The call to wear the bandana as an alternative to the hijab, the governmental prerequisite that mosque imams speak French fluently, the French Islamic rap songs that the second generation of French Muslim youth listen to…. Is all of this an omen to the emergence of what could be called “French Islam” or “Francophone Islam”?

Is it a refashioning of the relationship between the French State and Islam, so that Muslims, considered a new cultural composition, be fully merged into the French Judeo-Christian culture and heritage? Is it an interim phase in which “French Islam” will be recognized and will no longer be considered a foreign religion-a label that has stuck to it since the 1950s when the first waves of North African workers reached the country? Or is it a process of Westernizing and Christianizing Islam, a process that aims at stripping it from its political, cultural, and social particularities so that it falls in line with the Western concept of religion, the secular concept that religion is but an individual affair.

In this context, to grasp France’s standpoint toward Islam, one cannot ignore the most important expression maintained throughout the whole discussion-“French Islam.” This expression was uttered for the first time by the former Interior Minister and current Industry Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, on April 19, 2003, during the twentieth Conference of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France. On that same day, Sarkozy-the most outstanding candidate for the 2007 presidential elections-kindled an on-going debate on the issue of hijab and on his attending the Conference of the Union of Islamic Organizations; he being the first interior minister to have done so. That visit had been described by Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of the extreme-right National Front, as “a visit to the wasps’ nest.”

There is no doubt that Nicolas Sarkozy, by whose support the first council representing Muslims in France has been founded,¹ was mindful of the reaction of the thousands listening to his speech that day, when he said, “We don't want Islam in France; we want a French Islam.” He then declared that on the national identity card, the cardholder must be photographed bare-headed, which triggered protests from hundreds of hijab-wearing women who interrupted his speech by loud screams.

One year after Sarkozy’s speech, the meanings implicit in the phrase “French Islam” were crystallized more accurately and clearly. The French government, despite the ministerial change in which Dominique de Villepin succeeded Sarkozy as interior minister, has managed to tackle French Islam through three steps:

The second step is the bringing forth the issues of the mosque imams and the necessity of founding a French body whose mission is to prepare such imams. Once the hijab issue had cooled off, the issue of banishing the Salafi imam Abdul-Qader bin Zayn to Algeria² flared up, after he stated in a local magazine in Leon that “beating wives might be permissible.” The imam issue has been put forward by the French Interior Ministry-considered the negotiating party in religious matters-for the Islamic organizations to discuss because, according to Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, “There is no place for mosque imams who do not speak French fluently and who do not respect its basics.”

The third step taken by the French government manifests itself in supporting the liberal trend in the Muslim community, so that it becomes “French Islam’s” mouthpiece. Dalil Abu Bakr, head of the French Council for the Islamic Faith and dean of the Mosque of Paris, has taken upon himself to play that role, he being backed up on the media level by the writer Malik Shubayil and the Algerian-born thinker Mohammed Arkon. On the public societies level, Fadila Imara, chairwoman of the “no prostitution, no submission” movement, presented herself as the invincible barrier against the hijab proliferation in French cities and districts.

There is no doubt that the French government’s treatment of the issue of Islamic presence in France is influenced by a present necessity to contain that fast-growing religion whose rank (based on the number of its followers) has become second to Catholicism, surpassing both Protestantism and Judaism. The French government, seeing that the Muslim population is about six million and originally from Morocco, North Africa, and Turkey, has thought to incorporate Islam into the republic, emphasizing two essential prerequisites.

The first is that a French form of Islam would never clash with the values of the republic, such as the absolute equality between man and woman and the freedom of partner choice. The question has been raised here of the refusal of some French hijab-wearing females to see male doctors in hospitals³ and the question of endowing French girls of North African origin the right to choose their future husbands-a French survey has shown that 70,000 girls are being forced by their parents to marry men they do not like.

The second entails the giving-up of all expressions and rulings preached by the “Arab Islam.” There is no room in “French Islam” to discuss the enforcement of the Shari`ah (Islamic Law) and its punishments. One recalls here the live dialogue held between the Swiss thinker Tariq Ramadan and then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy⁴ on the issue of lashing some types of criminals in Islamic Law. Tariq Ramadan, Hassan Al-Banna’s grandson⁵, was tongue-tied in embarrassment before thousands of his youthful followers in Paris before he said briefly that “the matter requires a pedagogic work” without being decisive on that issue. It must be noted that Ramadan has been preaching “a European Islam” in his writings, a form of Islam which would adapt to its environment, though would not be fully separated from the “Arab Islam.”

Rejecting any form of non-French Islam is considered the main guarantee for the birth of a “French Islam,” which would bear its own French peculiarities and republican values and would merge into the French social and cultural composition. Olivier Roi, a French specialist in Islamics, explained to IslamOnline.net, “The problem now is that newly-born Islam is still searching for a model to follow, a problem which has its own historical roots. The Muslim presence in the West, for the first time in Islamic history, is that of a minority, a status quo very different from past historical phases.” Is then, the coinage “French Islam” simply an attempt to secularize Islam and adapt it to French principles, alienating it from its collective spirit and incorporating it into the designated Western sense of religion-an individual affair?

Nobody doubts that the freedom enjoyed by French Muslims surpasses in many instances the freedom they enjoyed in their countries of origin. It is also widely known that France hosts many figures affiliated with North African religious movements persecuted in their countries of origin, such as the Algerian Rescue Front and the Tunisian Renaissance Movement.

Some of the French authorities’ fears toward the influences of “political Islam” on the French community stem originally from the notable influence of the Moroccan Islamic movements on French Muslims. The Moroccan Justice and Charity movement (Al-Adl Wal Ihsan) has an apparent influence on immigrants of Moroccan origin, while the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on the Union of Islamic Organizations in France is evident as well. Abu Jara Sultani, head of the Algerian Peace Society movement, was the most outstanding guest of honor during the Union’s 21st conference in the Paris precinct of Bourges⁶.

If the French model of Islam is the one which would distance itself from the influence of non-French Islam, “it should be independent and inconsistent with political Islam,” stated John-Paul Vit, chief editor of the French magazine The World and Religions, to IslamOnline.net. “It would be an Islam which would not embrace any political or social project, because it is presumed that the Republic and its values are the sole project which contains any other project, culture and/or religion. The 1905 legislation maintains that the French State does not adopt any religion, and guarantees the freedom to embrace any religion at the same time.”

Regardless of the one color of Islam that France would like to authorize, there is no doubt that an Islam with its own unique characteristics is being incubated, one which would neither be severed from its Arab-Islamic roots nor cut off from its Western, secular, French environment: in effect, a Francophone Islam.