Secularism Confronts Islam

The center of Roy's story is Islam in France, but his evidence and commentary are wideranging and provide food for the American mind not only about Islam but about the relationship between government and religion.

As expected a book full of lies from people trying to spread Islam attempting to cover up the threat of the integration of Islam into civilized civilization.

Roy’s book is interesting, but it is very much a piece of French work. It is also, given its subject-matter, very short.Not only are Roy’s reference-points preponderantly French, but the book – while it discusses both secularism and the distinctive French approach of laïcité – is very much about laïcité. This is interesting from a non-French perspective, but it also comes over as a rather strange approach, rooted in part in a battle for political power between republicans and Catholics in France, but also in some truly odd Rousseauian themes that go back to the French Revolution. This, as I have indicated, was all very interesting, and gives a distinctive character to how the issues with which Roy is dealing arise in France. But the treatment of secularization by contrast seemed simply to take the (somewhat contested) idea for granted. There was also, I felt strangely, concerning Roy’s concerns, a paucity of references to sociological work on Islam in France.The book seemed to me well worth reading. But I thought that it ducked a key problem. This was the issue of how laïcité, which Roy stresses should be seen as political in its character, is to be legitimised to Muslims. In part, it is simply the status quo in France, and thus needs no more legitimization than do any other institutions. But I felt that we were left with two problems. The first is: how is it seen by the majority of not particularly observant, and non-Islamist, Muslims in France (particularly when it is used to ban the wearing of religious clothing in schools)? Second, what is made, by these same people (but also by those whom Roy compares to Protestant sects – although in the light of Roy’s more recent work, one might say the same about contemporary French Catholicism, too) of the Rousseauian strands in French ideas about the state.

Interesting analysis.

This is a short book but at 115 pages long for the ideas and information it contains. I can think of no friends who would consider it to be interesting and informative. The main idea is that in France there really is an understanding of what can be done by religions on one hand and by the French State on the other hand. Quite absent is a review of what Muslims really think about existing in the modern world. Academic? Almost puerile? Almost existentialist? Do not bother with it.