REPRESENTATIONS OF JEWISH-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY FRANCE A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2020 Adi S. Bharat School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Table of Contents Abstract 4 Declaration 5 Copyright 6 Dedication 7 Acknowledgments 8 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 9 1.1. Terminology: Jews, Muslims, Relations, Interactions 11 1.2. Universalism and Difference 15 1.3. Jewish-Muslim Relations in Twentieth-Century France 35 1.4. Methodology, Corpus, and Overview 53 CHAPTER TWO: JEWISH-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE 56 2.1. Methodology 57 2.2. Contextualizing Le Figaro and Le Monde 62 2.2.1. Ethnoreligious Biases 62 2.2.2. Contemporary Standing 66 2.3. Historical and Socio-Political Contexts (1970-2018) 69 2.4. Analysis and Discussion 74 2.4.1. Frames 74 2.4.2. Corpus Analysis 77 2.4.3. Discourse Analysis 89 2.5. Conclusion 98 CHAPTER THREE: JEWISH-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN RECENT NOVELS 100 3.1. Novels and Authors 101 3.2. Existing Scholarship 104 2 3.3. Analysis and Discussion 109 3.3.1. Le sourire de l’ange 110 3.3.2. Ce sont nos frères et leurs enfants sont nos enfants 130 3.3.3. Avant la haine 149 3.4. Conclusion 169 CHAPTER FOUR: JEWISH-MUSLIM INTERRELIGIOUS AND INTERCULTURAL INITIATIVES 174 4.1. Defining Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue 177 4.2. History of Interreligious Dialogue Initiatives in France 180 4.3. Contemporary Jewish-Muslim Dialogue Initiatives 184 4.3.1. Overview of Contemporary Actors 184 4.3.2. Interreligious Dialogue and the State 187 4.4. Methodology 194 4.4.1. Fleeting Interactions and Thin Description 194 4.4.2. Recruiting Participants and the Interview Process 196 4.4.3. Thematic Analysis 198 4.5. Analysis and Discussion 200 4.5.1. Diverging and Intersecting Affliations and Identifications 201 4.5.2. The State, Media, and Politicians 208 4.5.3. Le mahJ et l’IMA 216 4.5.4. Queering Jewish-Muslim Relations? HM2F and Beit Haverim 224 4.6. Conclusion 233 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS 236 Bibliography 249 Appendix 269 Word count: 77,013 3 Abstract This thesis examines representations of Jewish-Muslim relations in contemporary French newspaper discourse, literary writing, and interreligious dialogue initiatives. Specifically, it analyses the extent to which a dominant discourse of inherently tense binary Jewish-Muslim relations exists and how individual Jewish and Muslim writers and interreligious dialogue activists navigate this difficult socio-political terrain. While I conceptualize some aspects of literary writing and interreligious dialogue as counter-narratives, this thesis does not simply seek to counterbalance the dominant narrative of polarization found in the media, but to demonstrate, first, how this narrative constructs public Jewish and Muslim identities and shapes the terrain on which interactions between Jews and Muslims occur. My thesis reveals that Jewish and Muslim writers and interreligious activists are deeply invested in challenging the oppositional model of Jewish-Muslim relations. However, my research also suggests that their level of success depends in large part on their ability to navigate normative understandings of Jewishness and Muslimness that are often overdetermined by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. First, this thesis traces how Jewish-Muslim relations are defined and constructed in the media, focusing on the national dailies Le Monde and Le Figaro due to their considerable agenda-setting and framing power as elite and prestigious sites of journalistic expression. Subsequently, I consider how a set of contemporary novelists, Emilie Frèche, Thierry Cohen, and Nadia Hathroubi-Safsaf, formulate their visions of intergroup relations within this broader context. The novelists in this project have been included in the extent to which their works can be read as—and often are explicitly stated by these authors to be—a set of political interventions into the contemporary and highly politicized category of Jewish-Muslim relations. Finally, I examine how Jewish and Muslim activists promote interreligious dialogue and the challenges they face in doing so within a French republican framework that privileges the non-differentiation of ethnoreligious specificities. I conclude that the initiatives most likely to effectively challenge the dominant model of polarized Jewish-Muslim relations in contemporary France are those that de- emphasize Jewishness and Muslimness as separate and mutually exclusive categories, and instead emphasize hybrid identities and shared histories, while adopting an embodied, differentiated approach to solidarity. 4 Declaration I declare that no portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. 5 Copyright The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related right in it (the “Copyright”) and he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issues under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=24420) in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses. 6 Dedication This thesis is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Malcolm X whose life and work have been of utmost importance to my life-long, unfinished process of intellectual and spiritual decolonization, a process he once described as removing colonialism from the mind. 7 Acknowledgments All academic work is, to some degree, collaborative, especially multi-year projects such as a doctoral thesis. My sincerest thanks and gratitude go, first and foremost, to my supervisors, Joseph McGonagle and Barbara Lebrun, whose exemplary guidance and support proved invaluable to the successful completion of this thesis. I am also very grateful to Dalia Mostafa for her detailed feedback on the main chapters of this thesis. I would also like to thank all the participants I interviewed for the last chapter of this thesis. I am particularly grateful to Nadia Hathroubi-Safsaf and Thierry Cohen for discussing their work with me at great length. I am deeply grateful for the seemingly inexhaustible source of support that has been Jeffrey Mehlman, a remarkable thinker who continues to inspire me with his adventures in the French Trade. I can only hope that my adventures end up half as meaningful as his. I also benefited greatly from the support of my colleagues in Manchester. The Centre for Jewish Studies, in particular, provided me with a second academic home. I am indebted to Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Alexander Samely, Daniel Langton, and Laura Mitchell for their support and kindness. I would be remiss if I did not also mention David Alderson, the director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts and Languages (CIDRAL) and a brilliant conversationalist. David and CIDRAL have been of great moral and intellectual assistance to me. Finally, I thank Katharine Halls, with whom I founded the Jewish-Muslim Research Network (JMRN). The JMRN has proved to be an invaluable interdisciplinary forum. I am also grateful to Elizabeth Johnstone for all her help and solidarity. Last, but not least, I thank my family, friends, and cats back in Singapore for their constant support, even if they have not always understood what I have been doing all these years. 8 Chapter One: Introduction and Background In recent decades, with antisemitism and Islamophobia on the rise, relations between France’s Jews and Muslims have been depicted as increasingly tense. In particular, a group of French writers have pinpointed the source of a new antisemitism to be France’s Muslim population (Brenner 2002, 2004; Draï 2002; Taguieff 2002; Trigano 2003; Finkielkraut 2003; Attal 2004; Giniewski 2005). With state school seen as a hotbed of antisemitism, Jews have increasingly turned to private Jewish schools. According to Kimberly Arkin (2014), this sense of siege has in turn led to private-schooled (mainly Sephardi) Jewish youths racially constructing their Jewishness as separate from and hostile to Muslims and Arabs (and ‘white’ French people), as a defence mechanism to a perception of being under attack from both broader French society and, especially, Muslims and Arabs. This situation is partly a result of the particular histories of France’s colonial presence in the Maghreb and of France’s related postcolonial realities (see Chronology, Table 1 in Appendix). Economic crisis, high unemployment rates, especially for segments of Muslims, increasing antisemitic and anti-Muslim discourse and hate crimes, as well as the looming threat of further acts of terrorism, have only complicated issues and hardened outlooks.