An homage to Samuel Paty, a instructor murdered after displaying caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo, Oct. 18, 2020. Adnan Farzat/NurPhoto through Getty Photos

A French highschool instructor who had proven caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his class was beheaded on Oct. 16 by an 18-year-old Muslim refugee in what France’s President Emmanuel Macron characterised as an “Islamist terrorist assault.”

The killing is the newest high-profile assault by a Muslim extremist in France, coming after the 2015 bloodbath at Charlie Hebdo journal and the 2016 truck assault in Good. It additionally occurred two weeks after Macron gave a controversial speech defining Islam as “a faith that’s in disaster as we speak everywhere in the world.”

France, which colonized many Muslim-majority territories in Africa and the Levant within the 19th and 20th centuries, equivalent to Algeria and Mali, has Western Europe’s largest Muslim minority – 6 million folks, or 9% of its inhabitants.

Macron’s Oct. 2 speech outlined a legislative proposal to combat “Islamist separatism.” If handed in Parliament, it will basically ban home-schooling of all youngsters aged three and up and stop foreign-trained imams from main French mosques. The purpose, stated the president, is “to construct an Islam in France that may be suitable with the Enlightenment.”

Macron’s evaluation concludes, merely, that Islam is in some way at odds with fashionable Western society. However my analysis on state secularism and faith exhibits that the fact is far more sophisticated.

French President Emmanuel Macron.

Sebastien Bozon/AFP through Getty Photos

French versus American secularism

French secularism, which is embraced by each the progressive left and the Islamophobic proper, goes nicely past the American democratic idea of separating faith and state. Referred to as “laïcité,” it basically excludes spiritual symbols from public establishments. France has banned Muslim ladies’s headscarves in colleges and outlawed spiritual face coverings in all places. There aren’t any such bans in america.

Whereas each America and France have ongoing debates about “Islamic fundamentalism” and “Muslim terrorists” and views that may be outlined as Islamophobic and have some common assist, American democracy typically supplies higher alternatives for the mixing of varied spiritual teams.

In France, the Structure defines the state solely as secular, with out delineating the boundaries of that secularism. In america, the First Modification restricts the secular state’s engagement with faith, saying the federal government can neither set up a faith nor prohibit a faith’s free train.

It might be tough for the U.S. to announce, as Macron did, a state-sponsored venture to “forge a sort of Enlightenment Islam.”

In France, Muslim ladies might put on headscarves in Islamic non-public colleges just like the Alif college in Toulouse, however not in public colleges.

Eric Cabanis/AFP through Getty Photos

Certainly, 11 years earlier than Macron voiced his provocative view, U.S. President Barack Obama gave a well-known speech on Islam in Egypt in 2009, trying to reset the connection between America and the Muslim world.

Emphasizing Muslims’ contributions to American society, Obama stated, “It will be significant for Western international locations to keep away from impeding Muslim residents from training faith as they see match – for example, by dictating what garments a Muslim girl ought to put on.”

Obama’s speech mirrored an idealized American melting pot, a spot the place hyphenated identities like Muslim-American are widespread.

French secularism sees no hyphenated identities – solely French or Not French.

Islam and the secular state

Some in France additionally see this inflexible secularism as unequal to the challenges of multiculturalism and migration. The eminent scholar Jean Bauberot, for instance, defends a extra “pluralistic secularism” – one which tolerates sure spiritual symbols in public establishments.

France has in actual fact made many exceptions for Catholics. The federal government supplies substantial public funding to personal Catholic colleges, which educate a couple of quarter of all Okay-12 college students, and 6 of 11 official holidays in France are Catholic holidays.

Too usually, laïcité interprets into an unwillingness to accommodate the religiously primarily based calls for of Muslims.

In 2015, a Muslim advocacy group sued a municipal authority in France’s Burgundy area for refusing to supply an alternative choice to pork in public college cafeterias. The courtroom compelled the city to reverse its coverage, however not as a result of it violated spiritual freedom. The courtroom discovered the menu violated the youngsters’s rights.

France’s founding dedication to equality beneath the legislation likewise forestalls significant social debate on racial discrimination; its census doesn’t even accumulate info on race. Though France’s largest minority is generally composed of nonwhite Muslim immigrants from its former colonies in Africa and their descendents, Macron’s speech referenced solely in passing to French colonialism.

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Blasphemy

That stated, I discover some fact in Macron’s speech. However the “disaster” dealing with Islam lies within the historic and political failings of the Muslim world, not within the faith itself.

As my 2019 e-book, “Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment,” paperwork, many Muslim international locations like Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia have long-lasting authoritarian regimes and continual underdevelopment. In 32 of the world’s 49 Muslim-majority international locations, blasphemy legal guidelines punish individuals who converse sacrilegiously about sacred issues; in six international locations, blasphemy is a capital offense.

These legal guidelines, which block freedom of expression, are extra rooted within the pursuits of the conservative clergy and authoritarian rulers than within the Islamic religion, my analysis exhibits. They really contradict a number of Quranic verses that urge Muslims to not coerce or retaliate towards folks of different faiths.

Nonetheless, in Western international locations the place Muslims are a minority, extremists sometimes take it upon themselves to punish those that, of their view, mock the Prophet Muhammad. That has brought on world controversies over cartoons and flicks. At occasions, in France and past, it has led to an unacceptable consequence: homicide.

Such killings, whether or not perpetrated by the state or by people, are tragedies. However to border them as a purely spiritual downside ignores the socioeconomic and political origins of Islamic blasphemy legal guidelines, and the anti-democratic cultural penalties of authoritarianism in lots of Muslim international locations.

It additionally overlooks the tough actuality that social alienation is an underlying issue within the radicalization of some younger Muslims within the West.

A number of secularisms, a number of Islams

Macron’s speech made some gestures towards better inclusion.

“I need France to grow to be a rustic the place we will educate the ideas of Averreos and Ibn Khaldun,” he stated, referencing two eminent Muslim thinkers of the 12th and 14th centuries, and envisioned “a rustic that excels within the examine of Muslim civilizations.”

That plural in “civilizations” is significant. It acknowledges that Islam shouldn’t be monolithic. Neither is French secularism. Each are advanced programs with diversified interpretations.

In reality, Macron doesn’t must “construct an Islam in France that may be suitable with the Enlightenment,” as a result of that already exists. Whether or not French secularism can adapt to Islam is one other query.

Ahmet T. Kuru doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that will profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.