Dounia Bouzar, a French anthropologist who specializes in examining French-born and raised Muslims and former member of the French Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM), claims that Muslim sects, particularly the conservative Salafists, take advantage of the general ignorance about Islam in France to multiply within families. Bouzar claims that these conservative Muslim groups become most powerful when they alienate individuals from those who are normally central to their socialization – their teachers, educators, parents and even, imams. Author of L’Islam, l’intégrisme et nous (Plon, 2007), Bouzar concludes that being shocked by the burqa is to respect Islam, because it means that the religious tradition does not espouse such “archaic practices”.
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