates the limits of these studies.

Click here to read the full review at the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (paywall may apply)

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Atalia Omer
 Atalia Omer is Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame in the United States. She earned her Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics, and Politics (2008) from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Her research focuses on Israel/Palestine; religion, violence, and peacebuilding; as well as theories and methods in the study of religion. Omer was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2017, resulting in Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2023). Among other publications, Omer is the author of When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (University of Chicago Press, 2019). She is also a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2015). 
CM Reacts article

CM Reacts: Brussels & Beyond

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In the wake of last week’s bombings in Belgium, Turkey, Pakistan, and elsewhere, Contending Modernities asked the chairs of the Global Migration & New Cosmopolitanism working groups to react. Under the leadership of Vincent D. Rougeau, Angus Ritchie and Robert Hefner, Global Migration & New Cosmopolitanism working groups have examined patterns of contentions and cooperation in several the tumultuous urban centers of Europe and North America. Additionally, Contending Modernities Co-Director Ebrahim Moosa commented on the imbalance of media coverage.

VINCENT D. ROUGEAU and ANGUS RITCHIE

Once again we have witnessed the senseless murder of innocents, this time in Brussels, at the hands of those claiming allegiance to Islamic State. Despite yet another tragedy, we must remain steadfast in our understanding of who we are and what is at stake in our response to terror.  By anticipating that we will scapegoat Muslim minorities in Europe and North America as somehow responsible for these attacks, Islamic State means to drive us into submission. They hope that we will see this terrorism as an existential threat to our way of life, and they have some very prominent politicians helping them to make that case.  But this is not an existential threat,  We have faced and fought terrorism before and we can do it again.  What we cannot do is surrender ourselves to lives controlled by hate and fear.

ROBERT HEFNER

By sheer coincidence I traveled to Paris three days after the November 2015 ISIS attacks, for long-scheduled follow up research for the Contending Modernities project on Muslims, Catholics, and secular perspectives on the challenges of pluralist co-existence in Western Europe today. A few weeks later, on January 14, 2016, I found myself driving across downtown Jakarta to speak about a related Contending Modernity project (on pluralist co-existence in Indonesia) at the Maarif Institute for Culture and Humanity, a leading Indonesian Muslim democrat think-tank. En route, and a couple of miles away from my car, a small band of ISIS extremists attempted to enter a shopping mall and carry out their trademark mass slaughter. Fortunately the attackers were stopped by the quick and courageous action of Indonesia’s anti-terror police. My Indonesian hosts that day were shaken but quietly defiant. Since then, the world has had the sad opportunity to witness additional acts of ISIS terror in Brussels and Lahore. There will be more.

Like most of us, my first impulse in response to these awful acts inclines toward the ethical, humanitarian, and spiritual rather than scholarly. However, my coincidental travels near the sites of recent ISIS attacks, and the local commentaries we all have heard from Brussels and Istanbul to Lahore, do inspire a few thoughts. The first is that we have entered a new age of trial with regard to ISIS, one that is global and certain to persist for years to come. There will be further acts of violence, some perhaps on a scale more awful than those we’ve recently witnessed.

The second lesson, perhaps no less obvious, is that the breadth of this threat should unite people of all faiths and pluralist convictions. The clear basis for that unity is the recognition — heard so clearly in the comments of Indonesian colleagues in January, and in the pained but poignant observations of Pakistani authorities after the Lahore attack this week — that we share a common challenge and, notwithstanding local variation, a common moral civilization. It may strike some readers as odd to invoke the term “civilization” in today’s context, not least after two decades of hoary commentary inspired by the so-called clash-of-civilization thesis. The latter thesis drifted all too regularly into the type of culture-talk I don’t intend, and I hope we recognize we don’t need today. But it is time to take back that term, and make it the contemporary and ethical reality that it most truly is. For my Indonesian Muslim colleagues in January, and with Muslim educators and friends at Zaytuna College in Berkeley in early March (where, in the midst of a two-day discussion of al-Ghazali, thoughtful but anxious references to the moral threat ISIS represents abounded), this term felt necessary and right. The civilization we share today is a fragile tissue of thoroughly contemporary ideas, initiatives, collaborations, and friendships. It spans the globe, yet it is delicate and rare. It is moral more than it is material. Certainly, it has a distinctive richness and specificity in different parts of the world, and among different peoples. But across these differences we now share a wealth of commonality. Moreover, in a curious dialectic, the violence of ISIS, as well as the intemperate gush of some of our populist politicians intent on portraying Muslim citizens as problems rather than partners in a time of trial, reminds us all the more of this civilization we share and now find threatened.

We are in the early not later stages of this global trial. It will run its course differently in different national settings. But the challenge will be more quickly and effectively contained when we recognize that it is shared, as is this fragile moral civilization we are determined to defend.

EBRAHIM MOOSA

Several bombs go off in Turkish cities in a series of deadly acts perpetrated by Daesh, also known as the Islamic State. There are regular news reports in the Western media about these events. But there is no saturation coverage of families and loved ones of deceased and survivors by name as it happened after the Paris killings in November and the Brussels bombings in March. The injured and dead in London, Madrid, Paris and Brussels are humanized. Those who die in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Israel/Palestine are just statistics. The fight against terrorism ought to be a noble one, to retrieve human dignity and a respect for life. In life,  as in death we live in apartheid, with two kinds of humanity Us vs Them. We are now accustomed to electronic and print media that believe that thinking is a crime, common sense and humane judgment are values that will undermine their market share.  This is a double standard of two humanities normalized by the media: one standard for the West versus another for the Rest is the banality of the media.

An essay written by Hannah Arendt titled “Thinking and Moral Considerations” informs these reflections. Its ringing message haunts me as I write this. I wish the cliff-notes version of her essay was on the must-read list every journalist. Arendt talks about the lessons she learned after covering the trial of the Nazi,  Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt described Eichmann’s conduct in the horrendous violence he supervised during the Holocaust, in her now famous expression, as the “banality of evil.” Eichmann’s conduct was not some elaborate theory, according Arendt, but “something quite factual, the phenomenon of evil deeds…which could not be traced to any particularity of wickedness, pathology of ideological conviction in the doer, whose only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness.” Despite Eichmann’s monstrous deeds, writes Arendt perhaps controversially, “the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic” and the only characteristic she could identify in him was “not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think” (Arendt 417).

Our media today–corporations and journalists–should wonder whether they might too be called to give account for this “total absence of thinking” which Arendt identified as being the essence of what she called the “banality of evil.” Not to think is to commit a sin, says Arendt in short. An example of this absence of thinking has appeared in op-eds by perhaps well-meaning writers like Jochen Bittner, the political editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. Bittner wrote in the New York Times article “Europe, After Brussels” that: “For the sake of social peace, after the Madrid and London bombings, we told ourselves that Islam and Islamism had nothing to do with each other. But sadly they do.” Bittner’s unthinking judgment is this: “The peaceful religion can sometimes serve as a slope into militant anti-Western ideology, especially when this ideology offers a strong sense of belonging amid the mental discomfort of our postmodern societies.” Bittner does identify the poverty bubble in Brussels where immigrants live. But this social anomie is curable, while the purported slope from Islam to militant anti-Western ideology is incurable.

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Vincent Rougeau
Vincent Rougeau has been Dean of Boston College Law School since 2011. He previously worked as a Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame.  He teaches and writes in the area of law and religion, with an emphasis on Catholic social teaching, and is the author of Christians in the American Empire: Faith and Citizenship in the New World Order (Oxford, 2008).
Angus Ritchie
Canon Dr. Angus Ritchie is an Anglican priest. For over twenty years, he has served in parishes in East London involved in community organizing, playing a leading role in campaigns for the Living Wage, affordable housing, and a cap on interest rates. He is the founding director of the Centre for Theology and Community. His latest book, Inclusive Populism: Creating Citizens in the Global Age was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2019, and was recently discussed by Pope Francis at a conference of Catholics involved in community organizing.
Robert Hefner
Robert W. Hefner is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University.  He has done research on religion and plurality in Southeast Asia since the late 1970s, and has been involved in projects on the comparative study of Christians, Muslims, and civic-pluralist co-existence in Western and Asian societies since the 1990s.  His books include Pentecostalism in the 21st Century (2012) and Sharia Politics: Law and Society in the Modern Muslim World (2011).
Ebrahim Moosa
Ebrahim Moosa is Mirza Family Professor of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies in Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs and Department of History. He co-directs Contending Modernities with Atalia Omer and Scott Appleby. Moosa’s interests span both classical and modern Islamic thought with a special focus on Islamic law, history, ethics and theology. He is the author of Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination, winner of the American Academy of Religion’s Best First Book in the History of Religions (2006), and What is a Madrasa? (2015).
Field Notes article

Catholics, Muslims and Secularists in Quebec: Citizenships in Tension in the Aftermath of the Quiet Revolution


The introduction of a proposed “Charter of Quebec values” ​​by the Government of Quebec on September 10, 2013 was as a major event which can be considered part of a long process of secularization in Quebecois society, dating back to the so-called “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s, which achieved its last success in the late 1990s by denominating schools based on languages (French versus English) rather than religion (Catholic versus Protestant). Throughout its history, Quebecois society has been strongly tied to the Catholic Church, which historically maintained a powerful presence in education, healthcare, and even political parties. In the wake of the “Quiet Revolution”, French Canadians, who represent the majority of the province’s Catholics, have become less religiously observant. At the same time, the Quebecois national movement that had its birth within a Catholic movement—“Action sociale catholique,” which was active between 1905 and 1962—has itself become increasingly secular.

The proposed bill on a Charter of Quebec Values originated from a government led by the Parti Quebecois (PQ), an entity not particularly known for deep religiosity. The bill was criticized by many as a political manoeuvre by PQ to instrumentalize a religious issue—in particular, anxieties about Muslim migration—to reposition itself as a supporter of Quebecois culture and to win more votes in upcoming elections. In fact, for many observers, the PQ devised its strategy by learning from the example of the fast-growing popularity gains made by another political party, the ADQ (Action démocratique du Québec), which in 2006 made electoral headway by capitalizing on the controversy of “reasonable accommodations.” The PQ used similar tactics to exploit fear of foreigners and present itself as the protector of the Quebec’s identity, culture, and historical heritage. Just as the ADQ had harvested a record number of votes after capitalizing on the reasonable accommodation crisis, before disappearing thereafter, the PQ hoped to benefit from Charter of Values initiative to win the election and form a majority government.

The proposed law aimed, among other things, to prohibit the wearing of “ostentatious religious symbols” in public institutions and in private sector institutions financed even in part with public funds—institutions such as daycare centres, private clinics, private schools. The broad scope of the proposed law catalyzed great debates about citizenship equality, and quickly led to an outcry by some that the legislation was Islamophobic.

The Charter of Values is an important case to examine when considering pluralist coexistence because of the great tensions it generated—tensions which drove even the least interested citizens to participate and to express their opinions in the subsequent public debate. Amiraux and Koussens see in this kind of proposal the difficulties that liberal democracies in the West face in managing diversity in general, and especially religious pluralism. It is this confrontation among different visions of nation, and between those promoting a greater measure of cultural, linguistic, and religious homogeneity and those advocating for a more inclusive “interculturalism,” (the preferred French phrase in Quebec for what in English is usually referred to as multiculturalism) that makes the Charter of Values debate so important. The commission on Reasonable Accommodation, held in 2008, proposed in its report the concept of interculturalism as an alternative to Canadian multiculturalism, justifying this choice by the fact that multiculturalism in its Canadian version is not well suited to the reality of Quebec. Indeed, the French Canadian Quebecois are a cultural minority in Canada and North America and fear for their cultural survival as a nation.

Needless to say, most religious communities did not welcome the Charter bill. While many nationalist politicians, artists, and intellectuals tried to position themselves as protectors of Catholicism, most Catholic clergy in Quebec denounced the bill. In addition to the clergy, represented by the Assemblée Nationale des Évêques du Québec, Dominicans and Jesuits played a leading role in opposing the proposed law. At the same time, however, other nationalists tried to use Quebec’s Catholic heritage as a basis for excluding Islam and Muslims.

The official flyer detailing the proposed law was entitled: “parce que nos valeurs, on y croit ”— “because we believe in our values”. Phonetically, the French word “croit” (from the verb to believe) in the title is pronounced like “croix” (a cross). That fact did not escape the eye of critics, who circulated an image of the first page of the booklet with a red cross Untitledon the letter “t” transforming it to “x”, thus changing the meaning from “believe’ to “cross”.
These critics pointed to inconsistencies within the charter’s goal of banning ostentatious religious symbols from public institutions, including the cross, while intending to keep the large crucifix installed during the government of Maurice Duplessis in the main chamber of the National Assembly.

Public Controversy as an Accelerator of Cultural Change

Not surprisingly, Muslims perceived the law to be directed against them. Notwithstanding their internal diversity and organic decentralization, Muslims tried to organize themselves by creating a united coalition known by the acronym, QMDL (Québécois Musulmans pour les Droits et Libertés). The organization sponsored numerous press conferences, demonstrations, and rallies.

A few weeks after the official announcement of the proposed charter legislation, on Thursday, October 10, 2013, the “Centre Justice et Foi,” a public affairs center linked to the Jesuit Order, organized a conference under the title “remettre l’égalité citoyenne au cœur du débat” (relocating citizen equality at the heart of the debate). I entered the main hall of the Centre the evening of the conference and was surprised to find people from the entire metropolitan Montreal region.  For the majority of similar events, the room half full at best. That night, the room was filled beyond capacity and the organizers were forced to add chairs to accommodate the overflow.

The panel that evening brought together speakers from diverse backgrounds: Elisabeth Garant, a Catholic and director of the “Centre Justice et Foi”; Dominique Peschard, a largely secular figure and president of the “Ligue des droits et libertés,” a provincial human rights NGO; Alexa Conradi, a feminist and president of the “Fédération des Femmes du Quebec”; Asmaa Ibnouzahir, a Muslim feminist; and Michel Seymour, a secular nationalist and well-known intellectual. The speaker forum thus included Catholics, Muslims, and secular-minded people. The diversity of the alliance was seen in other meetings and rallies, and showed that the Charter of Values legislation had touched a deep public nerve. One of the participants summarized the reality in an ironic way, thanking the Prime Minister of the government of the Parti Quebecois, Pauline Marois, because her project produced a large participation in dialogue and activities related to citizenship: “Je veux dire merci à Mme Pauline Marois. C’est grâce à ce projet qu’on est rassemblé là!  — I want to say thank you to Pauline Marois. It is because of this project that we are together here!” (This sentence and similar sentences were repeated by several speakers at the conference of October 10, 2013 at Centre Justice et Foi and on other occasions).

We can thus ask, did the social tension generated by the Charter have a positive effect, unwittingly broadening citizen participation? At a dialogue with a representative of Bel Agir, a Muslim association that organized a rally against the charter in the Palais des Congrès de Montréal on December 14, 2014, one activist told me that ‘to mobilize this large number of associations of civil society, would have required several years in a normal situation. But with the issue of the charter, we work under pressure and we saved a lot of time reaching people faster and seeking partnership with others in struggle against the charter.”

 When Public Engagement Serves to Protect Private Life

One of the reasons people reacted strongly to the Charter legislation was their feeling that their private lives, including how they dress and what they believe, were threatened. The following comment from social media was typical: “On ne donnera à personne le droit d’entrer aux garde-robes de nos femmes! — We will not give anyone the right to enter to our women’s wardrobes”. The “wardrobe” in this expression is what a Muslim woman I met called “mon éthique vestimentaire”—“my dress ethics”, referring to the Charter’s proposal to ban the hijab for Muslim women. In this instance, the state’s ambition of entering into the protected circle of the individual’s privacy did not weaken citizenship involvement, but activated it. For these actors, citizen participation sought to protect individual rights, freedom of conscience, and family values. Contrary to some critics’ claims, the opposition was not the result of the Charter touching on something “sacred” and thus unquestionable. How else can we understand Quebecois Muslims’ mobilization, notwithstanding an unemployment rate far in excess of the national average? The answer is that social marginalisation and discrimination were perceived by these actors as directly affecting their private and public lives.

Obviously, banning the hijab doesn’t touch only the private life of individuals, but it would also greatly weaken women’s public participation, a point raised by the Women’s Federation of Quebec during their interventions in public debates. Also, very conservative circles inside the Muslim Community saw in the proposed law a way to serve their plans to bring back women to their homes and to keep them focusing on their “main purpose” by educating their kids. Accordingly, Muslim women were motivated to participate by the fear to lose their jobs and to be confined to housekeeping.

Pluralism in Solitude

Although there is diversity in actors’ religious tendencies and thoughts, it is interesting to discover that at some levels there nonetheless remains a wide isolation between different initiatives and a deep lack of representativeness of the antagonists’ positions by both camps. Despite the diversity on display at the aforementioned Centre Justice et Foi event, Charter supporters were notably absent among the panel of speakers, something that the audience did not fail to notice. On the other side, at events sponsored by those in favor of the Charter, a similar situation occurred: there were almost no instances of multi-sided debate.  It is true, then, that the controversy surrounding the Charter of Values bill deepened public interest in pluralism, but it also prevented the representation of the various parties in the debate in their full plurality. One reason for this is the difficulty of managing the intensity of interactions in real-and-existing public squares. Who can assume such a responsibility and ensure that the “civic” confrontational nature does not take precedence over the courtesy of the “civil” character of citizenship? Despite all this diversity produced by a focal event like the project of the charter of Quebec values, it was characterized by a measure of solitude in plurality.

On April 7th, 2014, the Parti Quebecois lost the vote in the provincial elections. One of the reasons behind its defeat was the controversy caused by the Charter of Values legislation. Religious and ethnic minorities, especially Muslims, felt relieved by the outcome of the vote. However, tensions related to Islam, as the religion of the “other,” are still widespread and unresolved. The precise formula for religion, public ethics, and citizenship in a post-Quiet Revolution Quebec remains unclear. But the mobilization and social networking set in motion by the Charter of Values debate, in particular that between Muslim associations, Catholic institutions, and other groupings in civil society remains a genuine social presence. Future challenges may yet make these ties stronger and more sustainable.

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Azeddine Hmimssa
Azeddine Hmimssa recieved his Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Montreal in 2018. Azeddine earned a master’s degree in religious studies and sociology from the same university where he wrote his thesis on citizenship as seen by Muslims in Quebec. He also holds a M.Sc. from ETS in Montreal, and a diploma in Islamic traditional studies from Nouakchott, Mauritania. Azeddine has worked as a researcher for the Canada Research Chair on Islam, Pluralism, and Globalization at the University of Montreal, and is a contributor to Contending Modernities’ Public Ethics And Citizenship In Plural Societies project. His research focuses on citizenship and pluralism in Islamic thought.
Field Notes article

The Un-Dutchable Challenge of Pluralism


Every year on December 5th, tens of thousands of Dutch people paint their faces black, dress up in antique costume, and assume the persona of Zwarte Piet (“Black Pete”) to help Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas) distribute candy and presents to children throughout the Netherlands. In recent years, Dutch citizens of Caribbean ancestry have spoken out against the portrayal of Black Pete as a racist caricature. In early October of 2013, Quinsy Gario, a Curaçao-born Dutch performance artist, argued on TV that Black Pete perpetuates a stereotype of African people as second-class citizens in Dutch society. The following week, the mayor of Amsterdam met with residents who asked that Black Pete be removed from the city’s Sinterklaas parade. Most white Dutch reacted angrily to accusations that the Black Pete tradition is racist, and the character continues to be popular in society. According to a 2013 survey, 92% of the Dutch public do not perceive Black Pete as racist or associate him with slavery, and 91% are opposed to altering the character’s appearance.

Challenges of the New Plurality

This example illustrates how the Dutch, otherwise known for their pragmatism and tolerance, are being tested by the new plurality that marks their society. Until the 1990s, Dutch nationals approached ethnic, racial, religious, and sectarian differences, themselves the result of migration and colonialism, with some of Europe’s stronger multiculturalist policies. However, such government policies did not make many demands on Dutch society’s longstanding habits. Rethinking one’s own traditions requires more than just tolerating difference; it also involves rethinking your self-identity to accommodate the “other.” One of my Muslim informants tweeted on the matter, reminding Dutch folks to empathize with the Muslim immigrants who are constantly asked to change their beliefs and traditions to adapt to their lives in the Netherlands.

I have been conducting fieldwork among Muslims in the Netherlands since 2003, focusing on questions of how they adapt their beliefs to their new homes . Our project on the New Western Plurality allowed me to extend my research into the Catholic and Secular communities. My previous research involved two years of fieldwork, beginning in 2003-2004 followed up by summer research between 2006 and 2011. For this new project, I carried out three months of fieldwork in Amsterdam especially focusing on Catholic and Secular communities. The focus on the three ethical “communities” means that the project was not intended to be exhaustive, in covering all the groups within each tradition. Instead, I sampled organizations to illustrate their different approaches to the challenge of the new national plurality.

As the Black Pete debate illustrates, most people are willing to make some incremental changes to the character. This year, they have removed the earring. Next year, they might paint the character with lighter color to fit the story line that Black Pete is black only because he enters homes from chimneys to drop the gifts. However, Geert Wilders, the leader of the far right Freedom Party, has proposed the adoption of a law to protect Black Pete against any alterations in his appearance “to protect our (Dutch) culture.” This incident is one among many that indicates that once “received” understandings of integration, including various models of multiculturalism, are now in question. This has pushed questions of pluralist co-existence to the center of discussion in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands officially adopted multicultural policies in 1983 but by the 1990s assimilationist policies became ascendant. The verzuiling or pillarization system enshrined in the Dutch constitution still provides the legal basis for recognition of religious group rights. Nevertheless, even for countries like the Netherlands with a long tradition of tolerance and acceptance, it has become a challenge to incorporate immigrants while respecting their differences. Thus, there is a need for new approaches to understand how people respond to pluralism in their daily lives in Western Europe. The Making Multiculturalism Work report from Contending Modernities’ London research team, that argues for the role of political friendships in fostering pluralism is an example of this line of research. My book, Localizing Islam in Europe, also provides examples of this approach, such as the transformation of Muslim activists through interfaith settings. However, activities like these actually have a limited impact on the larger society that is exposed to the sensationalism of a public media that everyday stigmatizes and marginalizes “the other.”

The Limits of Dutch Multiculturalism

The Netherlands provides an interesting setting to pursue research on the new Western plurality because it has historically had an institutionalized solution to ethico-religious plurality, grounded on the so-called verzuiling or pillarization system. The Dutch state has recognized religious and ideological groups since the second half of the 19th century. Accordingly, the state supported each ideological or religious group to organize its own schools, hospitals, media, and political representation. Despite some debate on the exact number of pillars, for most of the twentieth century there were four. They consisted of Social Democrats, (secular) Humanists, Protestants, and Catholics. Among the pillars, Catholics led the way in creating these institutions followed by Protestants. The “secular” pillars of Social Democrats and Liberals did not create as extensive an assortment of pillar institutions. With regard to education, for example, the secular humanists were satisfied with the public schools; by contrast, Catholics wanted to have their own schools funded by the state. In fact, whether the liberals and the socialists had formed a pillar of their own is still debatable because they had formed too few organizations in too small areas to be called a “pillar.” Moreover, liberals were against voluntary segregation based on ideological and denominational lines.

The confessional pillars suffered great strains under the secularization process that swept the Netherlands from the 1960s onwards, as witnessed by the decline in church membership and attendance. In an interview with Vatican Radio on December 5, 2013, Willem Jacobus Eijk Cardinal, Archbishop of Utrecht said that the Catholic Church in the Netherlands is facing a near collapse. “The number of practicing Catholics is diminishing very quickly,” he said. “In the 1950s 90 percent of Catholics still went to church every Sunday. Now, it’s only five percent.” He quickly added that the Church officials would soon be “forced to close many churches.” He quoted from the Dutch Office for National Statistics that in 2010 just under 16 percent of the population identified itself as Catholic. This number is expected to drop to about 10 percent by 2020. The same office estimates that Islam will become the second largest religion in the Netherlands the same year.

As the pillarization system was dissolving as a result of the Netherlands’ secularization, the number of Muslims increased steadily as a result of labor migration from Turkey and Morocco from the 1960s onward. They were the second wave of migration, the first having been from ex-colonies in the Caribbean. At present, the Netherlands has a population of some 850,000 Muslims, making up nearly 6 percent of the population; 329,000 of them have historical ties to Turkey and 314,000 to Morocco. There are other Muslims who have arrived from former and current areas of conflict such as Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. In addition, there are nearly 10,000 native “Dutch” convert Muslims.

Multiculturalism as a state policy began with these major increases in immigration during the 1950s and 1960s. An official national policy of multiculturalism was adopted in 1983, with the introduction of the “Ethnic Minorities Policy.” This has allowed state support for the cultural, religious, and linguistic development of immigrant groups based on their ethnic origins. This approach was also tied in principle to the pillarization system, on the assumption that minorities would be empowered and emancipated in society through self-organization and group identification.

Questions were soon raised about multicultural policies, however, as a result of the continuing social and economic marginalization of immigrants. By the 1990s, the national policy had shifted markedly to more assimilationist programs. Anxious about their religious traditions, Muslims invoked the principle of verzuiling and applied for state funding for their social, educational, and media programs. Although some funding was granted, the state stopped short of supporting a full Muslim pillar, since opinion had shifted and the idea was that society required more cultural cohesion than the retention of cultural difference.

Since the September 11 attacks in the U.S., Dutch public opinion has shifted even more forcefully away from multicultural accommodation. The change has caused many minority leaders to perceive integration as a cover-up for full-scale assimilation and assimilationist goals. Nonetheless, the policy shift continued, and even accelerated after the tragic murder of the film-maker and anti-Muslim polemicist Theo Van Gogh by an Islamist extremist in November 2004—an event that event caused a veritable moral panic in Dutch society.

Mapping the Ethico-Religious Communities: Catholics

Although the Catholic Church has long been known for its hierarchical administration, effective central control over an increasingly diverse Catholic population has become a challenge for the Dutch Church. On the basis of interviews and conversations with representatives from the Catholic Church, both clergy and laypeople, I would tentatively divide up the Catholic community into three groups: the Bishops who represent the official position that is closest to the Vatican’s views; civic Catholic organizations that are semi-independent of the Church; and individuals of nominal Catholic affiliation.

There are seven dioceses in the Netherlands, with Amsterdam coming under the authority of the Bishop of Haarlem. During my interview on February 17th, 2014 with a representative from the Haarlem Diocese, he began by stating that “the Catholic Church in the Netherlands is in a deplorable state.” He explained that Church attendance is plummeting; there is a desperate shortage of priests; the active volunteers in the Church are elderly; and there is internal strife between priests and laymen as well as among the country’s bishops.

Despite these great challenges, all dioceses subscribe to the Second Vatican Council’s call for interfaith relations, carrying out interfaith dialogue activities through various councils with many groups and sections of society in the Netherlands. There are constant and intense ecumenical relationships, including the one within the Council of Churches. Additionally, regular contacts take place with Jewish representatives, especially through the Episcopal Commission for the relationship with Judaism. There is also contact with believers of other religions through the Contact Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

The Catholic Church’s interfaith activities assessment document for 2012 describes relations with Muslims, laying out principles for the dialogue for Muslims, including calling for honest and open dialogue, and asking “difficult questions” such as textual references to violence in Islam. The document is critical of the “anti-Islam campaign” launched by the PVV (Freedom Party) of Geert Wilders. The Catholic Contact Council for Inter-religious Dialogue (CID) has strengthened its ties with Muslims through interfaith dialogue, and messages of goodwill to all Muslim organizations in the Netherlands during Ramadan. This has occurred despite the problems posed by some Muslims’ withdrawal from dialogue in the aftermath of the PVV’s election victory in 2010, which is thought to have benefited from substantial Catholic support. The document refers to an interesting finding about maintaining dialogue in such difficult times. It sums up the response in parishes to the “negative coverage of Islam” especially the film “Fitna” produced by Wilders as follows: “Where contacts between Christians and Muslims were good, ties became stronger, meetings and talks increased. Where there were few, if any, contacts, fear of Islam and distrust of Muslims grew.”

One example of this trend is Volendam, which is a small fishing town in the north where PVV has won nearly 40 percent of the votes in 2009 European parliamentary elections. Although there are no Muslims living there, the voters explain their support for Wilders by almost quoting him verbatim “This country is being taken over by the Muslims and their violent religion.” Despite such regional support for PVV among Catholics, the representative of the Catholic Church emphasized that churchgoing Catholics can empathize with immigrants and minorities because Catholics too have been a religious minority in this country. In other words, he underlined that the Catholic Church is not contributing to the support for PVV. However, it seems that the Church is not able to prevent the party’s popularity among some Catholic circles either.

Muslims

The Muslim minority population shares all the disadvantages of low socioeconomic standing, which limits and constrains their engagement with the larger society. A weak middle class, and very limited intellectual capital among Muslims makes them dependent on scholars from their countries of origins, most of whom are not familiar with the Dutch context. Muslims also lack the professional and intellectual cadres to engage systematically with public debates. There are a number of transnational Islamic movements that originated from the countries of origin and incrementally adapting their agendas to Europe, which can be categorized into three clusters that are influential and relevant for the pluralism debate: transnational branches of political Islamic movements; movements engaged with dialogue and pluralism; and Salafi Muslims.

There are, first, Islamic organizations that have originated as the transnational branches of the political Islamic movement in the Middle East such as Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt), Milli Görüş (Turkey), and Jamaat-i Islami (Pakistan). Their original agendas in their countries of origins such as ushering in pro-Islamic regimes have, in the context of Europe, shifted to developing a Muslim identity in public life by getting Islam recognized as an equal religion to other religions in Europe. These groups demand to be recognized as legitimate organizations within European states in return for spreading a “moderate” Islamic cause that condemns violence, accepts secularism, and calls Muslims to identify with their new societies.

There are a number of other movements that promote interfaith dialogue, active citizenship, and engagement with pluralism. According to this civil Islam, which refers to an interpretation of Islam that is compatible with the principles of democratic governance, Muslims are encouraged to play an active role in society while negotiating their religious and ethical commitments with the larger society. Jamaat al-Adl wal Ihsan from Morocco and the Gülen movement from Turkey have activists in the Netherlands and across Western Europe committed to these values. All of these individuals and groups utilize bridging activities in educational, interfaith and artistic venues to promote an active role for Muslims in larger society.

There is also a small but vocal group of Salafi Muslims, estimated to be several thousands. Salafis tend to avoid avoid engagement with a plural society, citing their interpretation of the principle of Al Wala’ Wal Bara’ (literally meaning loyalty and disavowal) which calls for disengagement with non-Muslims and even other non-Salafi Muslims. There are, however, different trends within Salafi Islam. Apolitical Salafis denounce violence but call for a literalist and puritanical interpretation of Islam. They consider the presence of Muslims in Europe as temporary. Although apolitical Salafis have been in principle against democracy and voting in elections (because this violates God’s authority as the only ruler, in their view) they have decided to vote in the elections in the Netherlands to counter the rise of Geert Wilders by using the traditional Islamic law principle of “maslaha” or public interest.

Normen en Waarden: Public Debate on Dutch “Norms and Values”

The murder of Theo Van Gogh by a Dutch-Moroccan Jihadi in Amsterdam in 2004 greatly intensified the public debate on Dutch norms and values. “Dutchness” has been presented by Far Right parties such as Wilders’ PVV as standing for freedom of speech, in opposition to Islam and Muslims, who are perceived as wanting to negate this principle. In this politically charged environment, social pressures on immigrants to accept the communal norms of Dutch society have increased exponentially.

This pressure has been expressed in several important policy changes. The Christian Democratic government has made it more difficult to immigrate to the Netherlands from outside the EU. A striking illustration of policy changes, since September 30, 1998 the Integration of Newcomers Act requires newcomers to take 600 hours of Dutch language and culture courses to become legal immigrants. Moreover, since March 15, 2006, immigrants are required to pass an exam testing their knowledge of Dutch language and society before they can come to the Netherlands to be reunited with their families. The Netherlands is also the first country in Europe to implement compulsory training for imams entering the country. Since September 2002, imams are obliged to attend courses on Dutch values, soft drugs, prostitution, gay marriage, and euthanasia. It is debatable whether these policies are effectively promoting cultural integration.

In short, both Muslims and the Dutch liberal tradition of multiculturalism have come to face new and significant challenges. Declining support for multicultural policies, new anti-immigration laws, and the end of political correctness toward Muslims have all created an atmosphere in which Islam and Muslims have become “the other” of the “tolerant” Dutch society. The Muslim “other” is portrayed as not tolerating homosexuals, mistreating women, and denying freedom of speech. Actual Muslims, of course, have widely varying opinions on all of these questions. However, the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the statement of the Moroccan Imam el-Moumni about gays, which referred to homosexuality as a disease, have been enough to confirm to many Dutch citizens that all Muslims share these views.

The “norms and Values” debate has informed new policies on civic integration (inburgering) and citizenship education (burgerschapsvorming). Since January 2007 the Civic Integration Act obliges most non-Dutch and non-EU nationals living in the Netherlands to speak Dutch and have some general knowledge of the country. This general knowledge about the society included topics such as homosexuality and gender equality. In order to promote integration, the Civic Integration Act obliges most foreigners to take part in language and civic integration courses. If you are between the ages of 16 and 65 and come from outside the European Union you will need to pass the integration exam.

Since 2005, Dutch schools have also been required to include citizenship education in their curriculum. The Ministry of education has come up with core goals or kerndoelen as the goals for citizenship education of students; however, each school is allowed to implement the goals in its own way. For instance, one of these goals is “active citizenship.” Each school aims to reach this goal differently. The De Roose Islamic School I visited aims to reach this through the “universal language of music,” as the principle put it. School officials believe that if their students learn to make music and use musical instruments they can become more active in the larger society. They organize fieldtrips to nursing homes and invite local authorities to talk to their students. Among the Catholic Schools in low income and immigrant neighborhoods that I visited, there were attempts to make the students more involved and responsible for the rest of the society and active citizens. However, for the Catholic schools in “white” neighborhoods with high economic standards, teachers and parents have admitted that they do not do much of anything with regard to citizenship education. Because they believe that citizenship education is not aimed for their students and that the inspectors know this as well and do not question them on it. A similar pattern was seen in secular schools. Overall, the priority for all schools was reading and math skills; citizenship education was way down on their “to do” list.

Liberal and social democratic critics of these new programs of citizenship education programs are worried that the government is moving in the direction of using education to create “good citizens of the state” whereas the goal of education should be to teach the students how to think critically. More generally, however, new policies and public debates on “norms and values” demonstrate that, even as Dutch society may have reached the limits of an earlier multicultural tolerance, programs designed to inculcate a common moral vision may be causing more tension than cohesion. For the moment, the path forward to a more effective pluralist co-existence remains uncertain.

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Ahmet Yükleyen
Ahmet Yükleyen is currently head of the Istanbul office for College admissions advising company "Great College Advice". He was previously Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Mississippi University's Croft Institute for International Studies as well as Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Commerce University. He received his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Boston University in 2007. His book titled “Localizing Islam in Europe: Turkish Islamic Communities in Germany and the Netherlands” was published by Syracuse University Press in 2012. .
Field Notes article

Struggling to Mieux Vivre Ensemble: The Sobering Reality of France’s new Plurality


 2015 was a devastating year for France. At the end of my 15-month fieldwork research in December of 2014, the country was already dealing with an ongoing economic recession, a wildly unpopular president, and a fervent and growing far-right political party. Furthermore, social tensions surrounding Islam, laïcité, and immigration had been escalating over the past few decades, with same-sex marriage being added to the heated public debates in recent years. The Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015 took a heavy toll on the already vulnerable state of the country. But ensuing unifying events such as the Marche Republicane – the biggest rally (~3.7 million people nationwide) in France since the liberation in 1944 – helped France to pull together and brush off at least some of the dust.

But the violence wasn’t over. The November 2015 terrorist attacks on the Stade de France, the Bataclan concert hall, and nearby cafes and restaurants, that killed 130 randomly targeted individuals, rattled the nation to its core. As opposed to the Charlie Hebdo attacks, which can be seen as a violent overreaction to a provocative media outlet, the November attacks personally touched the lives of thousands of innocent, ordinary French civilians, injecting angst and fear into homes, schools, and everyday social outings. As is the case after nearly every incident of global terrorism linked to Islam, French Muslims again find themselves in the precarious position of being targeted by both the terrorists and by French society; the latter demanding apologies for the actions of despicable individuals who have very little to do with the religion that the vast majority of ordinary Muslims know and practice.

Immediately following the attacks, President Hollande enacted the nation’s state of emergency laws for the first time since the Algerian war—an important step for being able to track and detain necessary suspects, but a controversial one in terms of potentially sacrificing civil liberties for debatable improvements in national security. In just the first three days after the attacks, 414 homes were searched, 29 people were arrested, and 118 people were place on house arrest. Nearly 800 police raids took place in the two weeks following the attacks, including disruptive and destructive overnight raids of local and otherwise peaceful mosques, stirring up significant protest and fear in France’s Muslim communities. While at least a handful of these raids were touted publicly as being useful or successful, the tangible benefits of such extensive and invasive investigations remain unclear.

The misleading and deleterious amalgams made between Islam and terrorism that, although certainly a preexisting condition, have increased exponentially in the aftermath of these events, foment social distrust across the population, and fuel volatile hostilities within French society. How can France’s vibrantly plural population avoid falling into the destabilizing trap of blaming their co-citizens and pointing fingers at innocent Muslims? How can French society find peace and ways to coexist or embrace pluralism in the aftermath of these painful events and amid this social turbulence – especially with the looming and unsettling reality that there may be more violence to come? (An estimated 1,200-1,450 French nationals had left to join the forces of Daesch—also known as ISIS/ISIL—as of early 2015, and the figure has undoubtedly grown since. As a direct consequence of this recruitment, French and Belgium nationals made up a majority of the teams involved in the November attack, and this “internality” factor makes it exponentially more difficult for authorities to impede French born terrorists from re-entering the country and to track them once they cross the border). The unanswered questions, suspicion, fear, and aftermath of these horrific events have, among other things, spurred a new urgency for leaders and for social actors to find new and more effective strategies to mieux vivre ensemble (live better together).

The mieux vivre ensemble slogan and its various manifestations figured heavily in my fieldwork since it relates closely to my research interests and had been a headlining strategy for politicians and social organizations since the early 2000s. Mieux vivre ensemble projects and initiatives come in many forms, but tend to focus on (re)locating an operating consensus for French society, or at least for certain groups within French society—an operating consensus based on a set of values, beliefs, guidelines, or similar that allow France’s diverse population to live together…better. Some groups—such as the youth interfaith group Coexister—interpret mieux vivre ensemble as being an engaged coexistence for both religious and non-religious individuals; in other words, actively living together, celebrating religious and non-religious diversity, and embracing pluralism. Other groups such as SNRM (National service for relations with Muslims) and GAIC (Group of Islamic-Christian amity), which have been around for approximately 40 and 30 years respectively, take a strictly interreligious approach to working toward this goal, focusing on Christian-Muslim relations. These projects to mieux vivre ensemble, which are more thoroughly explored later in this blog, represent just a few of the widely varying responses to France’s new plurality – a plurality that demands new models for plural citizenship, new strategies for making multiculturalism work, and new interpretations of pluralism.

My 15 months of research in 2013 – 2014 involved digging deeper into this modern French plurality and the religious and social tensions that simultaneously influence and emerge from the ways that this plurality manifests itself in the hearts and minds of French citizens. Spending time in various ethico-religious communities of France—primarily pious Muslim and Catholic communities juxtaposed with the secular majority—I sought to learn how these different communities reacted to, ignored, and/or engaged with the new plurality and/or pluralism (plurality refers to the presence and interaction of multiple ethico-religious traditions within a given context, while pluralism refers to a principle or ethical tradition that seeks to embrace and affirm the reality of plurality), and subsequently with laïcité and “Frenchness.” How did their understandings of French citizenship differ; how did they work toward shaping and producing model(s) of “Frenchness,” and how did their concepts of “being French” clash and/or imbricate? Moreover, I tried to better understand how these communities managed (or not) to vivre ensemble (live together) despite varied and often opposed understandings of what religious pluralism is and should be in France.

Being a French Catholic in Plural France

In order to contextualize being a Catholic in today’s France—or a religious citizen of any denomination for that matter—we must first glance quickly back through history to understand the “chain of memory” of France’s majority religion. Prior to the French Revolution in 1789, the Catholic Church was an integral part of French life. Post-Revolution France underwent a number of political shifts, ultimately becoming known as a European exception with its strong laïque movements and anti-clericalism. Despite its plurality in terms of language, pockets of religious minorities, and regionally based cultural differences, France remained a majority Catholic country until the late 19th century. In the 1880s France developed its modern public, laïque (or secular/neutral) school system. The school reformers, led by Jules Ferry, set out to create a public school system free to all, without religious instruction, and with the intent to instill the Republic’s Revolutionary values of liberté, égalité, and fraternité in the minds of young citizens. This school reform was followed by the formal separation of Church and State in 1905, and lastly, the 1959 alteration of the constitution to describe France as a “laïque” Republic.

The steady movement away from a Catholic nation toward a “laïque” Republic significantly changed France’s social and cultural fabric. Catholic religious observance went through various stages, but showed an overall decrease during the 19th and 20th centuries. Some authors suggest that the final and decisive turning point was during the post-1960s era, which was characterized by “the gradual loosening of the ties between church and society”. In 1986 the Institut CSA reported that 81% of the French population claimed to be Catholic; in 2012, the figure had fallen to 56%. A different study by l’Institut nationale d’etudes demographiques (INED- INSEE) reported that in 2010 only 43% of the adult French population self-defined as Catholic. Another 2010 study reported that only 7% of Catholics attended mass on a monthly basis while 57% of Catholics considered themselves non-practicing Catholics.

The relatively new “minority” status of the modern Catholic Church was evident in my discussions with priests and parishioners across France. As one Parisian priest explained, “the Church is at the same time alive and dynamic and has also become a minority in a country where everyone has forgotten the Church and religion.” Along with the decline, there has also been a diversification of Catholic practice, giving way to a wide-ranging spectrum of what it means to be a French Catholic. For some, “being Catholic” means weekly mass; for others, it’s more about defining what they’re not – for example, not being atheist or Muslim. For many of those who comprise the 57% of Catholics who are non-practicing, Catholic is more a declared cultural affiliation than it is a religious observance.

Being a French Muslim in Plural France

While the Catholic Church watches its social and cultural capital decrease, another prominent minority religion has been on the rise. Islam has been considered France’s “second religion” since at least the 1960s and today it is estimated that approximately 5-8% of the French population is Muslim. France’s historical relationship with Islam has been long, complex, and often tumultuous. The battles of colonialism and the grueling Algerian war still weigh heavily in the memories of many Muslim (and non-Muslim) citizens of France (about 2 million French residents trace their roots to Algeria, and approximately 75% of the country’s Muslims have family origins in Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia—however, despite common misperceptions and mistaken amalgams, only about half of the Muslims in France are of Arab descent). Along with more recent examples of oppression, discrimination, and inequality targeting Arabs and/or Muslims in France, these painful memories have given shape to complicated and sometimes volatile boundaries of nationality, belonging, and identity making among second and third generation youth – a prevalent topic in current discussions of youth radicalization.

According to at least one recent study, approximately 78% of French Muslims self-declare that religion is of great or moderate significance in their lives; only 24% of French Catholics would make the same statement. This, along with its relative newness and the highly mediatized political debates surrounding Muslim clothing and rituals, makes Islam a very public and practiced religion by comparison with Catholicism. That said, similar to the diverse ways that French Catholics practice, believe in, and belong to their faith, there are myriad ways to be a French Muslim – from nominal belonging and believing to pious devotion.

Furthermore, and also like their Catholic counterparts, French Muslim individuals and communities are engaged in a variety of responses to plurality, and demonstrate a variety of interpretations of Frenchness, laïcité, and “French Muslimness.” Some Muslims stand behind a discourse of strong laïcité—or the strict privatization of their religion, insisting that it does not impinge on their beliefs or practices, but rather allows them to practice their religion privately, freely, and unperturbed. Others make a stronger claim to their rights to freedom of expression and religion in the public sphere. (While these claims to the freedom of religion are wide ranging, many revolve around women’s dress—notably the headscarf, which, along with other ostensible religious signs, was banned from public schools in 2004 and is not permitted for public service employees, and the burka which was banned from public spaces in 2011—the source of significant controversy and hiring discrimination in the private sector). For every controversy and debate surrounding Islam in France, one can find Muslims supporting both or all of the different camps involved. It is precisely this diversity of practice and devotion that has led to significant intra-religious turmoil among certain Muslim communities in France – again, similar to intra-religious struggles found between French Catholic communities.

Finding a Friend in Faith

Over the past 50 years, the Catholic Church has been increasingly interested in engaging and supporting co-citizens from other faith traditions. In 1964, just after the Second Vatican Council, the French Catholic Church launched the Conseil pour les relations interreligieuses. In an effort to bolster its interfaith outreach, the Church later established one branch specifically aimed at relations with Judaism and another aimed toward relations with Islam. The latter Service nationale pour relations avec les musulmans (SNRM) was created in 1973 and is today the most active branch of Church-sponsored interreligious efforts. SNRM’s mission is to promote dialogue between Catholics and Muslims, to educate Catholics about Islam and interreligious work, to provide support for diocesan interreligious efforts, and to forge relationships with Muslim leaders.

From 2006 to 2015, SNRM’s was presided over by Father Christophe Roucou. Having lived for 9 years in Egypt, holding a degree from the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Rome, and above all, believing firmly in the importance of interreligious dialogue, Father Roucou was the perfect candidate to take over the SNRM presidency in 2006. In collaboration with Tariq Oubrou, the Imam of the Grande Mosquée de Bordeaux, Father Roucou wrote “Le prêtre et l’imam” (The Priest and the Imam). The book uses a frank and far-ranging dialogue between the two men to discuss some of the topics that sometimes derail interreligious dialogue. Stepping down in 2015, Father Roucou was replaced by Father Vincent Feroldi, a religious historian by training, a longtime chaplain, and an invested participant in interreligious dialogue for more than 40 years. Father Feroldi has spent more than 6 year in Morocco and has travelled extensively throughout the Muslim world. The primary responsibility of the SNRM President is to maintain relations with Muslim leaders at the national level, as well as to serve as the national representative for the Church in Islamo-Christian and interfaith events across France. Both Father Roucou and Father Feroldi play an active role in an impressive number of dialogue efforts across the country and throughout Europe, and participate in many youth initiatives such as Coexister (see below).

Similar in some regards to the SNRM, Le Groupe d’Amitié Islamo-Chrétienne (GAIC) was co-founded by Muslim and Catholic leaders in 1984. The official goal of the group is to, “contribute to the development of an improved mutual knowledge of the Christian and Muslim communities and to promote the common ethical and spiritual values of Islam and Christianity within the framework of an open laïcité”. GAIC maintains Christian and Muslim co-presidents at all times, and in recent years this latter position has been filled by Imam and Chaplain Said Ali Koussay. Having emigrated from Madagascar more than 20 years ago, Koussay first became involved with GAIC in 1996. As he explained in an interview, he was searching for the same friendly, interreligious relations to which he was accustomed in Madagascar. As with Fathers Roucou and Feroldi, one can find Imam Koussay at local interreligious dialogue events on an almost weekly basis, as a speaker, guest, or simply in support of friends and colleagues involved in the event. Despite, or perhaps thanks to, their divergent backgrounds and different faiths, Fathers Roucou and Feroldi and Imam Koussay all believe firmly in the importance of interfaith work, community dialogue, and the necessity of setting a good moral example for all in one’s daily life.

There are a number of prominent Islamo-Christian groups and initiatives in France, many owing their founding to the Catholic Church’s role in fostering the integration of minority religions into French society. In addition to these Islamo-Christian initiatives, there are a wide variety of other interfaith groups in France as well. For example, the association Coexister was established by a group of young people in 2009, and is today the most prominent grassroots interfaith youth group in France with more than 12,000 supporters from across the world. Their primary ambition is to bring youth with diverse perspectives together, including atheists and agnostics, for the purpose of inspiring community and social engagement. The group focuses not only on dialogue, but also on sensitization of high school youth, citizen and social action to build solidarity, formation/education, and interfaith travel in order to learn from other countries and inspire new forms of interfaith involvement in France.

Challenges to Cooperative Coexistence

SNRM, GAIC, and Coexister are important examples of interreligious groups striving to mieux vivre ensemble. Nonetheless, there are significant challenges facing these and other interfaith cooperation efforts in today’s social turbulent France. In a northern Parisian suburb, for example, one priest involved in interreligious work through the local branch of SNRM lamented recent changes in his community. He said he used to be invited into Catholic classrooms on a regular basis to talk about Islam, but now the kids have stopped wanting to engage with the topic. “One kid told me, ‘we already spend all day with them. After all, we’re not here [in the Catholic school] for a class on Islam’.” He added that Catholics were becoming less interested in engaging in interreligious dialogue and events in the area because of a perceived increase in a threatening, “communitarianist” or closed-off Islam. In some cases, it is possible to point to communities that are experiencing a repli or “turning in” toward each other and away from the greater French society. In a small minority of cases this is due to the following of a specific religious doctrine, although often it is in reaction to polarizing public debates or as an alternative to otherwise feeling outcast from French society. However, a large part this perceived threat stems from negative media portrayal of certain populations, notably Muslims and certain ethnic groups, which is exacerbated by events such as the January and November Paris attacks. These kinds of events, perceptions, suspicions, and fears can quickly snowball into a destructive force, diminishing social trust and wreaking havoc on interfaith cooperation efforts.

Also contributing to the challenges of coexistence is the internal diversity of viewpoints within France’s various ethico-religious communities—an internal diversity that often points to more similarities between religions than within them. Thus, opinions about Frances’s new religious and cultural plurality do not align neatly along ethico-religious lines. Although many of the Catholics and Muslims with whom I spoke complained of a moral decline in French society, in many cases their characterizations of French morals differed more as a result of their neighborhood circumstances than it did their religious orientation. Furthermore, there are Catholics, Muslims, and atheists who agree that religion should remain strictly private and that religious symbols should not be allowed in public schools or public administrative positions. On the other hand, there are members of each ethico-religious community who disagree with and even staunchly oppose these opinions. Often times, both sides of such debates will make claims in the name of laïcité simply using opposing interpretations of the concept. This intra-community plurality poses a challenge to interreligious dialogue since there is much intrareligious debate to be had before interreligious dialogue can fruitfully move forward. This is particularly the case for those varieties of dialogue that seek to invoke text-based orthodoxy so as to highlight commonalities across ethico-religious traditions. Where dialogue is based upon a faith-community’s presumed homogeneity the result can be superficial conversation or and even reinforced stereotypes.

Furthermore interfaith efforts in France tend to be limited to dialogue rather than creating sustainable projects of working across faiths toward a common goal. Dialoguing is recognized by nearly all those involved in interreligious work as an important and crucial contribution. However, as the Coexister founders (among others) have suggested, establishing local, grass roots, sustainable efforts to come together as religious communities to advance specific social causes can perhaps better affect real change. Another shortcoming of some interfaith events in France is the failure to include atheist or agnostic representatives, thus leaving out more than 1/3 of France’s population from the discussion. In many of the events I attended, a priest, a rabbi, and an imam would discuss their common, often religiously grounded, views on a theme. Even those religious representatives who believed in including all voices in the dialogue, as to mieux vivre ensemble, would often slip into a religiously grounded moral discourse that tended to exclude atheist and agnostic perspectives. This was especially commonplace in interreligious events organized to discuss recent topics such as gay marriage and adoption, as well as gender equality education in primary schools.

These publically contested and controversial topics illustrate the complexities and challenges of the new French plurality. In May 2013, France passed a law granting homosexuals the right to marry. In the months leading up to the vote, there were strong protests in support of and against the proposed law. After the law passed, the protests grew and became more volatile. More than religious values as such, the majority of protestors rallied to the idea of the importance of traditional family values. However, the media did not let France ignore the strong Catholic and Muslim support for the protests, as well as support from the far right. Some observers pointed to the irony of Muslims and the far-right being bedfellows. Others noted the unique opportunity for a very publicized form of collaboration between Muslims and Catholics, although the actual degree of cooperation varied across protest groups and locations. It seems that there was a considerable degree of collaborative effort in Lyon, for example, where the Muslim and Catholic populations have a particularly close relationship. However, in Paris, the pattern was more one of Catholics and Muslims protesting side by side, but not hand in hand. Again, the level of intra-community diversity of those involved played an important role in fostering or hindering inter-community collaboration.

The last major protest was held in February 2014, almost a year after the law’s passage. The protest drew fewer but still substantial numbers of people into the streets of Paris, Lyon, and Lille. Added to the protest agenda was the new gender equality program, scheduled for introduction into state primary schools in the fall of 2014. The program, known as ABC De l’Egalite, caused an uproar in Muslim, Catholic, and Jewish communities (among others), when rumors spread that young children were to be taught that gender is a “choice” rather than a naturally ascribed characteristic, that homosexuality is as normal as heterosexuality, and that masturbation is healthy and natural.

Mieux Vivre Ensemble?

Although the mariage pour tous protests and gender education remain salient issues in French society, the gravity of the 2015 attacks have, for the most part, overshadowed such debates. The public and political focus is now nearly-exclusively oriented toward Islam, Muslims (both French and non-French), terrorism, Syrian refugees, and immigration—sometimes spoken of as one monolithic amalgam—especially as citizens look ahead to the 2017 presidential elections. Even the economy has slipped into second place to some extent. The necessity of finding solutions to mieux vivre ensemble has not been so strikingly apparent for decades. How can French society and leaders negotiate and attenuate the current social turmoil? Are the policies of laïcité and assimilatory citizenship working? Are policy revisions necessary? Or do new models of secularism and citizenship need to be considered? Should “Frenchness” be redefined to make room for the new plurality and if so, how, and where should the boundaries of belonging be placed? Where should the line between public order and freedom of expression be drawn? How “public” should religion be allowed to be and what difference does this actually make to security concerns? Groups like SNRM, GAIC, and Coexister represent the optimistic vanguard for dialogue, tolerance, and cooperation. However, today’s conflict of interpretations with regard to Frenchness and plurality, exacerbated by a climate of fear, suspicion, and social distrust, present formidable and as of yet unresolved challenges to France’s enduring mission to mieux vivre ensemble.

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Carol Ferrara
Carol Ferrara is professor Emerson college, teaching courses on Islam, Applied Anthropology, and Religion and Secularism. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Boston University. Since April 2013 Carol has led the Paris leg of the Public Ethics and Citizenship in Plural Societies Project, as part of a team of researchers at Boston University’s Institute on Religion Culture and World Affairs (CURA) working with Contending Modernities.