Muslims' integration as a way to defuse the “Muslim Question”: insights from the Swiss case

Abstract

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).

Documenting conversion: Framings of female converts to Islam in British and Swiss documentaries

“…Conversion is imagined as, at best, ‘anomalous’ and, at worst, ‘dangerous’. While MMM and LCA construct framings of conversion that rest on notions of women’s oppression and cultural incompatibility, the Swiss documentary underlines the ‘threat of terrorism’ more than the British one, perhaps reflecting the differences between the British multiculturalism model (Modood, 2019) and the Swiss model of an ethnic conception of citizenship (Gianni, 2016) combined with a French republican fear of communalism, political Islam and violence (Bowen, 2007). Having said this, since documentaries afford us the opportunity to hear from converts directly (if in edited sound bites), our analysis also illuminated the ways in which the narrator’s framing can be contested.…”

Normative perspectives on citizenship and migration: the challenge of integration into citizenship in immigration societies

“…At the liberal level, because such a demand calls into question the freedom to endorse a conception of the good and to have guarantees that their freedom of conscience is protected by the state. At the democratic level, because it goes against the idea that democratic citizens should be able to participate to the redefinition and the resignification of the terms of their common belonging through their free and equal political engagement (Gianni, 2016). Contrary to a widespread belief, integration into citizenship and citizenship itself do not entail the absence or disappearance of political conflicts and contestations, but rather the contrary.…”

“…Integration is also a condition for gaining a residence permit: to be ruled as lacking in integration can lead to loss of residential status in the country, and in the worst case, can lead to expulsion from the country or coercive deportation. Such programmes are qualified by some as entailing an 'aggressive integrationism' (Triadafilopoulos, 2011) or as being an 'injunction to integrate' claimed against some negatively socially represented groups, in particular Muslims (Gianni, 2016).…”

“…In this light, integration is seen as an end-state, as the acquisition of the symbolic and material resources to be a good (at least, a non-dysfunctional) citizen. Non-nationals (that is, individuals or groups represented as not belonging to or not fitting with the national culture) are required to adjust to (national) liberal and democratic norms (Gianni, 2016).…”

Working against many grains: Rethinking difference, emancipation and agency in the counter-discourse of an ethnic minority women’s organisation in Belgium

“…Historical and contemporary debates about religion and feminism in post-colonial settings influence the current focus on Islam and Muslim migrant communities ( Fadil, 2014 ). ‘The Muslim question’ is aptly situated and defined by Gianni as ‘a conglomerate of discourses, attitudes, and practices that call into question the agency, subjectivity and moral equality of Muslims as individuals, as bearers of religious values, and as citizens’ ( 2016 : 23). Concerns and anxieties about ‘the Muslim other’ holding a contentious relationship with Western-European liberal values brought religion back into and simultaneously transformed the debate about the place of religion in society in general, and about religion as enabling/constraining women’s emancipation in particular.…”