Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France

by Jonathan Laurence

"
Nearly five million Muslims call France home, the vast majority from former French colonies in North Africa. While France has successfully integrated waves of immigrants in the past, this new influx poses a new variety of challenges—much as it does in neighboring European countries. Alarmists view the growing role of Muslims in French society as a form of ""reverse colonization""; they believe Muslim political and religious networks seek to undermine European rule of law or that fundamentalists are creating a society entirely separate from the mainstream. Integrating Islam portrays the more complex reality of integration's successes and failures in French politics and society. From intermarriage rates to economic indicators, the authors paint a comprehensive portrait of Muslims in France. Using original research, they devote special attention to the policies developed by successive French governments to encourage integration and discourage extremism. Because of the size of its Muslim population and its universalistic definition of citizenship, France is an especially good test case for the encounter of Islam and the West. Despite serious and sometimes spectacular problems, the authors see a ""French Islam"" slowly replacing ""Islam in France""–in other words, the emergence of a religion and a culture that feels at home in, and is largely at peace with, its host society. Integrating Islam provides readers with a comprehensive view of the state of Muslim integration into French society that cannot be found anywhere else. It is essential reading for students of French politics and those studying the interaction of Islam and the West, as well as the general public.
"

Genres: France

363 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2006

Reviews

[Wordwizard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for work (Civic Engagement research team). Interesting and informative; writing could have been better, but it was clear enough. The conclusion chapter seems tacked on, with implications for US-French collaboration stuff that they hadn't mentioned before. You're doing research on the situation in France, guys, and that's fine; it's hard to get data on issues like this in France, so you're more than fine; you don't need to shoehorn other things in.

[Ariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for a class in European Politics, and I much preferred this to Christopher Caldwell's Reflection on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West. Where Caldwell resorts to fear-mongering, Laurence uses France as a case-study where struggles and successes can be inventoried in equal measure. Lots of solid data provided to back up his analyses.