Author of Why the French Don’t like Headscarves (Princeton UP, 2007), Professor John Bowen of the University of Washington in St. Louis is interviewed about the new commission on the burqa and niqab, set to give its recommendations in December 2009. Bowen describes other European positions against the burqa and how it has trespassed French…
Written by Esther Benbassa, director of the EPHE (École Pratique des Hautes Études), this article claims that the case of French academic Vincent Geisser, currently under investigation for a “lack of obligatory reserve” is dividing the French university system. Detractors claim Geisser is an Islamicist, apologetic for the extremist positions he studies; his defenders point…
French specialist of religion and Islam, Bruno Étienne has passed away in Aix-en-Provence, France. In 1980 Étienne became director of the CNRS (National Centre of Scientific Research), holding the chair in the Muslim World and became Professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Aix-en-Provence. In 1985 he founded “Observatoire du fait religieux” (Observatory of…
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…
The elections on Sunday June 8th for the Council of French Muslims (CFCM) has revealed schisms in the French Muslim community. The council was imposed in 2003 by Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior. It’s in a permanent crisis, according to the Council’s vice-president, Fouad Alaoui
