The Islamic Veil Affairs (2003-4 and 2009-2011), which led to the banning of Muslim girls wearing Islamic headscarves in French public schools and women wearing full-face veils in public, have raised serious concerns about the relationship between secularism and the freedom of religious expression. In Unveiling the French Republic: National Identity, Secularism, and Islam in Contemporary France, Per-Erik Nilsson engages in a careful critical analysis of the Veil Affairs. His critique, for the most part, is not on the decision of Muslim women to wear the veil but rather on the misuse of secular ideology to justify religious intolerance and mask ethnic prejudice.

Per-Erik Nilsson takes a religious studies approach to analyse the intersections of secularism, nationhood and populism in contemporary France. This book provides insight into the French and European radical-nationalist ideology and activism, and contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between religion and the state in contemporary Europe and beyond. When Marine Le Pen became the leader of the radical nationalist and populist party National Front in 2011, she made clear that secularism was a core value of party. This signalled a significant shift in the party's rhetorical strategies and previous reluctance to embrace secularism. Nilsson argues that this conspicuous appropriation first came about as a logical result of the obsession of the established mainstream political parties and news media with questions of secularism, national identity and Islam. He shows that a key player in understanding the National Front's change is the web-based journal Riposte Laïque, which has become a central actor in French radical-nationalist and anti-Muslim web and street-based activism. For the first time, this source is examined in order to understand French radical nationalists' recent appropriation of secularism, as well as debates on secularism, national identity and Islam in France more broadly.

This book focuses on the recent debates surrounding headscarves in public schools in France, where the wearing of an article of clothing became the focus of intense national debate. The book is divided into two parts. Part One, Framing the Discussion, includes the following essays: (1) Essay: Immigration and Integration in Europe (2) France; (3) The First Veil Affair; (4) The Ban on Headscarves in Public Schools; (5) Secularism in France; (6) Secularity in the French Public Schools; (7) Mixed Origin: Religious Groups in Contemporary France; (8) The Beur Generation; and (9) Implications for Education and Democracy: a Discussion. Part Two, Primary Documents, includes the following readings: (1) What Does It Mean to Be French?; (2) Integration and Exclusion; (3) The Veil and a New Muslim Identity; (4) a Brief History of the Veil in Islam; (5) Public Schools: Where New Citizens Are Made; (6) The Veil at School; (7) The Integration of Jews in Modern France; (8) Debating the Ban of the Veil in Public Schools; (9) France Bans the Veil in Public Schools; and (10) Europeans Debating the Veil. A preface by Adam Strom and an introduction by John R. Bowen are included. A glossary is included. Individual sections contain footnotes.

This book analyses French cultural policies in the face of what the French government perceives as a challenge to its Republican secular raison d'être. It makes general arguments about France’s changing identity and specific arguments about the burqa and niqab ban. The book further explains how French history shaped the ideology of secularism and of public civil religion, and how colonial legacy, immigration, fear of terrorism, and security needs have led France to adopt the trinity of indivisibilité, sécurité, laïcité while paying homage to the traditional trinity of liberté, égalité, fraternité. The book argues that while this motto of the French Revolution is still symbolically and politically important, its practical significance as it has been translated to policy implementation has been eroded. It shows how the emergence of the new trinity at the expense of the old one is evident when analyzing the debates concerning cultural policies in France in the face of the Islamic garb, the burqa, and the niqab, which are perceived as a challenge to France’s national secular raison d'être. Subsequently, the book raises various important questions, such as: Is the burqa and niqab ban socially just? Does it reasonably balance the preservation of societal values and freedom of conscience? What are the true motives behind the ban? Has the discourse changed in the age of COVID-19, when all people are required to wear a mask in the public space? Therefore, this book is a must-read for students, scholars, and researchers of political science, as well as a general audience interested in a better understanding of French politics, elections, cultural policy, secularism, and identity.

Will Islam be able to adapt to France's secularity and its strict separation of public and private spheres? Can France accommodate Muslims? In this book, Frank Peter argues that the debate about “Islam” and “Muslims” is not simply caused by ignorance or Islamophobia. Rather, it is an integral part of how secularism is reasoned. Islam and the Governing of Muslims in France shows that understanding religion as separate from other aspects of life, such as politics, economy, and culture, disregards the ways religion has operated and been managed in “secular” societies such as France. This book uncovers the varying rationalities of the secular that have developed over the past few decades in France to “govern Islam,” in order to examine how Muslims engage with the secular regime and contribute to its transformation. This book offers a close analysis of French secularism as it has been debated by Islamic intellectuals and activists from the 1990s until the present. It will influence the study of secularism as well as the study of Islam in the French Republic, and reveal new connections between Islamic traditions and secular rationalities.

This dissertation aims at making visible the pervasiveness of white supremacy in contemporary France. In order to do so, I deconstruct French national identity by critically engaging with the French Republic's universalist and colorblind stance. In the first section, I take stock of France's knowledge production on questions of identity, identifying problems in the conflation of race with immigration studies and noticing the relative absence of racial studies. In the second section, I consider the ways in which the French education system is an ideological apparatus of forceful inclusion by analyzing issues of knowledge production and destruction within the French education system. In the third section, I discuss the racialization of religion in France and historicize the concept of laïcité, France's word for its brand of secularism, in order to show how it has become a technology to oppress Muslims and perceived Muslims in France. In the fourth section, I am focused on issues of representation, recognition and state antiracism in France, questioning and historicizing the French colorblind antiracist institutions through an analysis of two critically acclaimed films, Intouchables and Bande de filles. In the last section, I look at the place of language in the construction of French identity. I discuss how it became such an essential aspect of French identity by looking at its colonial context, and I address what that context might mean for non-white, non-heteronormative contemporary French speakers.

How do experiences of national identity and belonging differ for French Muslims and Catholics respectively? What can these differences tell us about the causes and dynamics of minority marginalization in plural secular societies? To address these questions, Carol Ferrara draws upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork across France within spaces of religious education and interfaith dialogue, illustrating the inequities between Muslim and Catholic citizens in opportunities for national belonging, political and civic engagement, and institution-building. This reexamination of Muslim exclusion against the backdrop of Catholic inclusion calls into question popular explanations for minority marginalization – especially those that blame non-adherence to French Republican principles or the exclusionary power of secular discourse. Instead, Ferrara argues that the boundaries of French belonging are policed by francité -a tacit national imaginary ideal-type that draws upon and reproduces national cognitive biases and undermines the French republican values of secularism, equality, liberty, and fraternity. Given the central role of francité in the politics of belonging, Ferrara suggests that paths toward greater pluralism in France and beyond lie in the reframing of national identity narratives and reimagining the inclusive potential of secular democratic values.