9 - The Making and the Unmaking of Europe in its Encounter with Islam: Negotiating French Republicanism and European Islam

Summary

The point of departure for this chapter is that Islam is an active agent in the alteration of European space, necessitating a new frame for thinking about the relationship between the political and the religious bond, and the ways in which this relationship reinforces or transforms the meaning of a polity such as the French Republic or a religious community such as European Islam. Rethinking the relations between Islam and Europe requires a new conceptual space, a new frame that introduces an intercultural perspective to our readings of European modernity. It requires a sensitivity to the duality of certain key processes: how religious and secular causes become entwined with one another, and how Islam translates and is translated into European modernity.

In this chapter I argue for a new conceptual frame that will enable us to understand the nature of the encounter between Islam and Europe as a novel experience of modernity. This calls for an opening up of our readings of modernity to Muslim experiences that are neither shaped exclusively by Western liberalism and secularism, nor identifiable as the reproduction and transmission of religious traditions. Islam takes on new discursive meanings through its interaction with modernity. It achieves a performative visibility. Through this, and with the aid of various religious agencies and discursive practices, Muslim actors distance themselves from the traditional interpretations and prescripts of Islam, as well as rejecting the notion of assimilative modernity.