Fraternal Critique - (Class 200: New Studies in Religion) by Kirsten Wesselhoeft (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The discourse on Islam in the French public sphere and French policymaking presumes that Islam is uniquely incompatible with critical thought and open debate. France's manufactured "Muslim problem" or "Muslim question" is framed variously as a problem of socioeconomic inequality and urban marginalization, of liberal democratic values and gender and sexual equality, and of national security and foreign affairs. Contrary to this narrative, Kirsten Wesselhoeft reveals, French Muslims nurture a lively organizing and intellectual culture. Fraternal Critique explores two sides of Muslim community in France: how Muslims undertake the moral project of shaping their community in a wide range of cultural and political settings and how the French state, in turn, responds. Discontented with existing religious institutions and moral frameworks, beset by gendered and racialized media stigma and state surveillance, and facing urgent social problems, many young French Muslims are focused on the moral and material improvement of their community through grassroots social activism and renewed intellectual culture. Through social critique, Wesselhoeft shows, French Muslims create solidarity through debates over how to live well and what kind of communities to build. At the same time, the French state and political elites use the specter of "communalism" to justify unprecedented restrictions on civil liberties, often in the name of the defense of secularism. Fraternal Critique exposes the ways that secularism in the legal sense has been exceeded in French policy and political discourse, showing how the idea of "Muslim community" has become an object of increasing surveillance under the aegis of public order"--

Book Synopsis

An exploration of ways that discord binds rather than divides communal life, through an ethnography of French Muslim activism.

The conversation about Islam in France is framed by the presumption that Muslim communities are a threat to secular solidarity or fraternité. In the face of state repression, French Muslims have not closed ranks around a narrow range of voices; instead, Kirsten Wesselhoeft finds that young Muslim activists have continued to purposefully spark debate about the values that anchor community life. Wesselhoeft argues that such disagreements, far from dividing communities, actually constitute a form of belonging. Some activists call this ethic "fraternal critique," and Wesselhoeft finds in it profound insights about the place for critique in civic life. The French state has reacted to Muslim solidarity with repression, but Wesselhoeft argues that unity need not come at the expense of dissent. Instead, fraternal critique can teach us how to build communities that are worth fighting over and fighting for.

Review Quotes

"A gifted ethnographer, storyteller, historian, and ethicist, Wesselhoeft brilliantly explores in this book how Muslims in France organize and respond to state-supported hostility and racism. Her central concept, 'fraternal critique, ' allows for an analysis of debates within social and political movements that does not reduce argument to infighting or division. Instead, Wesselhoeft suggests that it is in the arguing itself that solidarity is practiced and community constituted."--Juliane Hammer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"In her wide-ranging and clearly conveyed ethnographic work, Wesselhoeft has succeeded in drawing a comprehensive picture of the efforts of a young generation of Muslims to build new institutions of learning in the greater Paris region. She deftly traces ways in which these young Muslims anchor their piety in lively debates about individual rights and women's autonomy and in doing so gives the lie to misleading rhetoric labeling Muslims as 'communalists.'"--John R. Bowen, Washington University in St. Louis