Social Science Research Council

"Un Espoir en Devenir: The Mosquée de Paris and the Creation of French Islams"

My dissertation will investigate the role the Mosquée de Paris, for decades the most potent visual symbol of Islam in France, has played in the creation of French Islams from World War I until 1982. From its inception, the Mosquée has represented a vision of French Islam that is compatible with republican values, especially laïcité. Its physical space was designed to reflect North African architectural styles and thus encourage "traditional" religious practices, but at the same time the Mosquée was intended to be accessible to a non-Muslim French audience. The discourse on Islam in France has often been strongly linked to social practices and aesthetics, and this project will pay particular attention to the architectural and aesthetic elements of the Mosquée and other sites in Muslim Paris while tracing out the different kinds of Islam that have developed. I hypothesize that the French Islam of the Mosquée and the practices associated with it, and alternative Islams which emerged as Muslim immigration increased, correspond to different visions of the ideal relationship between Muslim immigrants and the secular French republic. Debates from this period which focused on the Mosquée and other Muslim sites were as much about race, culture and class as they were about religion. A close investigation of the Mosquée's development could potentially leave us with a very different understanding of laïcité's historical trajectory and of the question of a "Muslim exception" in French secularism. My project involves archival research in Paris, Aix-en-Provence and Nantes (France); Rabat (Morocco) and Algiers (Algeria) as well as interviews in Paris.