This paper looks at the determinants of the political participation of Muslims. We assess the impact of associational involvement on their overall political participation and their involvement in protest activities. We do so using original survey data consisting of a random sample of Muslim residents in Switzerland. Our analysis provides support to the argument that associational involvement is a strong predictor of political participation. The findings suggest that Muslims involved in cross-ethnic organisations are more likely to engage in politics. This holds for the overall political participation and for engagement in protest activities. In terms of social capital theory, our findings confirm that bridging social capital is as crucial when it comes to explaining the political participation of Muslims as it is when dealing with migrants in general. However, we also observe a positive impact of the involvement in religious associations. We interpret this effect as an indication that bonding social capital plays a role in the political participation of ethno-religious minorities, but one based on a religious rather than an ethnic cleavage. Future research should pay more attention to this relationship.

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This paper proposes an alternative explanation of Muslims' endorsement of secular values based on their belonging to religious minorities. We argue that, contrary to what is often asserted in both the academic literature and the public debate, Muslims' endorsement of secular values is not simply a matter of strong individual religiosity, but may also result from belonging to a religious minority. We suggest that this group-level variable may explain differences in the support for democratic values by Muslims in Europe, in addition to the individual-level variable pertaining to individual religiosity. Our findings show that belonging to a religious minority in the country of origin positively affects the degree of support of secularist values. More generally, they suggest that denominational Muslim identities should be investigated by taking into account the role of belonging to religious minorities. Moreover, the article will show how belonging to a religious minority can moderate the negative effect of religiosity on secular values.

Résumé Cet article a pour objectif d’analyser le rôle que tiennent les questions de genre dans le discours public de certains médias suisses francophones sur les musulmans et l’islam. Au fil de l’analyse quantitative et qualitative du corpus d’une recherche, on montre que les questions de genre traversent les thématiques abordées par le débat public à propos de la compatibilité ou de l’incompatibilité de la culture musulmane avec celle de la Suisse. Cela amène une interprétation des résultats du point de vue de l’usage politique du genre et de la constitution du sujet politique.

and the anonymous reviewers of CRR for their comments and suggestions that helped me, I hope, to improve this article. themselves as "Muslims" because of their family backgrounds, their personal attachments, their ethnic and group allegiances, or the social and cultural environments in which they were raised (Gianni, Giugni, and Michel, 2015). These Muslims are often categorized as "cultural" or "nominal" Muslims (Ruthven, 1997). However, in public debates, Muslims are represented very differently. They are essentialized, viewed as being internally consistent, clearly bounded, natural, and unchangeable religious subjects. The essentialization of Muslims entails an overculturalization of their agency and a deterministic view of its impact on secular institutions. In particular, these representations have undemocratic, performative effects for they crystallize Muslims' social and political visibility in a way that calls into question their social and political integration 1. These negative social and political representations of Muslims are at the core of what, broadly speaking, can be called the "Muslim Question." Unsurprisingly, this expression is very controversial. It harkens to the Jewish Question and to the Shoah, and for this reason it must be used very carefully. In particular, it should not be used to compare historical experiences, discourses, and representations of Jewish and Muslims alterities, which are particular and raise different issues. There are two uses of the notion of the 'Muslim Question': the first focuses on the social, legal, and political problems raised by the accommodation of Muslims in Western societies, with an emphasis put on the issues raised by Muslim immigration and Islam for 1 The distinctive aspect of performative utterances is that they do not merely name, they also perform what they are naming and represent it at the same time (Hermansen, 2004: 390). The notion of performative effects refers here to the discursive constructions of normative conception of Muslimness and the subject-positions attached to them in given polities or societies. For an exemple of the use of this analytical category, see Ringrose and Renold (2010).