Naomi Davidson^ Figure 1. Institut Musulman de Paris

"Accessible to all Muslims and to the Parisian Public": The Mosquee de Paris and French Islam in the Capital

The minaret of the Mosquee de Paris and Institut frartfais, or a "traditional" Moroccan-inflected Islam Musulman rises above its green-tiled roof into the sky of inscribed firmly within a French republican and laic, or Paris' fifth arrondissement, in the heart of the Latin secular, model. It was through the medium of this Quarter. Across the street from the Jardin des Plantes' republican Islam, at once French and other, that the museum campus, its cafe maure and hammam (public metropolitan and colonial states administered the Paris bath) have long been touted as exotic attractions to region's North African immigrant population during the generations of tourists making their way through the early decades of the 20th century. The use of Islam as a French capital. The Mosquee, whose construction was tool to mediate the relationship between the state and completed in 1926, was the metropole's first modern maghrebin immigrations signaled the administrations' mosque, built with the financial support of the government belief in Muslims' inability to actually be laic subjects, and after the recent passage of the law of 1905, which their simultaneous inclusion and exclusion in the French separated Church and State. A series of complex republic. negotiations between the metropolitan administration, the colonial governments of North Africa, Parisian officials, In this essay, I will argue that the architectural and and Muslim elites ultimately gave form to the institution aesthetic plans for the Mosquee and Institut Musulman which to this day serves as the main representative of were essential to the creation and diffusion of islam Islam in France to the French state.- The Mosquee and its fran<;ais. The placement of the complex with its "Muslim Institut Musulman embodied its founders' vision of islam architectural character" in the heart of Paris' intellectual

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role as a secular, cultural, and religious institution. should be built and how it should be decorated. It During the period in question, the working class Muslim was this physical site which served as the grounds for population of Paris was relatively small and transient, and negotiating what French Islam would look like. The the Mosquee was imagined by its creators as a space French supporters of the Mosquee believed firmly that destined for North African and Middle Eastern Muslim Islam was a religion which invaded all aspects of daily life elites touring the capital, and non-Muslim French tourists in both the public and private spheres, and that Muslim interested in Islam. French Islam, or islam franfais, was rituals needed to be performed in a particular kind of enshrined in a space that was inaccessible to the capital's space. Their choice to use a mosque to embody their Muslim population because of its geographic location, conception of Islam was thus a logical one, though in fact decor, and religious practices. The Mosquee thus served Muslim ritual does not require a sacralized space, nor as a physical manifestation of the paradoxical inclusion/ does Muslim religious belief accord the visual the same exclusion which the "secular" vision of islam franfais importance it had in this French imagining.' Yet of course offered Muslims living in France. the Mosquee was not merely a religious site, it was a monument to France's power in the Muslim world, and as On the eve of the First World War, France's position as such, was a "repositor[y] of meaning" used to make visible a political power in the Muslim world was challenged by France's relationship with its Muslim subjects on a daily England's imperial interests in the Middle East. In order basis." to maintain its position as the world's premier "Muslim power," the French administration on both sides of the The islam franfais embodied by the Institut Musulman Mediterranean had to articulate a politique musulmane was a system of thought particular to "rejuvenated"

which would allow it to maintain its hold on its empire.^ Moroccan Islam, whose "isolation" for centuries brought it The carnage of the First World War and the deaths of "closer to the purest [Muslim] belief but whose encounter Muslim colonial soldiers provided the catalyst to re-launch with "modern life" and "progress" through the French the campaign to build a mosque for the French capital, presence was bringing this archaic Islam into modernity.'" which had been afloat since 1895. " The idea of a mosque This new Islam had much in common with French as a war memorial and gesture of gratitude was widely republicanism, or, as President Doumergue explained acclaimed across the political spectrum as a powerful at the site's inauguration, "the Muslim savants. ..have propaganda tool, but plans to build a religious site with exalted the respect of individual dignity and human state funds on metropolitan soil posed the problem of a liberty. They have called for. ..the reign of.. .fraternity and conflict with the law of 1905.' Senator Edouard Herriot, equal justice. Democracy has no fundaments other than one of the institution's strongest proponents, explained these."" Paris' municipal council's decision to donate during the parliamentary debates on the question that the land formerly used by the Hopital de la Pitie for the "there [was] no contradiction" in the state's decision to complex's construction seemed "curiously predestined" finance the institution, for what the French and colonial to scholar Emile Dermengham. who noted that Muslim administrations were funding was an Institut Musulman ambassadors frequented the neighborhood during the which would allow for the study of Muslim civilization, epoch of Louis XVI.'- The location of the Institut in the law, history, and Arabic grammar. In other words, the fifth arrondissement gave credence to the assertion that state was funding a secular site. Yet at the same time. the Islam celebrated in the site was compatible with Herriot declared that state was also within its rights French civilization. As the Prefet de la Seine exclaimed to fund a religious edifice since in the colonies "we very at the site's inauguration, "are we not right next to the legitimately give churches to Catholics, temples to Pantheon? Do not the works of the Persian Saadi and the Protestants and synagogues to Jews."" Morocco's Resident Arab Averroes appear on the shelves of the library" next General Lyautey. who opposed the plan to build the to the French classics?'' Thus the Institut, which was complex, saw the pairing of the Mosquee and Institut as a always discursively situated in the university district but "cunning" maneuver by metropolitan politicians to avoid never described as an actual physical site, made clear that controversy over funding a religious site,' Islam frangais was compatible with French values without necessitating the abandonment of Muslim intellectual

I argue that the play between the "secular" and "religious" traditions. sites was not merely political slight of hand, but an integral part of the process of defining islam franqais. It was the Mosquee, rather than the Institut, which did This vision of Islam was defined implicitly in discussions the work of being bound to "Muslim" ritual as filtered through French perceptions of Moroccan practices and

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00239 by guest on 23 September 2021 aesthetics. When its proponents discussed the Mosquee's their drawing of the site (Fig. 2) of their project highlights creation, they did not situate it in Paris' intellectual all the elements which the popular press would echo as center; that was the space occupied by the Institut. The reasons to visit the Mosquee de Paris. Mosquee was not discursively situated in any particular neighborhood. It was essential that the site be easily The site, its architects promised, would "be of the purest accessible to visitors to the capital, but its precise Arab style in composition, construction, and furnishing, geographical location was far less emphasized than its while keeping in mind modern comfort and the special design. Its aesthetic character was of primary importance dispensations the Parisian climate requires."-" The com- because the Mosquee embodied an Islam which had "a plex included a restaurant, "accessible to all Muslims and hold on its faithful," requiring them to perform particular to the Parisian public, where only Arab cuisine prepared rituals in a given setting, since daily life and religious with the greatest care will be served," as well as a practices were inextricably linked for Muslims.'^ The hammam whose management would be "confided to a Mosquee"s architects" referenced Morocco, whose Muslim proven Muslim specialist." The elements associated with aesthetics were much appreciated in France, in their religious ritual as described in this document include the designs so as to assure its appeal to Muslim and non- minaret, whose description is somewhat cursory when Muslim visitors. compared with other aspects of the building. The Ablutions Room, "installed according to ritual, and

Nowhere is the tension between the Latin Quarter Institut destined for the purification of the body before prayer," led Musulman and the Moroccan-modeled Mosquee more vis- to the patio which preceded the Prayer Room, which was ible than in a drawing distributed with a commemorative properly oriented towards Mecca. Small changing rooms

brochure for the site's inauguration (Fig. 1). In the on either side allowed "Muslims dressed in European drawing, the Mosquee's complex occupies a virtually clothes to change into ritual clothing for prayer."-' The empty space. It could be anywhere in Paris, or anywhere section of the Mosquee reserved for prayer would be lit in the world. The legends at the bottom right and left discreetly "so as to preserve mystery and meditation." The corners of the drawing engender further confusion, for promise of "mystery" held out by the Mosquee was enthu- the French text identifies the site as the "Paris Muslim siastically received by the press on both sides of the Medi- Institute" while the Arabic caption refers to "the Paris terranean. One newspaper urged its readers to visit the Mosque and Muslim Institute." In the illustration there site, arguing that "it will provide a change for Parisians

is nothing to signal an institute designed to creating links from the cardboard boxes with which one pretends to con- between French and Muslim civilization: what is signaled, vey, in expositions, the mysterious charm of the intimacy not least by the way the eye is drawn first to the mina- of African houses."^- L'lUustration recommended a trip to ret towering over the complex, is a Muslim religious site the Mosquee to those who wanted to re-experience the food which seems out of place in 1920s Paris. and color they had so enjoyed on trips to the Maghreb.^' From the beginning, the Mosquee's founders planned to This was exactly the aim of the site's architects, who charge admission to the site from non-Muslim visitors, fully of its tourist were active proponents of the "new architecture " being making it clear that they were conscious developed in Morocco, "a collaboration between French potential.-* science and intelligence with indigenous craftsmanship and tradition.""' The Muslim elite association charged The Mosquee complex, so celebrated by politicians with the Mosquee's construction voted to give the building and the transnational Muslim elite, not to mention "an African architectural character," specifically that indigenophile Parisians, played a minor role, if at all, of Fez's mosque-medarsa Abou-Inan.'" This decision in the lives of average Muslims living in the capital. was praised by metropolitan architectural critics, who Nevertheless, national and municipal officials used the considered that "Muslim constructions, unlike ours, islam frangais of the Mosquee as the primary tool to have not evolved and must, on the contrary, remain mediate their relationship to the North African immigrant traditional."" Lyautey's Service des Beaux Arts instituted working class. These people, primarily single men, were campaigns to preserve entire districts, virtually freezing simultaneously identified by their nationality and by medinas in time, though Gwendolyn Wright has argued their presumed "Muslim-ness," whether they would have that this was not incompatible with its orientation chosen to identify themselves as such or not. If they did in "towards charming streetscapes that would appeal to fact engage in Muslim practices, which took place outside French residents and tourists."" of the confines of the Mosquee, these observances were dismissed as "pagan." The small North African population The architects' textual description, which accompanied of Paris during this period was saturated with a religion

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Figure 2. Architects' blueprints for the Mosquee

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00239 by guest on 23 September 2021 which they would not necessarily have identified as theirs, laicite though rooted in "traditional" Moroccan Islam, and which thus precluded their ability to ever become The Institut Musulman celebrated the similarities laic subjects since their nationality and religion were between French and Muslim civilizations, while the inextricably linked. Mosquee's Moroccan-inspired aesthetics guaranteed the "authenticity" of the religious practices to be enacted The Mosquee was inaccessible to most of the city's Muslim there. Yet the belief that Muslim practice was intrinsically residents for reasons having to do with its location, the physical and invaded all aspects of daily life, confounding schedules for prayers and holiday observances, and not the public and private spheres, also made clear that the least the site's well-heeled "clientele." The guests of honor proponents of islam frangais did not actually believe

for landmark occasions as well as for the annual cycle of it was possible for Muslims to actually access the laic holidays were Muslim dignitaries passing through Paris sphere. This simultaneous move to rhetorically include but and representatives of the metropolitan and colonial practically exclude Paris' colonial North African working administrations. Si Kaddour, the site's director, admitted class from French republicanism was enacted physically

that workers' factory schedules made it nearly impossible in the site of the Mosquee de Paris. The institution and for them to travel from the northern and western suburbs its modern Islam were as inaccessible to them as was the where they worked to the center of Paris to celebrate luxurious museum-like site in the heart of the capital. the holidays or to come to Friday noon prayers, yet imams from the Mosquee rarely if ever ventured out to those neighborhoods. As an official sent from Morocco to investigate the activities of Moroccan emigrants explained, the Mosquee "is far from their neighborhoods.

It is expensive for their budgets. The hammam. the cafe and the restaurant attached to the Mosquee are luxurious spaces destined for Parisians or for foreigners looking for exotic thrills and in which the shabby clothes and workers' helmets would be a sorry sight."-* North African nationalist groups in Paris condemned the institution primarily as a piece of colonial propaganda and an

"insult to Islam," but also because it was built in part with donations from workers, who were excluded from

it.-" Yet the significant absence of Paris' North African workers from the celebrations of islam franfais was also a conscious choice and not merely the result of the site's inaccessibility. Although French observers qualified their practices as a "very particular Islam, with its sheen of paganism,"-' emigrants had a well-established and highly organized network of sites for social and religious gatherings. These meetings took place in private homes or in cafes or restaurants, in which people prayed together, or featured visits from religious leaders who traveled from North Africa on tours of the metropole. On these occasions, people would "eat couscous, drink mint tea, listen raptly to stories. ..hear musicians, singers and dancers..." and raise money for mutual aid projects.-'* Much as the Mosquee remained inaccessible, whether by choice or not, for Muslim workers, their Muslim practices remained inaccessible to the proponents o{ islam franfais.

In conclusion, the complex originally conceived as a fairly straightforward political move in response to external threats quickly became something much more complicated. The Mosquee de Paris and Institut Musulman came to embody a secular Islam, islam frangais, compatible with

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Notes University of Chicago Press. 1991). 134. 20 This citation, and those which follow, are taken from "Note descriptive de la

Mosquee et de ses dependances dressee par M. MANTOUT, Architecte de la Societe 1. This article is drawn from the first chapter of my dissertation, entitled " Un des Habous des Lieux Saints de I'lslam." espoir en devenir: The Mosquee de Pans and the Creation of French Islams." at the n.d. AMAE Afrique 1918-1940/Affaires University of Chicago's history department. musulmanes/11. 21. Although worshippers must remove their shoes before entering the Prayer 2. The Mosquee's director, or recteur. serves as the President of the Conseil fran^ais Room, no ritual dress is required. du culte musulman. the Muslim association that acts as an intermediary between 22. Le Petit Journal 25 February 1922. Mushms in France and the French state, 23. "Un decor d'Orient sous le Ciel de Paris." L'lllustration 26 (November 1926): 582. 3- For a discussion of this issue, see Henry Laurens, "La politique musulmane de 24. One of the Mosquee's architects, fresh from his success, would in fact go on la France" in Orientates II: La Illeme Republique et I'lslam (Pans: CNRS Editions. to construct the Moroccan pavilion of the 1931 Colonial Exposition in Paris. The 2004). See also Pascal Le Pautremat. La Pohtique Musulmane de la France an XXe mosaics used to decorate the itself were siecle (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003) Mosquee in fact taken from an earlier Colonial Exposition in Marseille, see the correspondence of the Mosquee's director 4. Paul Bourdane, one of the Mosquee's strongest proponets, provides a summary from March 1923 in AMAE Afrique/Affaires musulmanes/12. of the site's history in "L'Institut Musulman et la Mosquee de Paris," Extrait de La 25 Rapport du Lt-Colonel Justinard Revue Indigene (October-November 1919), sur les travailleurs marocains dans la banlieue parisienne. 26 November 1930. AMAE K Afrique/Questions generates 1818-1940/ 5. The most often-cited article of the law of 1905 is its second, which states that Emploi de la main d'oeuvre indigene dans la Metropole 1929-1931. "the Republic does not recognize, salary, or subsidize any religion. " The law did not 26. Messali Hadj, the leader of the Etoile Nord -Africa ine. expressed this particular restrict religious practice or the construction of religious edifices, but it did change critique Cited in Pascal Blanchard et al.. Le Paris arabe (Paris: La Decouverte. the way these practices and sites were funded. The situation of the Mosquee as a 2003). 132. Muslim site was further complicated because of the way the law was applied in 27. Letter from the Prefet de la Seine to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. 13 October Algeria, A regime of "temporary" exceptions meant that Muslim religious affairs 1926, AMAE K Afrique/Questions generates la d'oeuvre continued to be financed by the colonial administration For a complete discussion 1918-1940/Emploi de main indigene dans la Metropole. 1926-1928, of the application of the law in Algeria, see Raberh Achi. "La separation des Eglises 28. Note au Sujet de tournees de Ziaras faites par des Chefs indigenes en et de I'Etat a I'epreuve de la situation coloniale. Les usages de la derogation dans France pendant I'annee 1938 par Lt. Huot. 10 October 1938. K Afrique/Questions I'administration du culte musulman en Algerie (1905-1959)," Politix 17. no, 66 AMAE generates 1918-1940/Emploi d'oeuvre (September 2004): 81-106. de la main indigene dans ta Metropole, 1926- 1928. 6. Herriot's complete arguments can be found in the Journal Officiel of July 1. 1920. 7. Letter from Lyautey to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 24 May 1922. AMAE Afrique 1918-1940/Affaires musuImanes/11.

8. As Oleg Grabar has argued, "traditional Islamic culture ... identified itself

through means other than the visual." See his "Symbols and Signs in Islamic Architecture." m Architecture and Community Building m the Islamic World Today, ed. Renata Holod (Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1983). See also Barbara Daly Metcalfs introduction to her edited volume. Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1996),

9. I borrow this phrase from Daniel Sherman's discussion of French memorial monuments after WWL See his The Construction of Memory in Inlerwar France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1999). 216. 10. Rene Weiss. Reception a ('Hotel de Ville de Sa Majeste Moulay Youssef. Sultan

du Maroc: Inauguration de I'lnstitut Musulman et de la Mosquee (Paris: Imprimerie

Nationale. 1927). 2.

1 1 Doumergue's speech is cited in Weiss. 36. It also celebrates the friendship

between "the Muslim elite and the French elite," Non-elite Muslims in North Africa

were solicited for donations to aid in the construction of this site, but as this citation suggests, the Mosquee was not intended for their use. 12. Emile Dermengham, "Musulmans de Pans," La Grande Revue 799 (December 1934): 15-21,

13. Weiss. 45. 14. These sentiments were expressed by many of the Mosquee's proponents. This particular citation comes from a letter sent by Lyautey's deputy to the Minister of Foreign Alfairs, 7 January 1916 AN Fonds Lyautey 475AP/95/Lettres au departement 1916. See also Commissariat General a I'lnformation et a la

Propagande. "Projet de loi relatif a I'edification a Paris d'un Institut Musulman" n.d. AMAE Afrique 1918-1940/Affaires musulmanes/11 15. Although the original plans for the site were drawn up by Maurice Tranchant de Lunel, the former Directeur du Service des Beaux-Arts under Lyautey's administration, The architects who would eventually take charge of the complex's construction were Maurice Mantout, Robert Fournez. and Charles Heubes. Mantout and Fournez had also both been employed as architects in the Moroccan Service des Beaux-Arts,

16. Henri Descamps, L'architecture moderne au Maroc (Paris: Librairie de la

Construction moderne, 1931), 1.

17. Letter from the Mosquee's first director. Si Kaddour ben Ghabrit, 6 October 1920. AMAE Afrique 1918-1940/Affaires musulmanes/11.

18. Antony Goissaud, "L'Institut Musulman et la Mosquee de Paris." La Construction moderne 3 (2 November 1924): 50-55.

19. Gwendolyn Wright. The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago:

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