Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space and Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France

Extract

Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space. By John R. Bowen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 327p. $27.95.

Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France. By Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2006. 342p. $52.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

The specter that haunts Europe these days is not, as in Marx's time, the specter of class struggle, nor is it, as it was for much of the twentieth century, the specter of communism; instead it is the specter of Islam. How should these nominally secular, historically Christian states handle the millions of people now in their midst, many of them migrants from former colonies, who identify as Muslims? Are there helpful precedents in histories of immigration or of mutual accommodation between states and religions? What are the reasonable limits of such accommodation and what are legitimate grounds for questioning the limits? What are the political stakes involved in assessments of the limits? And what does racism have to do with it?