On Islam in the West and Muslims in France: Views from the Hexagon
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ThirdWorld Quarterly, Vol 18, No 2, pp377± 389, 1997 FEATUREREVIEW OnIslam in theWest and Muslims in France: viewsfrom the Hexagon Arun Kapil Allah in the West: Islamic movementsin Americaand Europe GillesKepel, translated from French by Susan Miller Cambridge:Polity Press, 1997 pp vii 1 273,pb £ 13.95 EÃtre musulmanen France:associations, militants et mosqueÂes JocelyneCesari Paris &Aix-en-Provence:E ÂditionsKarthala & IREMAM,1994 pp367, pb 160FF GillesKepel is oneof France’ s mostprominent specialists of contemporary Islamistmovements and is well-knownoutside the walls of academiathere, due tohis best-selling books and frequent appearances in the media. A numberof Kepel’s publicationshave appeared in English translation over the past dozen years,most notably his ® rst-ratework on Islamism inEgypt. The book under review,which was originallypublished as AÁ l’ouestd’ Allah (Paris: EÂditions du Seuil,1994), represents Kepel’ s latesteffort to chartthe ` rise ofIslam’ ,thistime inthe USA, UK, and France: threeWestern countries with signi® cant and growingMuslim minorities. Twothings need to be said straight out about the book. First, it is aimedat aspeci®cally French audience and re¯ ects apeculiarlyFranco-centric perspec- tiveon its subject. Second, though it takes on the appearance of a scholarly comparisonof Islamic movements in its three selected countries, the book is in facta polemicalsalvo ® redinto a noisydebate that has beenraging in France forseveral years now,namely over whether or not Muslim immigrant com- munitiesfrom the MaghribÐ and principally AlgeriaÐ are assimilatinginto Frenchsociety and what policies the French state should adopt to further this goal.Though the book devotes roughly equal space tothe three countries, the USAand UKÐ often lumped together as the` Anglo-Saxons’in French dis- courseÐessentially serve as foilsfor the French case, thelatter being the main concernof the author and, presumably, his target audience. Kepel’s pointof departure, as hestates, is toexamine the ` assertionsof communityidentity’ by Muslims in societies that seem tobe evolving toward greatercultural homogenisation and which have witnessed an erosion of ArunKapil is at23Villad’ Este-Appt 1082, 75013 Paris, France. 0143-6597/97/020377-13$7.00 Ó 1997Third World Quarterly 377 FEATURE REVIEW traditionalcleavages based on social class andcompeting political ideologies of theleft and right. He wishes to ®ndoutwho the followers of Islamic movements inthe three countries are, what they are strivingfor, and why ` callsto Islamic communityidentities’ have occurred in places where the individual is muchfreer inhis allegiances than in the more traditional societies of the Muslim world. The® rst case Kepelconsiders is theUSA. The discussion is basedexclusively onthe Nation of Islam ( NOI)ÐtheBlack MuslimsÐ and its leading personalities overthe years: founderElijah Muhammad, the legendary Malcolm X, and the sulphurousLouis Farrakhan. Kepel’ s choiceof the NOI is mostodd and the chaptersconsecrated to the subject are ¯awedon several levels. First, what he offers thereader is littlemore than a historicalnarrative of the NOI from its inceptionup to the present. While competent, it adds little to our knowledge of the NOI,nordoes it surpass Vincent-MansourMonteil’ s 1964article on the subject,which remains the most important French reference on the Black Muslimsand curiously does not ® gurein Kepel’ s otherwiseextensive source notes.1 Asecondproblem is thechoice of the NOIÐandparticularly in its recent FarrakhanperiodÐ in considering the issue ofIslam inAmerica. Kepel touches onthe movements split in the late 1970s± early 1980s in the aftermath of Elijah Muhammad’s death,when Elijah’ s son,Warith Deen Muhammad, repudiated his father’s teachings,changed the NOIsnameto the American Muslim Mission, and ledpart of the ¯ ockinto mainstream Sunni Islam. Farrakhan’ s groupkept the NOI labeland remained faithful to Elijah’ s doctrine.But Kepel gives almost no furtherattention to Warith Deen Muhammad and his followers, whose interpret- ationof Islam is moreorthodox than that of the NOI.Andno estimates of the actualnumbers of adherents in either group are advancedthat could enable one toassess therelative importance of each. More importantly, there is nomention whateverof the sizeable immigration from Muslim countries to the USA since the1960s, which is nowinto the second generation and whose numbers are considerablyhigher than those of African-Americansclaiming an Islamic ident- ity.To discuss Islam inAmerica without making reference to immigrant communitiesfrom the Islamic world makes nosense. Kepelcommits a furthererror in focusing on the Black Muslims, as itis questionablethat they should be consideredMuslims at all, or that the NOI should evenbe mainly understood as areligioussect. It has longbeen noted that the NOIsdoctrinehas divergedsharply from the Islam practisedby thevast majority oftheworld’ s Muslims.Peculiarities of the NOIsdogmaand ritual, which Kepel discusses onlyin passing, include Elijah Muhammad taking on the status of a prophetand the veneration of the NOIsmysteriousmessiah ®gure,Wallace Fard, as Godincarnate, the notion of black racial superiority and association of the whiterace withSatan, holding the Ramadan fast onlyin themonth of December, listeningto sermons in NOI `temples’seated in chairs, and prayers carried out by standingwith palms turned up, to name a few. Kepelanticipates objections as tothe NOIsIslamiccharacter by arguing that, underFarrakhan, it has graduallyerased its` deviations’Ð aquestionableas- sertionand which Kepel does not back upÐ and drawn closer to states suchas SaudiArabia, and that the NOI should,in any case, beviewed as aheterodox 378 ISLAM INTHE WEST AND MUSLIMS INFRANCE movementwithin Islam, akin to the tariqa-s ofWestAfrica and Ahmadiyya sect inPakistan. This won’ t ¯y.Unlike the heterodox sects onthe periphery of the daral-islam , the NOI was createdwithout having had any signi® cant contact with Muslimsand none whatever with the Islamic world. The NOI sleadinglights neverlearned Arabic and gave little evidence that they had even mastered the Qur’an, let alone the corpus of Islamictheology. In point of fact,the NOIs roots are inthechurches of BlackAmerican Protestantism, to which it bears as much aresemblanceas itdoesto Islam. 2 Thisbeing said, the actual theological content of the NOIsdoctrineis practicallynil, as isthatof thesermons ofFarrakhanand other NOI `ministers’, whichbarely touch on scripture or matters that could be construedas religiousin nature. 3 The NOI shouldbe understood less as areligioussect, strictly speaking, than asaBlackpride and self-help movement issuing from the very speci® c context ofthe Black condition in America. As forits identi® cation with Islam, it seems tohaveescaped Kepel that the NOI isnotconsidered in America as amovement withspiritual or doctrinal roots in the Islamic world, nor is itviewed as representinga localmanifestation of some worldwideIslamic resurgence. The NOI is almostuniversally regarded in the USA as aBlacknationalist, or separatist,phenomenon. In thisrespect, it istobenotedthat in theheavy media coverageof Farrakhan’ s `MillionMan March’ in Washington in October 1995, itoccurred to practically nobody that the event had anything to do with Islam, whichit most decidedly did not. As forthe Black Muslims themselves, the relevantcleavage in their imaginaire has notbeen that of Muslims versus non-Muslimsbut rather that of Black AmericansÐ whatever their religionÐ againstwhite America. Until very recently, the NOI has manifestedno interestin forgingties with Muslim immigrant communities or itsassociations; on theother hand,Farrakhan’ s sermons andrallies are wellattended by youthful African- Americanswho have not converted to the NOIsconceptionof Islam andlikely havelittle or no intention of doing so. Theunderlying theme in these chapters is thatthe NOIÐandthe growing interestin Islam amongAfrican-Americans it is supposedlyspearheadingÐ representsa `communal’fragmentation of American society. The concept of communalismis Kepel’s leitmotifand crops up throughout the book, though it isneitherdeveloped theoretically nor, in thisinstance, in reference to American societyor history. The term employed in the original French version is communautarisme ,whichis anideologically loaded and emotionally charged expressionin France signifying the will of ascriptive communities to seal themselvesoff from the larger collectivity, resist assimilationinto French society,reject in part or in whole the republican and laic values of the French polity,and to use theirethnic or religiousidentity as aresourcein theirinterface withthe public authorities and political system. In the French imaginaireÐ and particularlyfor its intellectuals, whatever their ideological predispositionÐ communautarisme standsin opposition to the Jacobin state and constitutes a mortaldanger to the cohesion of French society. As such,it is somethingto be combatted.The public af® rmationof ethnicidentities and their use asapolitical resourcehas thus,until very recently, been taboo in France. WhenFranceÐ one of the leading receivers of immigrants since the 19th 379 FEATURE REVIEW centuryÐlooks at that other great country of immigration, the USA, it sees the antithesisof its own valuesÐ values that are viewedas universalisticin natureÐ andexperiences. The notion that immigrants in America cluster, over several generations,in unassimilatedethnic ghettos is almostuniversally held in France. Kepeldoes not