Gilles Kepel, Quatre-vingt-treize, Paris: Gallimard, 2011. Pp. 322 French academic Gilles Kepel came to international prominence three decades ago with the publication of his Le Prophète et pharaon, a study of armed Islamist groups in Egypt and their role in the 1981 assassination of former Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat. Since then, he has written extensively on the rise of Islamism and Political Islam, notably in his native France. Les Banlieues de l'Islam, naissance d'une religion en France, published in 1987, looked at changing attitudes to religion among second and third- generation immigrants of Maghreb origin, while A l'ouest d'Allah (1995) and Jihad, expansion et déclin de l'Islamisme (2000) looked at the new visibility of Islam in Europe and the international reach of Islamist ideology, respectively. A new book by Kepel is quite an event, and the author has not disappointed in his Quatre-vingt- treize (ninety-three), an essay on broadly Islamist themes that appeared at the same time as a report on life in the deprived suburbs surrounding Paris. These areas, home to many families of North African or African origin and suffering from high rates of social exclusion, came to international attention in 2005 when riots sparked by the deaths of two teenagers spread to suburban areas across France, resulting in the widespread use of curfews and the declaration of a state of emergency. Kepel's new essay and the report on which is it based can be understood in the context of the French national soul-searching that resulted from the 2005 riots and worries that the country has been failing to integrate its Muslim immigrants. As well as being the number of the administrative department to which these Paris suburbs belong, the title of Kepel's essay is an allusion to an 1874 novel by the French writer Victor Hugo that contains the great republican's thoughts on the legacy of the French Revolution. While Kepel's essay deals with less dramatic events, his writing has a similar synoptic feel, using recent history as a way of posing larger questions. The shadow of the 2005 riots is in the background to what Kepel writes about France's mixed record in integrating its young people of North African or African origin. Somewhere in the background, too, are wider anxieties about the terrorist attacks carried out by armed Islamist groups in Europe, such as those that took place in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. In his introduction to Quatre-vingt-treize, Kepel says the book is a way of saying farewell to the question of Islam in France (he is coming up to retirement), as well as of "reflecting on France and its future from an Islamic starting point." The news is a mix of good and bad, though there are some stark warnings, notably regarding the potential rise of US-style identity politics, which, religiously based, could act to destroy commonly held ideas of citizenship in France and encourage "the fragmentation of society into irreconcilable parts." There are also warnings about the ability of the mainstream political parties to deal with the issues starkly illustrated in the 2005 riots, potentially leading to the polarisation of French society and the further rise of both the extreme-right Front National, an anti-immigrant party, and of feelings of alienation from mainstream society among some young people of immigrant origin. "The future of Islam in France," Kepel writes, "is now in the hands of the younger generation of Muslims who were born and educated in the country... It is the ability of French political parties and institutions to find a place for elected politicians of immigrant origin, particularly those from the Maghreb or from sub-Saharan Africa, that will determine the extent to which these can participate in the forms of civic mediation that the institutions of a democratic state and society represent, bringing debate on religious questions back within a secular framework. If this does not take place, then the identity issues that are currently hijacking the question of Islam in France are likely to become ever more polarised in a process of mutual caricature that is likely to lead to a more difficult future." The book is divided into three parts and is a mix of academic study and personal reflection. Perhaps the most rewarding part for those new to the subject is section two, entitled "the three ages of French Islam," which traces the history of Arab and Muslim immigration to France and the appearance of a French form of Islam. While early Arab and Muslim immigrants to France, possibly up until as late as the 1980s, had been likely to consider their countries of origin as providing their primary form of identification, even aiming to return to them after a stint working abroad, their sons and daughters, French citizens of Arab or African origin with in some cases little first-hand experience of their parents' countries of origin, began to claim Muslim identities that could be at odds with parental practices. Perhaps as a result of not feeling fully at home in French society, while not feeling at home in the parental countries of Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia either, and in some cases disproportionately affected by unemployment and other forms of social exclusion, such young people "turned to Islam as their steadiest point of reference," Kepel writes. This meant that the "Islam of the young" could be more pronounced and provide a stronger form of group identification than the national forms of belonging of the older generations with their often more relaxed forms of religious observance. The result has been a "re-Islamisation" of sections of the French population, which have abandoned older forms of mobilisation, most notably those associated with the left-wing political parties, and chosen instead to make their presence felt through religiously inflected campaigns for recognition, for example through the wearing of the Islamic veil or headscarf by women or through campaigns to have halal meat served in fast-food restaurants. "Up until the beginning of the 1980s," Kepel writes, "the Islam of the older generation reigned almost everywhere in France, its visibility remaining rudimentary as far as politics was concerned." This changed when young people of Arab or African origin, "the children of immigrants and educated for the most part in schools or colleges in suburbs marked by social problems and ethnic prejudice and having generally only limited access to employment," began to discover Muslim identities that could provide powerful forms of mobilisation for social or political struggle. "The hybrid positioning that set the oppressed Muslim classes against the established order" was a way of "substituting a 'Muslim' identity for the Moroccan or Algerian identities of the young people's parents." It was not long before explicitly religious references began to enter social questions that had previously been the territory of the left-wing political parties, as these questions themselves became progressively Islamised. This process, Kepel writes, reached a kind of crescendo earlier this century, as religious identification began to make itself felt in local and even national elections. France seemed to be seeing the rise of a "Muslim vote" along the lines of the group voting practices familiar from the United States, the difference being that this Muslim vote, in many areas sidelining allegiances previously given to secular and particularly left- wing political parties, interested itself not only in issues that might be thought of as having special relevance to Muslims, such as the building or upkeep of mosques or the provision of religious and other forms of education, but also leaked out over a wider spectrum. More than simply the expression of a religious lobby group, the Muslim vote began to push aside the traditional parties in socially deprived or immigrant-majority areas, leading to the collapse in support particularly for the French Communist Party, now without significant support in France, and even the Socialist Party, whose representatives, drawn from an ethnically narrow background, have sometimes been unsuccessful in their attempts to reach out to Muslim voters, let alone to find a discourse capable of rallying them behind the Party's programme. Kepel seems to be unsure about how far France's developing Muslim vote should be considered as a potential voting bloc aligned behind a religious identity -- how far, in other words, it needs to be considered as such for the purposes of elections -- and how far it is simply a lobby group influential only within certain areas and acting to raise awareness on a limited range of issues, such as campaigns to have halal meat served in fast-food restaurants in majority Muslim districts. While he welcomes the greater involvement particularly of young people of Arab origin in the country's political life, their mobilisation behind a religious identity being the expression of a desire not to separate themselves off from the country's institutions, but rather to win representation within them, he sees limiting factors to how far Islamism can enable them to do so. There is the notoriously schismatic character of "identity politics" in general, with competing groups fighting each other for monopoly over a given identity, and there is the fact that French voters of Arab or African origin, from a variety of national and other backgrounds even if they have religion in common, are unlikely to agree on any single political programme. Some may be happy to vote for the "Islamo-leftist" programme put together by the young activists in the suburbs, while others may be more likely to vote for the mainstream French Socialist Party or for French president Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right UMP, with its message of individual betterment, political and social reform and fiscal responsibility. Whatever the case may be, there is a danger, Kepel thinks, that young voters of Arab or African origin, identifying themselves as Muslim for political purposes, may be frustrated in their attempts at joining the country's political mainstream, as some of them have the professions, leading to frustration and radicalisation. Meanwhile religiously inflected campaigns, whether for mosque building, larger Muslim cemeteries, or recognition of cultural or dietary practices, leapt on by sections of the French media as evidence of alleged Muslim failure to integrate in French society, may create a backlash among parts of the wider population, uneasy at what it may see as growing communitarianism. Kepel reminds readers of his essay of some of the special features of French society that may make it less hospitable towards minority religious identification for public purposes than other societies elsewhere. Among these is a political tradition that does not recognise religion as having any part to play in public life and does not allow religious expression in any public institution or any institution receiving public funds, including schools and hospitals. Under these circumstances, hopes of political participation on the basis of belonging to a religious group, Muslim or otherwise, might be felt to be doomed from the start. However, as Kepel also says, it is up to the country's politicians and political institutions to find a way of bringing such issues back within a secular framework. For the time being, France's politicians, many of them "white, male and 50 plus," may seem to be unrepresentative of the ethnic, sexual and demographic profile of the country's population. "The Assemblée nationale," the French parliament, "does not contain a single MP of Muslim background," even though it is charged with making decisions on behalf of millions of French citizens who identify themselves as Muslim. One doesn't need to be an American communitarian to understand the potential problems of that. Reviewed by David Tresilian
