8/19/2023 0 Comments Adidas flux![]() ![]() Public debate in France often conflates controversies surrounding the visibility of Islam-from the burqa and halal butchers to instances of violence carried out in the name of Islam. Mosques provide one recurrent object of contention in current political controversies around the visibility of Islam within French physical space and debates around communitarianism, supposed radicalization, and breaches of the republican value of laicité. Beyond its predominantly Arab and black population, Islam in France is further marked as “other” through the physical appearance of Muslims-men with beards wearing jillaba, veiled women-and its concentration in relatively restricted areas, due to its communities’ migration history and socio-economic make up. In practice, however, the 1905 Law is generally evoked as a constraint on religious visibility, most often targeting Islam as the second largest and most “visibly different” religion in France. The 1905 Law on the Separation of Church and State also provides for the freedom of exercise of religion and the right to establish places of worship. It was within this context that the first prayer rooms were established in factories and on sites where migrant workers were accommodated. This period not only saw the increased presence of Muslim populations, but also placed the problematic relationship between the colonial state and Islam on France’s doorstep. And in an attempt to create favorable conditions for the maintenance of this labor force, the state implemented generalized policies for family reunification. 1 Following World War II, France encouraged and facilitated the migration of people from its colonies to rebuild the country. While in mainland France, laicité (secularity) was solidified through the 1905 Law on the Separation of Church and State, it did not apply to Algeria, where an “official” form of Islam loyal to the colonial state was cultivated. The French colonial project continued this close, if often uneasy, relationship between France and Islam. The Umayyad invasion of Gaul (719–759 AD), and eight hundred years later the Franco-Ottoman alliance in the siege of Nice (1543), testify to France’s involvement in the history of the Mediterranean, and thus the spread of Islam itself. This provides critics with further evidence of Islam’s “visibility problem,” only further hindering the development of solutions that can serve the needs not only of the Muslim community, but also French cities as a whole. But these spaces are usually insufficient, with their limited capacity sometimes prompting the use of the street as an alternative space for prayer. With the goal of reducing the visibility of Islamic prayer, then, officials prefer the establishment of discreet prayer rooms to the construction of mosques. ![]() Furthermore, the visibility of Islam and Muslims in France is constructed, at state level, as a “problem” of security and a failure of integration policy. Yet architectural elements deemed “characteristic” of mosque architecture tend to be endlessly debated and questioned on their capacity to fit within local urban fabrics. Public architecture of French mosques fails to reflect the diversity-and thus meet the needs-of the French Muslim community.įrench mosques that can be easily and publicly recognized as such tend to transpose codes of Islamic architecture found in North Africa, with the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Grand Mosque of Strasbourg being the most prominent examples. Beyond implementation, however, mosque architecture in France remains largely influenced by the places of origin of its immigrant Muslim populations, which consolidates the image of Islam as foreign to France, rather than a legitimate part of the national religious landscape. ![]() Yet the political climate surrounding the creation of mosques, including state-level restrictions on public funding of all places of worship, make the process drawn out and fraught with challenges. Throughout its history and colonial project, Islam has served as a counterpoint, allowing French identity to consolidate in relation to this identifiably different “other.” The estimated five million Muslim people living in France today obviously need and deserve places to worship. Islam has been an integral part of France since the eighth century. ![]()
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