Photography and the Evolution of Franco-Islamic Identities: France Keyser’s We are French and Muslim

On 20 March 2017, the French news outlet 20 Minutes published an online article with the headline, “This photo of Muslim gendarmes has been causing controversy without reason for seven years.”[1] The photograph in question depicts two French gendarmes seated on a police station floor with a third knelt in front of them. Before the kneeling man lie copies of the Qur’an and a French translation of The Sealed Nectar, Safi-ur-Rahman al-Mubarakpuri’s biography of the prophet Muhammad. Several French nationalist and populist websites and social media accounts had circulated the photograph alongside captions such as “Arab culture lessons for the national gendarmerie” to denounce a supposed infiltration of radical Islamists into the police force. The 20 Minutes article, however, uncovers these stories’ fabulation to expose how right-wing sources appropriated this photograph, divested it from its original context, and repackaged and redeployed it with a deceptive message—in short, they “hijacked” it.[2]

Tracing the photograph to its source, 20 Minutes reports that French photographer France Keyser captured the scene almost a decade earlier as part of a socially engaged photographic reportage. Produced between 2005 and 2009, Keyser’s series features individuals that anthropologist Mayanthi Fernando would call “Muslim French,” that is to say, “women and men committed to practicing Islam as French citizens and to practicing French citizenship as pious Muslims.”[3] Keyser’s photographs document ways in which Muslim French negotiate tensions between religio-cultural acts and republican values in their everyday lives. Published in 2010, the photo-text We are French and Muslim combines Keyser’s photographs with political scientist Vincent Geisser’s explanations of historical and sociocultural factors that shape what it means to identify as both French and Muslim in contemporary France. For Geisser, Keyser’s lens captures the “extraordinary banality” of these individuals’ daily lives: “I voluntarily use this oxymoron to illustrate the gap between the real experiences of the vast majority of Muslims who are in harmony with their social environment, and politico-mediatic discourses that focus on the alterity that they are supposed to bear.”[4] Most recently, Joseph Downing has advocated for just such an approach to representing Muslim French, arguing that “exposing the everyday ‘banality’ of European Muslims is an important counterweight to the often exceptionalist discourse.”[5] In this vein, We are French and Muslim depicts everyday ways that Muslim French mold what John R. Bowen calls a “workable reality ... to live fulfilling social and religious lives in France.”[6]

In Keyser’s project, this “workable reality” does not entail simple assimilation of the dominant cultural model, nor can it be reduced to cultural code-switching, in which an individual alternates between various cultural toolkits depending on the social situation. Rather, as Keyser’s photographed participants navigate intersections of francité (Frenchness) and islamité (Muslimness), I contend they participate in cultural code-mixing to challenge the perception that being French and being Muslim remain diametrically opposed both philosophically and practically. Reading the photographic depictions of how Muslim French identities manifest visually, I examine how Keyser’s participants adapt enactments of one subjectivity to operate within the framework of the other so as not to transgress the accepted norms of either. Analyzing visual signifiers of both francité and islamité, I consider how Keyser’s participants reconcile these two subjectivities so often presented as being incompatible. As a result, this article demonstrates how We are French and Muslim proposes a variety of entry points for understanding what self-identifying as Muslim French means in the contemporary Republic.

Constructing Frenchness and Muslimness

Islam’s place in French society remains a thorny subject, rife with historical baggage dating back to the Crusades. Contemporary anti-Muslim rhetoric in France originates most often—albeit not exclusively—from populist and nationalist groups such as the right-wing National Rally, formerly the National Front. Yet negative views of Islam permeate French society more broadly, owing to assumptions about what it means to be Muslim. As Olivier Roy notes, Muslim French must deal with three different external categorizations of their religious identities: “Islam is either portrayed as a foreign culture, defined essentially by ‘Arab’ or ‘Muslim’ values as purportedly propagated by North African immigrants; or as a religion, often a fundamentalist one; or as a geopolitical force, in reference to the crises in the Middle East, the umma, and Islamist terrorism.”[7] Even when Muslim French do not encounter overt bigotry, they must contend with structural discrimination, particularly when faced with a rigid application of French secularism, or laïcité. The nationalist view of Islam as an unmalleable system situates the religion as being at perpetual odds with the French nation-state. Moreover, as Naomi Davidson argues, a reductive view of Muslims as fundamentally religious individuals saturates them with not only a marker of unbelonging vis-à-vis the imagined community of the French nation but also “an embodied religious identity that function[s] as a racialized identity.”[8] In this way, the French social imaginary projects Muslimness as an innate, immutable characteristic, and being Muslim becomes “as essential and eternal a marker of difference as gender or skin color.”[9] When individual practitioners operationalize Islam in daily life, however, their enactments vary significantly based on local context and should not be summarily amalgamated.

Although any study of social categories must take care not to fall into the trap of essentialism, it must also be on guard against countering one form of essentialism with another. When analyzing what it means to be Muslim French, not only must we avoid essentializing Islam and being Muslim, but also France and being French.[10] Downing, in discussing “local vernacular Islams,” notes that a term like “Muslim French” functions as “an umbrella which seeks to bring together how these many Islams can, and indeed do, connect to the many ‘Frenchnesses’ present in France.”[11] Neither “French” nor “Muslim” is a reified, monolithic identity that simply exists; each comprises diverse social realities and nuanced identitarian performances that are not easily reducible. Indeed, “if there is one ‘essential’ nature or truth about French Muslims it is their diversity, dynamism and complexity; and rather than one central truth, there are currently somewhere around 5.7 million ‘truths’ that sum up the French Muslim experience.”[12] As a result, We are French and Muslim does not—nor could it possibly—engage with every potential permutation of Frenchness and Muslimness.

Nevertheless, for the purposes of creating categories for analysis, it is useful to engage with some selections about what “Frenchness” and “Muslimness” mean more broadly. Keyser’s subjects self-identify as French and Muslim, and their actions display how they understand these designations of belonging. In distinguishing self-identification from mere self-understanding, social scientists Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper assert that self-identification indicates “at least some degree of explicit discursive articulation.”[13] The photographs in We are French and Muslim depict individuals engaging in embodied acts of discursive positioning that resist assimilation to dominant stereotypes about Muslim French. Commonalities in how the participants navigate the intersections of Frenchness and Muslimness in their daily lives thus allow us to construct an understanding of francité and islamité situated within the context of the photo-text’s visual and textual narratives.

When it comes to French national identity, much ink has been spilled in attempts to define what it means to be French, who has the right to be French, and how one becomes French, with arguments for and against a range of social, political, moral, historical, and cultural points of connection.[14] Of course, the myriad attempts to define Frenchness simply underline “the reality that ‘France’ as a unified cultural, linguistic or religious entity has never actually existed, but has required constant attempts to socially construct a common identity out of regional, cultural and linguistic traditions with very little in common.”[15] Echoing Ernest Renan’s definition of a nation, Patrick Weil asserts that the French are French because of their adherence to a common identity based on symbolic republican values that lead them to want to live together as a nation.[16] In a 2019 survey of French citizens, 63 percent of respondents identified attachment to the values of the Republic—liberty, equality, and fraternity—as a key component of contemporary Frenchness.[17] Indeed, the republican trinity of values—along with the unofficial fourth constituent of the national motto, laïcité—remain the most commonly cited constituents of what is means to be French. Yet these ideals’ operationalization remains couched in how an individual interprets their spirit in a given context because, like Frenchness itself, the values associated with French national identity are not transhistorically or transpolitically stable.[18]

The idea of a homogenized version of French national identity persists though. As sociologist Jean Beaman argues, racial, ethnic, and religious distinctions sustain a French identity “defined by whiteness and the exclusion of immigrant-origin individuals tied to its colonial empire.”[19] As a result, nonwhite citizens often find their Frenchness called into question, and they must continually assert and reassert their francité in ways that white citizens rarely have to do.[20] In this vein, sociologist Trica Keaton finds that Muslims in France see the legitimacy of their Frenchness as being “determined less by what they claim to be, and more by what they do, as it is their actions and strategies that ultimately say who they are, beyond the categories of perception by which they are identified.”[21] Downing likewise emphasizes the importance of actions over words in enacting Frenchness. Drawing on social psychologist Michael Billig’s work on banal nationalism, Downing observes that national identity is “very much constructed in the daily interaction of individuals with symbols, narratives, objects and rituals.”[22] In other words, individuals rarely inhabit their national identity in extraordinary ways, but they instead express and experience national identity through mundane, daily practices.[23] In doing so, they “unmix” a conception of Frenchness lacking in ethnic or religious diversity and instead forge their own iteration of francité.[24] Thus, the everyday embodied acts of Muslim French—like those of all French citizens—continually make and remake what it means to be French.

Similarly, Muslimness is not a singular identity either, even though it is often presented as a monolithic form of alterity against which Frenchness can be reified. Indeed, Fernando points out that “the alleged contradiction between being a Muslim and being a citizen is immanent to French republicanism.”[25] This supposed incongruity relies on two inherent falsehoods, namely that Islam comprises a unified set of religious beliefs, practices, and laws followed by all Muslims and that Islam is a rigid, absolutist religion incapable of secularization. Analogous statements have previously characterized other religions, yet Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism have all made compromises to co-exist within the constraints of laïcité. As Keyser’s photographs show, Muslims in France are likewise adjusting their religio-cultural practices in efforts to be seen as “ordinary” citizens.[26]

Muslim French see ways to practice their faith openly as citizens of the Republic without transgressing either set of values, with the two belief systems often overlapping. For instance, civic action and social justice lie at the heart of being a good citizen but are also instrumental in being a practicing Muslim.[27] In the 1970s and 1980s, youths of immigrant origin led social movements that exposed contradictions entrenched in French citizenship, nationality, and national identity.[28] When Muslim French attempt to claim equal rights as citizens of the Republic, the hypervisibility of their islamité combined with their invisible francité creates a catch-22: “the more they assert their Frenchness, the more they reveal the precariousness of their belonging.”[29] Instead, today’s Muslim French are taking the alternative route of trying to transform their Muslimness into a banal practice so that it is no longer overdetermined, or what one of Fernando’s interlocutors called his droit à l’indifférence (right to indifference), to blend in, “to be forgotten.”[30] In this vein, “the desire to be ordinary propels many Muslim French to claim the public practice of Islam ... as an entitlement of equal citizenship.”[31]

Introducing We are French and Muslim

Read through this lens, Keyser’s photographs highlight how the embodied acts of the everyday become pathways for Muslim French to be recognized as visibly unremarkable; banality is the subject. Of course, Keyser and Geisser have made choices about what to include and exclude from the photo-text’s visual and textual narratives. As socially engaged cultural products, Keyser’s photographs are not windows to the world but rather selections framed to form a coherent narrative about what it means to be French and Muslim today. We are French and Muslim thus provides examples of Muslim French who break free of the totalizing discourse on Islam and establish themselves as religious citizens of the Republic.

The photo-text comprises 137 photographs assembled into eight thematic chapters, each confronting Islam’s supposed incompatibility with the civic, social, and cultural spheres forged by French republicanism. Focusing on similarities between the photographed participants and viewer, Keyser presents individuals performing the same sociocultural tasks their fellow, non-Muslim citizens do—working, gathering with family, shopping, playing sports—to present Muslim French “whose faith and religious practice are lived less as traditions imported from over there than as living expressions of their citizenship here.”[32] Geisser’s accompanying texts fulfill the Barthesian function of anchoring readers’ interpretation of the photographs, with the individuals presented not as exceptional cases but rather as exemplary of larger social patterns among Muslim French who find balance and harmony in their enactments of francité and islamité.[33] Indeed, the photo-text does not present Muslim French as a uniform identity; rather, it highlights the diversity of the metropole’s Muslim populations to fracture the concept of a monolithic French Islam.

Although We are French and Muslim’s eight chapters each has its own specific focus, reading across these textual boundaries reveals several cross-chapter visual themes, the three most salient of which will be investigated here. First, the photo-text depicts Muslim French who perform political or military jobs that surpass standard enactments of citizenship, rendering them what economist Kaushik Basu calls “metacitizens.”[34] Second, the consumerscapes of fashion and food in Keyser’s photographs offer sites for identity negotiation and selective acculturation, as Muslim French adopt some French cultural practices while preserving certain Islamic religio-cultural traditions. Finally, although most participants in We are French and Muslim are of Maghrebi origin, the project also includes Muslim French of European and sub-Saharan origins, thereby destabilizing Islam’s supposed status as an “Arab” religion; the photo-text instead depicts Islam as a worldwide faith that crosses ethnic boundaries. Each of these themes offers various vantage points for challenging anti-Muslim discourse in France—particularly negative patterns found in media representations of Islam.[35]

In reading any photo-text though, the danger of privileging either the visual or the textual over the other persists. The reader might view the photographs as mere illustrations of the text, or the text as fully explaining the visual. Yet the dialectic relationship between the two parts of a photo-text is more complex than that. As Andrew Stafford suggests, “text can change photography into something more political, because the addition of text to image makes the resultant photo-text engage with social and political realities, ‘anchors’ it into a (potentially) political (and polemical) ‘relay’.”[36] This reference to the two Barthesian functions of the linguistic message with regard to the iconic message offers a reminder that the locus of meaning exists not in a given image or its accompanying text, but in the tension established between them.[37] Indeed, Geisser’s tone is at times forceful and politically charged, echoing his earlier work on France’s “new Islamophobia.”[38] His contributions here imbue Keyser’s works with sociopolitical urgency and an historical anchor that the photographs or captions may not make readily apparent to readers. We are French and Muslim thus exemplifies how the photo-text genre foregrounds the politics of representation, here most salient in the work’s depictions of Muslim French performing political or military jobs.

More French than the Average Citizen: Muslim French as Metacitizens

Men and women who hold public office, work in civil service, or serve in the military embody the nation in ways most citizens never will. The photo-text introduces such individuals as “French like the others, or even a little more so, to the extent that in their respective domains they each exercise positions of responsibility in the service of citizens.”[39] They go beyond standard performances of citizenship to function as synecdoches of the Republic, or metacitizens. This role explains the hijacking of the photograph featuring Muslim French gendarmes and its persistent recycling on fearmongering websites, where any individual who does not fit into the imagined norm of what it means to “be French” represents a threat to that narrative. With metacitizens personifying the values of the nation-state in the eyes of local, national, and international communities, a Muslim French metacitizen becomes a supposed menace to a national narrative founded on “fictive ethnicity.”[40]

Contemporary perceptions of this incompatibility of republicanism and islamité originated in the aftermath of France’s invasion of Algeria in 1830. During the colonial era, renouncing legal and cultural norms of indigenous life was one step towards citizenship for native Algerians.[41] The discriminatory Native Code segregated Muslims and relegated them to a subordinate status. It disaggregated nationality and citizenship, and it isolated Muslims from public and political life, except in the case of subservient or auxiliary positions.[42] The state abrogated the code soon after World War II; however, in We are French and Muslim, Geisser contends “an imaginary Native Code nevertheless persists in people’s minds, explaining the numerous people who have difficulty conceiving that a practicing Muslim can also be an active citizen enamored with the Republic’s principles and values. Prejudices are tenacious at times: the vision of a French Muslim simultaneously frequenting a mosque and a Masonic temple is quite simply inconceivable.”[43] This perceived incompatibility is the photo-text’s first target.

Focusing on metacitizens, the first two chapters account for nearly one-third of the work, displaying the importance the photo-text attributes to depicting Muslims who are active citizens of the Republic. The first chapter, titled “Citizens First!,” opens with a photograph of Bouchra Elgouille stepping out of a voting booth (fig. 1), having just voted in the first round of the 2007 presidential election. Elgouille’s white outfit and light blue hijab connote two of the three colors of the French flag and the corresponding ideas of liberty and equality, both important virtues exemplified through her voting.[44] At the same time, the hijab signifies her Muslimness, whereas the passport she holds represents her citizenship in the French Republic. Elgouille’s portrait presents a normally banal practice of citizenship that, owing to the individual achieving it, becomes exceptional, particularly since it is also Elgouille’s first time to vote. As the photo-text’s initial subject, Elgouille characterizes Keyser’s overarching project through its combination of markers of Frenchness and Muslimness in a single entity. The subsequent photographs in the first chapter feature national and municipal politicians, civil servants, and social workers as examples of how Muslim French metacitizens navigate intersections of francité and islamité. Yet the most salient examples of this subjectivity appear in the second chapter, “Brothers in Arms: Muslims at Attention,” which comprises photographs of Muslims who serve in the French armed forces.

Fig. 1. © France Keyser/MYOP (Courtesy the artist)

The question of whether France should allow Muslim soldiers dates from the early days of the second colonial empire, but it becomes particularly important in twentieth-century French military history. During the Great War, Algerians accounted for approximately one-third of all colonial subjects in the French army.[45] Given Algeria’s status as a settler colony and an integral part of France, these men’s conscription gave rise to debates on the connection between fulfilling obligatory military service and attaining full citizenship rights. Richard Fogarty notes these soldiers’ Muslimness set in motion early endeavors to change the naturalization process in Algeria.[46] However, reform only occurred after the war. In 1919, the Jonnart Law redefined the prerequisites for Algerians to gain French citizenship, but with more rigorous requirements. As a result, it eliminated any possibility for Muslims seeking French citizenship to preserve their statut personnel, the legal status whereby they submitted to Koranic law in matters not directly related to colonial administration.[47] The low number of Muslims seeking naturalization—539 applications during the law’s first five years—attests to the Jonnart Law’s restrictive nature.[48] Colonial soldiers’ Muslimness, viewed as “an insurmountable obstacle,” continued to bar their road to citizenship during the interwar period.[49]

Of course, Muslims participated in the French armed forces throughout the interbellum and into the Second World War. With the 1942 debarkation of Allied Forces in North Africa, Maghrebi soldiers became pivotal to the battle against Nazi Germany. By November 1944, approximately 230,000 North Africans had joined the Free French forces.[50] However, De Gaulle’s myth of French liberation and the popular belief Americans freed the metropole eclipsed the importance of Maghrebi troops to Nazi Germany’s defeat.[51] Decolonization also obfuscated colonial troops’ achievements.[52] They were further penalized when the French government permanently froze their pensions in 1959 as an effect of independence, while French veterans regularly received cost of living adjustments. Algerian-French director Rachid Bouchareb’s 2006 film Indigènes (Days of Glory) denounced this inequality, bringing it to public attention.[53] Concomitantly, then-President Jacques Chirac brought the war pensions of indigenous troops still alive in line with those paid to Frenchmen.[54]

We are French and Muslim cites both this historical divide between Muslimness and citizenship in the colonies and the box office success of Days of Glory to introduce contemporary depictions of Muslims serving in the French armed forces. The 1996 suspension of conscription and obligatory national service professionalized the republican army, as Geisser reminds us in the photo-text.[55] Voluntary enlistment provides Muslims and non-Muslims alike the opportunity for a stable career while openly living their faith. However, the 2003 Stasi Commission report on the application of the principle of laïcité drew attention to the absence of Muslim military chaplains. The armed forces’ Muslim chaplaincies were founded in 2005, and within a year, Muslim chaplains joined their long-established Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish counterparts.[56] They hold the singular rank of aumônier militaire (military chaplain), a contractual appointment comparable to an officer. Chaplains belong to the republican institution but remain outside the normal chain of command. They thus serve in liminal spaces between officers and enlisted men, and between the religious and the secular.

Fig. 2. © France Keyser/MYOP (Courtesy the artist)

Many of Keyser’s photographs of Muslim French in the armed forces focus on chaplains, an unsurprising choice given their hybrid position as religious entities fulfilling a public service. For instance, photographs of Abdelhakim Mokhaissi performing two aspects of his role as chaplain bookend Chapter 2 of the photo-text. Mokhaissi appears in a white robe in the first image, where he leads five servicemen in prayer. The other men wear military attire, vestimentary signifiers of their republican identity. They stand shoeless though, hands folded on their chests, as they look down at the spot where their heads will soon prostrate—all corporeal signifiers of their religiosity. Communing together in their faith, the men do not completely abandon their identities as French soldiers as they exercise the religious imperative of prayer (fig. 2).[57] The two sides of their personas intertwine. Mokhaissi likewise fulfills a hybrid position, exercising his spiritual duties under the aegis of a republican institution. Closing the chapter is a two-page collage comprising four photographs of Mokhaissi. These images depict him in his non-religious role—as the military uniform he wears connotes—and thus demonstrate his unique position among his comrades. The first photograph, a medium close-up, shows Mokhaissi addressing a mostly unseen audience. Owing to the low angle shot, the viewer gazes up at Mokhaissi, like the audience before him. The camera angle lowers the vanishing point, giving him a larger presence. Mokhaissi appears too tall for the room as he towers over the viewer. This photographic technique positions Mokhaissi as someone of import who commands respect. Moreover, the viewer literally looks up at him, an optical signifier of Mokhaissi’s role as adviser and confidant for officers and soldiers alike. The other three photographs reinforce his social role through depictions of Mokhaissi interacting with a cross-section of his comrades—male and female, enlisted personnel and officers. Two images capture moments of levity between Mokhaissi and these individuals, connoting a chaplain’s role as a builder of morale among the forces. The final image shows the far-reaching nature of his service, as he walks with a captain and a member of the forces aeriennes stratégiques, the strategic air command charged with nuclear deterrence.

Fig. 3. © France Keyser/MYOP (Courtesy the artist)

Several photographs in the chapter feature other chaplains and their role as religious leaders in a secular institution, but two chaplains are of particular importance. First is Chaplain Abdellatif Benzellif, the man kneeling before the Qur’an and the biography of the prophet in the aforementioned photograph of Muslim gendarmes featured in the 20 Minutes article. Here, the photograph appears across a two-page spread (fig. 3).[58] The gendarme barracks provides an intimate setting for the performance of a republicanized version of Islam in which a male and a female gendarme worship together, thereby contravening norms of Islamic gender segregation. Sitting on the floor with their legs crossed, the gendarmes look down at the books. Their light blue polos bearing the word “gendarmerie” function as vestimentary markers of their civil role. Moreover, the woman’s head remains uncovered even as she performs a religious act, a signifier of her presence in republican public space and her subjectivity as an agent of the Republic. Unlike Mokhaissi, Benzellif does not wear a religious garment. Instead, he wears his gendarme attire: a long-sleeved button-down shirt and black tie. The only indication of his religion is an epaulette bearing the emblem of a Muslim military chaplain: two olive branches below a crescent moon.

Fig. 4. © France Keyser/MYOP (Courtesy the artist)

The second chaplain featured prominently in the chapter is Messaouda Houha. In the three photographs of Houha, viewers catch glimpses of how she navigates between her personal religiosity and her public role as the only female chaplain in the French armed forces. At work in a military hospital in Bron, Houha wears a standard uniform: white button-down shirt with the same epaulettes as Benzellif, black tie, and a long, black skirt. Talking with two male patients, her hair falls freely on her shoulders; she must fulfill her job without a headscarf as she represents the Republic. Meanwhile, Houha’s office represents an intermediary space for her. She does not wear her uniform to work; rather, she changes in her office, as evinced in the second photograph. Again, her Muslimness here is only signified through the crescent moon emblem on the hat sitting atop her cabinet. In the final photograph, the camera captures Houha walking through the gates to leave the hospital as she pulls a headscarf over her hair (fig. 4). Returning to the outside world and her private life, Houha reclaims clothing revealing her religio-cultural identity, garments her job in secular space prohibits her from wearing.

Although professionalized, the French armed services still signify what it means to be republican and the need to uphold the tenets of the nation-state. Likewise, holding political or civil office means that one personifies the Republic in local, national, and/or international spheres. Such individuals surpass the role of mere citizen to become representatives of the national collective. When Muslims serve in these metacitizen roles, the plurality of their positions can seem, at first blush, to contradict the notion of laïcité, particularly given Naomi Davidson’s assertion that republican discourse has long positioned Muslimness as an immutable quality.[59] Nevertheless, as Keyser’s photo-reportage reveals, acts of selective acculturation can allow individuals to express Frenchness and Muslimness as an intersectional subjectivity that oscillates between public and private spaces, much as observant Catholics, Jews, and Protestants do. Utilizing specific boundary work tactics, Muslim French establish the acceptability of particular behaviors in differing situations. In this vein the photographed subjects display markers of both francité and islamité that vary according to their embodied acts. It should not be assumed, however, that selective acculturation in France means fully compartmentalizing the dual aspects of Muslim French subjectivity. Indeed, one’s Muslimness informs one’s Frenchness and vice versa, so each must carve out space to function within the framework of the other.

Visualizing Intersections of Consumer Culture and Muslim Sensibilities in France

Although the photographs of metacitizens challenge views that Islam cannot coexist with republicanism in the sociopolitical sphere, negotiations of a workable Muslim French reality appear more readily in the marketplace where individual religious convictions and consumer capitalism co-evolve. Fashion and food, two spheres in which France receives international acclaim, function as strong markers of national identity. As key components of the French cultural imaginary, they help sustain the unified narrative of a timeless Frenchness. For Muslim French though, these consumerscapes offer sites for identity negotiation and selective acculturation; they adopt some French cultural practices while preserving certain Islamic conventions.[60] As with all groups in consumer societies, Muslim French construct and communicate identities through regular consumption patterns. Consequently, Islam becomes a lifestyle that suppliers can package and distribute to a market segment looking to observe religio-cultural traditions.

The growth of the Islamic culture industry worldwide means commodities and consumption practices increasingly help shape contemporary Muslim identities. As Banu Gökariksel and Ellen McLarney note, “Islamic knowledge, performances, and selves are more and more mediated through increasingly commodified cultural forms and spaces.”[61] In France consumer demand has led to greater availability of Islamic goods and services, from prayer mats being sold in Carrefour hypermarkets to travel agencies advertising preplanned pilgrimage trips to Mecca. Indeed, the consumer capitalist framework commodifies all things religious, as merchants supply new items to meet demands for religiously permissible products. Yet consumer capitalism and Islamic virtues have long been considered antithetical, with pleasure-seeking materialism and conspicuous consumption seen as being irreconcilable with Islam’s modest nature and spiritual center.[62] Nuancing this contradiction, Muslim French balance religious prescription with republican consumer capitalism. In the photo-text, this negotiation manifests in Muslim French consumption acts.

Keyser’s Muslim French Fashionistas

Keyser’s photograph of a woman wearing a Louis Vuitton headscarf illustrates how Muslims navigate the tension between religio-cultural conventions and conspicuous consumerism. Consumption patterns, particularly of luxury goods, remain integral to Western capitalist societies. France’s international reputation as a center of couture forms one facet of the nation’s identity, and individuals’ clothing choices help construct their social identities. Donning Islamic garments communicates a desire to express one’s Muslimness and thereby differentiates the wearer from secular counterparts. This photograph thus prompts the viewer to question the interactions between haute couture and veiling, two vestimentary systems one might normally view as being diametrically opposed.

Indeed, the veil functions historically as the most salient visual marker separating Muslim women from others.[63] Numerous claims about the supposed incompatibility of Islam and republicanism focus on the veil. For many French nationalists, the veiled woman remains symbolic of Muslim unwillingness to integrate into European society. Some critics contend men force the veil on women to relegate them physically and psychologically to an inferior social status.[64] For decades though, anthropological studies have found multiple motivations exist for wearing the veil, including religious devotion, womanliness, and fashion.[65] Yet in Keyser’s photographs, reasons for veiling are less important than the headscarf’s role as a signifier of women’s Muslimness in French public space. As such, veiling in the photo-text visibly affirms religious affiliation.

Although headscarves remain a popular signifier of Islamic femininity, some Muslim French have embraced more Westernized attire to negotiate public life. Consequently, the women the photo-text calls “fashionistas” do not wear traditional garments but instead “Islamize” Western outfits to reconcile religio-cultural identity and sartorial desires. This choice permits them to engage in French cultural and social spheres while enacting contemporary manifestations of Islamic femininity. It also exemplifies a standardization occurring throughout much of the Muslim world of the hijab as the primary form of veiling, often minimized as a headscarf combined with modern clothing trends.[66]

Fig. 5. © France Keyser/MYOP (Courtesy the artist)

The photo-text expands on Muslim French fashion choices through photographs of women shopping for shoes. The most poignant image to do so occupies a two-page spread (fig. 5). A headscarf-clad woman stands before a wall of silver, gold, and black high heels. The footwear’s sparkling details connote the opulence such items bestow on their wearer. The shoes sit inside shelves whose hexagonal shape evokes the French metropole. In another image, the same woman tries on a fuchsia, peep-toed shoe with a large flower on top. Her leg slightly bent, she gazes down to judge how the shoe looks on her foot. This simple gesture of evaluating the shoe’s appearance marks her as fashion conscious, as does the trendy, relatively modest outfit she wears. In her lived practice of dress along a continuum of clothing choices, she mediates her religion’s requisite socio-moral behavior with individual aesthetic considerations and fashion preferences to create a personalized look.

Wearing flashy, brightly colored shoes or expensive designer scarves though transgresses devout Islamic conceptions of decorum. The term “modesty” as it is used among many conservative Muslims relates not only to a person’s internal character but also to the external display of dignity through discreet and unobtrusive conduct in interpersonal interactions. In other words, individuals should refrain from drawing others’ attention and shun ostentatious displays of wealth.[67] In social spaces where conspicuous consumption is valued though, these demands become contradictory. As a result, the complex interweaving of visible piety and fashion, and the bilateral compromises made to mediate between them, remind us that Islamic notions of modesty are not stable transhistorically or transnationally.

Halal Products, Buyer Confidence, and Evolving French Consumerscapes

Conversely, religiously prescribed dietary restrictions remain relatively uniform throughout the Islamic world.[68] Dietary rules may be obeyed even when other religious tenets become negotiable. Studies have shown migrants’ food habits generally evolve more slowly than other cultural traditions because they consume many meals at home.[69] For Muslims in France, consumption of halal meat, that is to say, meat from animals slaughtered according to Islamic rites, often represents a cultural tradition more than a religious one.[70] Furthermore, “halal” increasingly signifies a consumer lifestyle more than a marker of faith, with the term connoting purity and quality.[71] Today’s processed foods often contain long lists of ingredients, additives, and preservatives, many of which are derived from animals and hard to identify based on product packaging (riboflavin, for instance, may be derived from plants, and thus halal, or from pork liver or kidneys, and so haram).[72] As such, “halal” as a discursive certification now appears on an array of products to guide consumption decisions, particularly for younger city-dwellers who often place greater credence in packaging claims.[73]

Several of Keyser’s photographs detailing the production and distribution of halal items focus on sheep and the Muslim holiday of Aïd el-Kébir, the Festival of the Sacrifice. Her choice to highlight this celebration engages the common stance that most sheep killed in France using Islamic sacrificial rites are for Aïd el-Kébir celebrations.[74] Each year, animal rights activists use the holiday as a platform for condemning ritual sacrifice as animal cruelty since the sheep are not stunned first. Additionally, media outlets disseminate stories of Muslims performing illegal

sacrifices, with accounts of sheep killed clandestinely in bathtubs, basements, and garages. Yet holiday sales figures indicate that the majority of Muslim French acquire ritually sacrificed sheep through legal commercial distribution channels.[75]

Fig. 6. © France Keyser/MYOP (Courtesy the artist)

Though We are French and Muslim represents the production process with a few slaughterhouse images, it moves quickly to distribution, focusing on French mass retailer Groupe Casino which launched the first all-halal private label in 2009. In one photograph, shoppers push carts in a Géant Casino hypermarket. Each cart contains two large, sealed boxes bearing the store’s logo. The caption reveals Casino charges 165 euros for a ritually sacrificed sheep, presumably in these boxes.[76] Keyser also takes viewers into the meat aisle of a Casino market where a young man examines selections of cold cuts and deli meats (fig. 6). A sign hanging over packages of steak, duck, and chicken bears the words “Halal Products,” designating the space where halal-conscious Muslims can find meats suitable for their consumption. Our view of the entire sign above a relatively small display connotes the narrow range of selections available. Although non-Muslim shoppers can choose from the store’s wide-ranging stock, the photograph’s framing signifies the limited, albeit ever-growing, diversity in halal options found in French grocery stores at the time.

The photo-text juxtaposes this image inside a national supermarket chain with a photograph of the exterior of Islam viandes (Islam Meats), a neighborhood butcher located at the Centre commercial Les Puces in Marseille. Sharing a page, the two images engage with concerns over halal products’ authenticity, a major point of contention for consumers. In the marketplace “halal” remains a “credence quality attribute,” a product characteristic that consumers cannot truly evaluate because of a lack of personal knowledge about the production process and supply chain from which it originates.[77] For a successful transaction, suppliers must convincingly communicate the presence of such intangible qualities, and consumers must trust the source of such claims.

The photograph of Islam viandes reveals how the vendor’s bilingual signage reinforces its products’ genuineness. Utilizing the colors of the Algerian flag, the white sign bears the shop’s name in green letters, with the stylized ‘v’ in “viandes” also serving as the “i” in “Islam” and red Arabic script. The sign’s French-language catchphrase “Mérite Votre Confiance” (Merits Your Confidence) does not specify which characteristics of the business warrant consumers’ trust. For French monolinguals, the information stops here. They see the red Arabic script but do not know what it means; instead, the script serves as an iconic signifier of the butcher’s islamité, and they might assume it simply translates the French. The script, however, comprises the linguistic message “quality and halal,” signifying attributes in which Arabic-literate customers can place confidence. Indeed, the words in Arabic appear just beneath “viandes” and thus further mark the meat as possessing both qualities. As consumer behaviorists Karijn Bonne and Wim Verbeke have shown, assurance in the “halalness” of food remains predicated on faith in the supplier: “Buying at the Islamic butcher is exemplary for behavior where product authenticity and trust are mediated through personal interaction. ... Trust is also strongly based on the fact that the butcher is a Muslim responsible for his acts towards God.”[78] Thus, Muslim butchers inspire faith in their supply chain, and for many believers, only another Muslim can truly guarantee halalness.[79]

Contrasting Islam viandes, which “merits your confidence,” with Casino, which makes no such claim, these two photographs connote uncertainty over the quality of goods sold by larger French retailers. The young man in Casino stands, gazing at shelves without reaching for any items. With no Arabic script, the signage targets a French-literate audience. Some product packaging bears words in Arabic, but the French words appear in larger fonts and often written completely in capital letters, particularly the word “halal.” No butcher helps the customer or substantiates the animals’ ritualized slaughter. Moreover, no one reassures the shopper about the lack of cross-contamination (a concern for Muslim consumers, who often perceive supermarkets as being unhygienic) or provides direct information about the supply chain.[80] The consumer must trust the labels. Faith in packaging claims remains problematic though, as evinced by numerous accusations of “fake halal” products that have resulted in items being pulled from the market.[81] Read through this lens, the man’s non-action before the wall of halal meat signifies an uncertainty in the credence quality attribute of mass-produced halal goods.

At the time of the photographs’ production, the Muslim consumer base in France was estimated at 4.7 million individuals,[82] a significant number of shoppers potentially demanding halal goods. France’s halal market is consumer driven. Grocers adapt to demand by providing greater halal options, particularly ready to eat, convenient, and individually portioned meals for the urban consumer.[83] Many suppliers have entered the halal business in hopes of capturing part of this market share, and their products occupy an increasingly visible space on store shelves. As a result, they have changed the face of republican consumptionscapes. Capitalizing on this evolving consumer trend, stores have expanded space for halal food and for signage and packaging that affirm products’ extrinsic halal attribute. Today, France’s Muslim presence often appears graphically on store shelves in the form of Arabic script. Likewise, as the photograph of Islam viandes exemplifies, Arabic enters public streets via store signs designating Muslim businesses, from butchers to Islamic bookshops to restaurants. This change increasingly allows Muslims to employ strategic consumption patterns. By boycotting specific items or generally refusing “Western” products when halal substitutes are available, these individuals engage in “politicized halal consumption,” which Manni Crone calls “a normal, democratic form of politics that is not contrary to the principle of secularism.”[84] Indeed, exercising purchasing power to support trusted goods or boycott dubious ones epitomizes consumer capitalism in a secular state. Keyser’s photographs thus depict selective acculturation through consumption as a two-sided market process in which producers provide a growing number of non-negotiable, religio-cultural products to respond to demand while Muslim French manifest their blended identity through purchasing habits. As a result, Keyser’s project destabilizes the supposedly antithetical relationship between Islamic religio-cultural traditions and “Western” consumer capitalism. Muslim French participate in selective acculturation to balance Islamic traditions with life in a commodity culture. We are French and Muslim thus documents a specific historical moment as markets evolve in response to a growing Muslim consumer base.

Islam in Shades of Black, Blanc, and Beur: Contesting a Muslim French “Arabness”

The photographs examined thus far feature subjects that display putative ethnic traits commonly read as signifying “Arabness.” The prominent place Maghrebis occupy in the photo-text is not surprising, as North Africans account for most of France’s Muslim population. They have also been the most visible and vocal embodiment of Islam on French soil.[85] Yet the photo-text portrays Islam in France as more than a religious signifier of populations of Maghrebi origin. Viewers find sub-Saharans interspersed among Maghrebis, particularly in photographs of group prayers. These group images never foreground Africans’ presence though. Instead, viewers must scrutinize the crowds for these men. This visual hide-and-seek reflects not only sub-Saharans’ relatively small numbers in France vis-à-vis North Africans but also their wide-ranging effacement from public discourse on Muslims in French society.

Nevertheless, the photo-text does not limit itself to such images. Instead, it also tells the visual stories of a few sub-Saharan Muslims and Franco-French converts to Islam. These images characterize Muslimness as a religio-cultural identity that surpasses ethnic divisions. They thus complicate the widespread view of Islam as an “Arab” religion and instead offer a multiethnic portrait of what it means to be Muslim French.

Keyser’s photographs of Muslims of sub-Saharan origin generally emphasize group solidarity and vestimentary signifiers of Muslimness and Africanness. At a meeting for Saïd Ahamada, a 2008 Democratic Movement (MoDem) candidate in Marseille’s municipal elections, the camera lens captures the audience members instead of Ahamada himself. We see many sub-Saharans wearing traditional clothing of the African diaspora, such as Senegalese kaftans (robes) and kufis (brimless, short, rounded caps). They sit close together so their bodies merge on the visual plane, signifying mutual familiarity and unity. Yet Nassurdine Haidiri, deputy mayor of Marseille, provides an exception to the traditional African outfit. Haidiri wears official attire indicative of a French politician: suit, shirt, and tie accompanied by a tricolor sash connoting his municipal role. Offsetting this sartorial separation, Haidiri maintains physical closeness with his diasporic compatriots; he stands shoulder to shoulder with his kufi-clad interlocutor. The photograph simultaneously conveys Haidiri’s unique position in the Republic and his continued place in the larger African community. These photographs though present public displays of Muslimness within the sub-Saharan diaspora as principally a male homosocial affair.

The main exception to this masculinized image of French African Islam arises in a tetrad of photographs presenting Ndella, a young, black, Muslim woman. These photographs maintain the importance of a gendered group cohesion (Ndella only appears alone when at home, in prayer) but without restriction to origins. Indeed, Ndella interacts only with non-black women, an image of female solidarity across ethnic lines. The accompanying text casts Ndella as an extraordinary woman whose feminist consciousness compels her, in the name of gender equality within the framework of Islam, to seeks avenues for change:

The photo-text’s linguistic message initially positions Ndella’s choices as provocative, yet the photographs show her in relatively ordinary situations. In one she sits with two other headscarf-clad female students in a private Arabic class. In another she participates in a peaceful street demonstration with other women, most likely members of the CFPE. In both cases the photographs reinforce the identity the text assigns to Ndella, but the images appear banal alongside it. The other two photographs depict Ndella in her apartment where she appears in more traditional religious and familial roles. In the first, she prays alone on the living room floor. In the second, she sits in an armchair and observes two small children playing nearby. While the caption does not comment directly on the additional photographs, these images support a reading of Ndella’s visual identity as commonplace. They occupy the same amount of space as the aforementioned scenes, thus equating the prosaic nature of praying and childcare with Ndella’s other actions. In spite of the linguistic message, the photographs mark Ndella, her religiosocial engagement, and indeed her blackness as “normal,” thereby continuing the leitmotif of commonness that prevails in Keyser’s overarching representation of Muslim French subjectivities.

In terms of the intersection between Islam and French national identity, the most striking group of non-Arab Muslims in the project comprises converts to Islam, so-called white Franco-French (Français de souche) who profess a newfound faith in Allah. Reasons for religious conversion are multifarious.[87] For young-in-the-faith Muslim “Westerners” though, feelings of inadequacy owing to their non-Arab ethnic origins may lead them to adopt overzealous viewpoints.[88] A few high-profile cases of white Muslim French involved in terrorist acts stigmatize male converts although such radicalization represents “an ultra-minority attitude.”[89] Popular discourse on the “radicalized convert” also reveals a continuing fear in contemporary French society about “contagion effects” and “invisible enemies.” Meanwhile, the same discourse often criticizes female converts for lacking self-respect or submitting to a Muslim man’s patriarchal demands. Nevertheless, with estimates of around 3,500 conversions to Islam annually in France, this amorphous group will assume an ever-increasing role in shaping the evolving image of French Islam and future interactions between Muslim populations and the nation-state.

These prevailing, gendered constructions of Islamic converts are absent from the photo-text though. Instead, photographs of new Muslims serve as banal counterexamples to this dominant imagery. In the chapter entitled “My Personal Conversion,” the photographs and text primarily focus on two individuals—one man and one woman—and the prosaic nature of their religious choice. The captions first invoke the converts’ Judeo-Christian names, Christophe and Isabelle, as a way to signify their a priori “Frenchness.” One caption adds that Christophe, who adopted the name “Aymen” when he converted, grew up with Muslim friends, thereby representing what Éric Geoffroy calls a “proximity conversion.”[90] The photographs show Aymen peacefully in his apartment, images that stand in contrast to narratives on radicalized male converts. In one he reads the Qur’an by an open window; in the other he converses with a man and headscarf-clad woman, family members with whom he lives. The photo-text thus returns to the leitmotif of Muslims living common, everyday lives so that Aymen exemplifies the preponderance of converts who do not turn to fundamentalism.

Whereas the photographs of Aymen meld well with Keyser’s framing of the everyday, the nine images of Isabelle form an exceptional visual narrative of a once-in-a-lifetime experience: her conversion to Islam. We see her performing ablutions in a bathtub and then reviewing the profession of faith, or shahada, she will soon pronounce during the ceremony. Later, she sits in a prayer room among other women and recites the well-rehearsed words into a microphone for all to hear. The visual narrative ends with Isabelle emotionally hugging two women as others crowd around to welcome and congratulate her (fig. 7). The photo-text thus frames her conversion as a moment of group solidarity, community, and mutual love. Moreover, Isabelle occupies a special place in the photo-text, as her portrait appears on the cover. As a twenty-two-year-old Frenchwoman, she has experienced the republican education system, a site where future citizens are molded and national identity reified. With her conversion to Islam complete, Isabelle immediately blends into the mass of believers because converts are not a separate group within the Ummah.[91] She now embodies the photo-text’s titular duality of being at once French and Muslim.

We are French and Muslim avoids dominant representations of converts as potential terrorists, but anxiety still exists in France regarding these individuals because of their ability to blend in. Seen as epitomes of the “invisible enemy,” individuals like Isabelle and Christophe remain targets of Islamophobic discourse that fears the expansion of a parallel Muslim society. Many on the far-right view such conversions as indicative of a growing Islamization of the Republic. Such apprehensions have much to do with desires to protect and legitimize France’s fictive ethnicity. Yet Keyser’s lens captures how religio-cultural incarnations of Muslimness and sociopolitical constructs of Frenchness can cohabitate in a space where selective acculturation becomes a “workable reality,” at least at the individual level. Only time will tell if this accomplishment can be generalized across the plurality of France’s Muslim populations. In the end, any accommodation made for this community requires a shift in conceiving Frenchness in the twenty-first century.

Fig. 7. © France Keyser/MYOP (Courtesy the artist)

Conclusion

“For you, what does it mean to be French?” Between 2 November 2009 and 31 January 2010, this fundamental, yet highly subjective and reductive question prompted more than fifty thousand online contributions for the “Great Debate on National Identity” launched by Éric Besson, then-minister of immigration, integration, national identity, and co-development. It evolved into a highly polemical affair, reflecting the volatile nature of questions of immigration, religion, ethnicity, and national identity in contemporary France. Many responses adopted a resolutely anti-Islam slant.[92] At first, being French and being Muslim appear irreconcilable realities given the republican emphasis on universalism and laïcité, not to mention a generalized French belief that Islam is “a rigid and totalizing system filled with corporeal rituals ... performed in certain kinds of aesthetic spaces.”[93] As some Muslim French challenge the notion of a difference-blind republicanism though, they “embrace the multiplicity of identity [and] recognize their various affiliations, such as ‘French’ and ‘Muslim,’ in a nonhierarchical way and insist on the compatibility of these affiliations.”[94] Accordingly, they modify sociocultural practices of Frenchness and Muslimness within the exigencies of the other to reconcile these two subjectivities so often presented as being incompatible.

We are French and Muslim moves this sociopolitical issue into the cultural arena of visual representation. Keyser’s project engages with the particularities and difficulties of crafting a republican variant of Islam capable of coexisting with laïcité. The photographs stand in sharp contrast to the amalgamations and phantasms that often color negative perceptions of Islam in France, many of which find origins in colonial visualizations of Islam.[95] The lack of a worldwide, monolithic Islam permits adherents to develop a liberal incarnation of the religion attuned to the cultural demands of secular society and individual citizenship.[96] Politicians, soldiers, and civil workers stand as metacitizens of the Republic and bear few visible markers of their Muslimness except when they retire to personal, spiritual space away from public eyes. This sort of boundary work represents a first step in navigating between francité and islamité. Muslims’ identity negotiations in French consumerscapes, however, require more than a single-sided adjustment by the individual. In a consumer-driven marketplace, Muslims may have to adapt to some “Western” sartorial and dietary ideals, but the market also competes for Islamic purchasing power by offering items catering to this population. Keyser’s images of supermarket shoppers show that Muslim French use capitalist consumption patterns to fulfill religio-cultural alimentary principles. The photo-text thus depicts consumerism and Islamic virtues as less antithetical than normally perceived. Finally, Keyser’s lens shines light on the presumption of Muslimness being necessarily tethered to Arabness, thereby destabilizing misconceptions of Islam as solely a religion of (Arab) immigrants. In particular, French converts to Islam epitomize the fusion of a Muslim French identity, as they were citizens of the Republic first. They have the requisite understanding of sociocultural aspects of Frenchness to navigate public life and, as relatively recent initiates to Islam, are still mastering acceptable displays of Muslimness not only in French society but also within the Muslim community. Ultimately, such individuals perhaps best demonstrate how selective acculturation functions in France; they serve as models to help persons of (post)colonial origin construct individualized subjectivities with suitable degrees of Islamic religio-culturalism and republicanism.

Fernando asks “whether one can be publicly Muslim without automatically being classified as different and whether one can be visibly but unremarkably Muslim in France.”[97] Keyser’s project suggests it is possible. As ethnocultural identities and the political construct of citizenship diverge, French national identity becomes progressively nebulous. Despite popular sentiments to the contrary, France has long been multiethnic. Anti-Muslim discourse tries to reinforce a French cultural hegemony that continues to dissipate, taking with it the unified narrative of a timeless national identity that bolsters the French imagined community and its fictive ethnicity. In response, fierce proponents of French secularism often resort to a radical universalism primarily targeting Islam.[98] Integrating Islam, however, does not require abandoning universalist principles, as new codes of comportment must be added to the toolkit of permissible practices available within the Republic. We are French and Muslim shows such shifts occurring on a local, individual level and reminds us that Islam and French national identity are neither immutable nor completely malleable. If we view the photo-text as a record of a specific historical moment in the evolutionary story of integrating Islam in France, then Keyser’s subjects suggest ways that selective acculturation by Muslim French along with similar sociocultural adjustments within French society could eventually lead to the full solubility of Islam in the Republic. The photo-text thus stands as a harbinger of a potential future in which Muslim French will simply just be seen as French.

Notes

1. “Cette photo de gendarmes musulmans fait polémique sans raison depuis 7 ans,” 20 minutes, updated 20 March 2017, https://www.20minutes.fr/high-tech/2034255-20170320-photo-gendarmes-musulmans-fait-polemique-raison-depuis-7-ans.

2. Andy Stafford, Photo-texts: Contemporary French Writing of the Photographic Image (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), 23. Stafford attributes the word “hijacked” to Gisèle Freund as a translation of her use of the French verb détourner to describe this phenomenon. Freund provides several examples of the same photographs being used by various media outlets to different political ends, ones that are often diametrically opposed, noting that “the objectivity of a photograph is only an illusion. The captions that comment on it can change its meaning entirely.” Gisèle Freund, Photographie et société (Paris: Seuil, 1974), 155.

3. Mayanthi L. Fernando, The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 13. Fernando chooses “Muslim French” as a translation for citoyen français de confession musulmane, noting her intention for the neologism to be awkward linguistically in order to reflect how the individuals it designates lie outside of the conventional French imaginary. For a full explanation of her reasons, see Fernando, The Republic Unsettled, 62-63. Like Fernando’s interlocutors, the individuals in We are French and Muslim most often emphasize citizenship before religious affiliation. Thus, the present article adopts Fernando’s term “Muslim French” to highlight these individuals’ perceived unbelonging in French society.

4. Elyamine Settoul, “Vincent Geisser : ‘L’extraordinaire banalité’ des Français musulmans,” Respect Mag, 6 May 2010, http://www.respectmag.com/2010/05/06/vincent-geisser-lextraordinaire-banalit-des-fran-ais-musulmans-3473.

5. Joseph Downing, French Muslims in Perspective: Nationalism, Post-Colonialism and Marginalisation under the Republic (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), 136.

6. John R. Bowen, Can Islam be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 5. Italics in original.

7. Olivier Roy, foreword to Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France, by Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), ix.

8. Naomi Davidson, Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 2.

9. Ibid.

10. Downing, French Muslims in Perspective, 11.

11. Ibid, 20.

12. Ibid, 10.

13. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity’,” Theory and Society 29, no. 1 (2000): 18

14. See, for example, Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976); Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Patrick Weil, Qu’est-ce qu’un Français ? Histoire de la nationalité française depuis la Révolution (Paris: Grasset, 2002); Gérard Noiriel, Le creuset français : Histoire de l’immigration XIXe-XXe siècle. 2nd ed. (Paris: Seuil, 2006); Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006); Alec G. Hargreaves, Multi-Ethnic France: Immigration, Politics, Culture, and Society, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2007); Fred Constant, “‘Black France’ and the National Identity Debate: How Best to Be Black and French?” in Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness, eds. Trica Danielle Keaton, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Tyler Stovall (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012): 123-144; and Jean Beaman, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017).

15. Downing, French Muslims in Perspective, 26.

16. Patrick Weil, “Nationalities and Citizenships: The Lessons of the French Experience for Germany and Europe,” trans. George Lavy and Josh Gibson, in Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe, ed. Mary Fulbrook (London: Routledge, 1996), 81. Renan contends that “a nation ... in the present comes down to one tangible fact: consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue communal life.” Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation ? 2nd ed. (Paris: Lévy, 1882), 27.

17. “Enquête sur l’intégration républicaine,” IPSOS, summary presentation prepared by Brice Teinturier and Mathieu Gallard, January 2019, slide 4. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2019-02/rapport_ipsos_integration_republicaine_fev_2019_3.pdf.

18. For examinations of the historical evolutions of these values and how they are deployed by different political parties, see Jeremy Jennings, “Liberty,” in The French Republic: History, Values, Debates, eds. Edward Berenson, Vincent Duclert, and Christophe Prochasson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 95-102; Jeremy Jennings, “Equality,” in The French Republic: History, Values, Debates, eds. Edward Berenson, Vincent Duclert, and Christophe Prochasson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 103-111; Anne-Claude Ambroise-Rendu, “Fraternity,” trans. Arthur Goldhammer, in The French Republic: History, Values, Debates, eds. Edward Berenson, Vincent Duclert, and Christophe Prochasson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 112-118; and Jean Baubérot, Les sept laïcités françaises: Le modèle français de laïcité n’existe pas (Paris: Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2015).

19. Beaman, Citizen Outsider, 70.

20. Ibid, 90.

21. Trica Keaton, Muslim Girls and the Other France: Race, Identity Politics, and Social Exclusion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 33.

22. Downing, French Muslims in Perspective, 90.

23. Tim Edensor, National Identity, Popular Culture, and Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg, 2002), vi.

24. Trica Keaton, Muslim Girls and the Other France, 33.

25. Fernando, The Republic Unsettled, 86.

26. Hargreaves, Multi-Ethnic France, 120.

27. Fernando, The Republic Unsettled, 83.

28. Keaton, Muslim Girls and the Other France, 10.

29. Fernando, The Republic Unsettled, 65.

30. Ibid, 27.

31. Ibid, 79.

32. France Keyser and Vincent Geisser, Nous sommes français et musulmans (Paris: Autrement, 2010), 6.

33. Roland Barthes, “Rhétorique de l’image,” Communications 4 (1964): 44.

34. Basu notes the role of metacitizen activates when citizens are called upon to provide social services to their compatriots. Kaushik Basu, Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 74.

35. See Thomas Deltombe, L’islam imaginaire : la construction médiatique de l’islamophobie en France, 1975-2005 (Paris: La Découverte, 2005). Deltombe builds on Edward Said’s work on Western media representations of Islam while focusing specifically on the French context. See also Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (New York: Pantheon, 1981).

36. Stafford, Photo-texts, 193.

37. Barthes, “Rhétorique de l’image,”44-45.

38. Vincent Geisser, La Nouvelle Islamophobie (Paris: La Découverte, 2003).

39. Keyser and Geisser, Nous sommes français et musulmans, 9. Italics in original.

40. Étienne Balibar, “La forme nation : Histoire et idéologie,” in Race, nation, classe. Les identités ambigües, eds. Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (Paris: La Découverte, 1988), 130.

41. Paul A. Silverstein, “The Fantasy and Violence of Religious Imagination: Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism in France and North Africa,” in Islamophobia/Islamophilia: Beyond the Politics of Enemy and Friend, ed. Andrew Shylock (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 146.

42. On imperial and local dynamics of the Native Code, see Isabelle Merle, “Retour sur le reìgime de l’indigeìnat. Genèse et contradictions des principes répressifs dans l’Empire français,” French Politics, Culture & Society 20, no. 2 (2002): 77-97.

43. Keyser and Geisser, Nous sommes français et musulmans, 10-12. Achille Mbembe has likewise asserted the Native Code continues to inspire present-day French laws enacted to control undesirable populations in the Metropole. See Achille Mbembe, “The Republic and Its Beast: On the Riots in the French Banlieues,” in Frenchness and the African Diaspora: Identity and Uprising in Contemporary France, eds. Charles Tshimanga, Didier Gondola, and Peter J. Bloom (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 52.

44. Historically, the flag’s colors do not signify the individual words of the French motto, yet the two triptychs have become increasingly associated with each other, as they often appear together. The French government’s logo adopted in 1999, in which “Liberté,” “Égalité,” and “Fraternité” each appear under the respective colors in the merged image of the French flag and Marianne, has further reinforced this informal connection.

45. Richard S. Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914-1918 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 243.

46. Ibid, 245.

47. Ibid, 258.

48. Martin Thomas, The French Empire Between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics, and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 73.

49. Fogarty, Race and War, 265. For a historical treatment of Muslims’ status in the French armed forces during the interwar period, see Belkacem Recham, Les Musulmans algeìriens dans l’armeìe française (1919-1945) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996).

50. Mareìchal Juin, Meìmoires : Algers, Tunis, Rome (Paris: Fayard, 1959), 365.

51. Recham, Les Musulmans algeìriens, 276.

52. Ibid, 277.

53. Scholars have argued IndigeÌnes is as much a historical film as a film about France’s contemporary struggle to come to terms with its colonial past. See, for example, Alec G. Hargreaves, “IndigeÌnes: A Sign of the Times,” Research in African Literatures 38, no. 4 (2007): 204-16; and Mireille Rosello, “Rachid Bouchareb’s IndigeÌnes: Political or Ethical Event of Memory?” in Screening Integration: Recasting Maghrebi Immigration in Contemporary France, eds. Sylvie Durmelat and Vinay Swamy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 112-26.

54. In 2002, the center-right government had already adjusted pension payments, but it had only brought them in line with the cost of living in the former colonies where they were to be paid. Budget officials at the time argued a full equalization of the pensions would risk destabilizing economies in the former colonies.

55. Keyser and Geisser, Nous sommes français et musulmans, 43. The French armed forces comprise the armeìe de terre, the armeìe de l’air, the marine nationale and the gendarmerie nationale.

56. The military chaplains’ corps has been a legal, permanent, structured institution since 1880, at which time Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant chaplaincies existed. On the historical evolution of this entity, see Xavier Boniface, L’Aumônerie militaire française (1914-1962) (Paris: Cerf, 2001).

57. Figure 2 is an alternate photograph provided by Keyser for this article, as the photograph printed in Nous sommes français et musulmans could not be reproduced here. The photograph in figure 2 shows the moments after the photograph from the photo-text was taken. Here, Mokhaissi and the men have knelt in prayer.

58. Provided by Keyser for this article, figure 3 is an alternate angle of the photograph printed in Nous sommes français et musulmans and is provided here for illustration. The original photograph can be seen in the photo-text and in the aforementioned 20 Minutes article at https://www.20minutes.fr/high-tech/2034255-20170320-photo-gendarmes-musulmans-fait-polemique-raison-depuis-7-ans.

59. Davidson, Only Muslim, 2.

60. Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 267; Portes and Rumbaut base their definition of “selective acculturation” on the particularities of American immigrant subjectivities, not all of which hold true for Muslims in France. Additionally, Portes and Rumbaut warn against confusing selective acculturation with multiculturalism, which they see as perpetuating ethnic enclaves within the host population.

61. Banu Gökariksel and Ellen McLarney, “Introduction: Muslim Women, Consumer Capitalism, and the Islamic Culture Industry,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 6, no. 3 (2010): 1.

62. Ibid, 4.

63. Nilüfer Göle, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 1.

64. See, most notably, Fadela Amara, Ni putes ni soumises (Paris: La Découverte, 2003).

65. In addition to Keaton, Muslim Girls and the Other France, see, for example, Fatima Mernissi, Le Harem politique : le prophète et les femmes (Paris: Albin Michel, 1987); Françoise Gaspard and Farhad Khosrokhavar, Le foulard et la République (Paris: Découverte, 1995); Farhad Khosrokhavar, L’islam des jeunes (Paris: Flammarion, 1997); Nancy Venel, Musulmanes françaises : des pratiquantes voilées à l’université (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999); Emma Tarlo, Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith (Oxford: Berg, 2010); and Jennifer A. Selby, Questioning French Secularism: Gender Politics and Islam in a Parisian Suburb (New York: Palgrave, 2012).

66. Marnia Lazreg, Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 13.

67. Ibid, 20. For one example of the warnings that critics of “Western” influences on Islam make against such “excessive” consumption, see Ali A. Mazrui, “Islam in a More Conservative Western World,” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 13, no. 2 (1996): 246-49.

68. On Islamic food prescriptions, see Mohammed Hocine Benkheira, Islam et interdits alimentaires : Juguler l’animalité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000).

69. See, for instance, Song-Yi Park et al., “Mothers’ Acculturation and Eating Behaviors of Korean American Families in California,” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 35, no. 3 (2003): 142.

70. See, for example, Karijn Bonne and Wim Verbeke, “Muslim Consumers’ Attitude towards Meat Consumption in Belgium: Insights from a Means-End Chain Approach,” Anthropology of Food 5 (2006), accessed 12 October 2018, http://aof.revues.org/90.

71. For an historical assessment of this evolution, see Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, “De la viande halal à l’halal food. Comment le halal s’est développé en France ?” Revue européenne des migrations internationales 21, no. 3 (2005): 125-47.

72. Such items typically receive the designation mushbooh, which identifies the grey area between haram and halal and thus, in theory, best avoided by devout Muslims.

73. Alberto Bernués, Ana Olaizola, and Kate Corcoran, “Extrinsic Attributes of Red Meat as Indicators of Quality in Europe: An Application for Market Segmentation,” Food Quality and Preference 14 (2003): 271-74.

74. Gil Raconis, “Avis sur l’abattage rituel,” Œuvre d’Assistance aux Bêtes d’Abattoirs, accessed 12 October 2018, http://www.oaba.fr/pdf/reglementations/Avis_sur_abattage_rituel.pdf.

75. To meet increased demand for halal meat, each year officially sanctioned, temporary slaughterhouses are also established for Aïd el-Kébir These establishments follow the same strict government standards for halal production, but concerned citizens often erroneously see them as being illegal due to their transitory nature. See Manuel Valls and Stéphane Le Foll, “Circulaire interministérielle DGAL/SDSSA/C2013-8004 du 24/09/2013 relative à la célébration de la fête religieuse musulmane de l’Aïd al Adha,” Bulletin officiel du Ministère de l’agriculture, de l’agroalimentaire et de la forêt 39 (2013), accessed 12 October 2021, https://info.agriculture.gouv.fr/gedei/site/bo-agri/instruction-C2013-8004/telechargement.

76. Keyser and Geisser, Nous sommes français et musulmans, 99. Prices are from 2010. By 2016, Les Echos was reporting the cost to be upwards of 300 euros. See Samuel Chalom, “L’Aïd-el-Kébir, un (petit) business à part entière,” Les Echos, accessed 22 October 2020, https://www.lesechos.fr/2016/09/laid-el-kebir-un-petit-business-a-part-entiere-214813. Subsequent annual reports around the holiday in France note a significant elevation in the cost of a whole sheep compared to the rest of the year, with holiday prices varying from 260 to 400 euros depending on the region and the year.

77. Michael R. Darby and Edi Karni, “Free Competition and the Optimal Amount of Fraud,” Journal of Law and Economics 16, no. 1 (1973): 68-69. Some consumers assert, however, that a difference exists between halal and non-halal meat, one that sight, taste, and smell can distinguish. See, for example, Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, “Le goût de la viande halal : viande de boucherie française et viande de boucherie marocaine,” Bastidiana 31-32 (2000): 193-205.

78. Karijn Bonne and Wim Verbeke, “Religious Values Informing Halal Meat Production and the Control and Delivery of Halal Credence Quality,” Agriculture and Human Values 25, no. 1 (2008): 43-44.

79. Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, “Halal : d’une norme communautaire à une norme institutionnelle,” Journal des anthropologues 106-107 (2006): 77.

80. Hocine Benkheira, “Le rite à la lettre. Régime carné et normes religieuses,” in Sacrifices en islam : Espaces et temps d’un rituel, eds. Pierre Bonte, Anne-Marie Brisebarre, and Altan Gokalp (Paris: CNRS, 1999), 78-79.

81. In October 2010, Canal+ aired an investigative report by Feurat Alani and Florent Chevolleau into fake halal being sold in France. Blogs and other engaged websites have similarly been instrumental in denouncing fake halal products and providing advice for discerning consumers.

82. Brian J. Grim and Mehtab S. Karim, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projection for 2010-2030 (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2011), 124, accessed 10 October 2018, http://www .pewforum.org/files/2011/01/FutureGlobalMuslimPopulation-WebPDF-Feb10.pdf.

83. Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, “Social Definitions of Halal Quality: The Case of Maghrebi Muslims in France,” in Qualities of Food, eds. Mark Harvey, Andrew McMeekin, and Alan Warde (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 102.

84. Manni Crone, “Shari`a and Secularism in France,” in Shari`a As Discourse: Legal Traditions and the Encounter with Europe, eds. Jørgen S. Nielsen and Lisbet Christoffersen (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 155.

85. Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, “From Migrants to Citizens: Muslims in France,” in Politics and Religion in France and the United States, eds. Alec G. Hargreaves, John Kelsay, and Sumner B. Twiss (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2007), 140. Laurence and Vaisse estimate seventy-five percent of Muslims in France are North Africans and their descendants; Laurence and Vaisse, Integrating Islam, 17.

86. Keyser and Geisser, Nous sommes français et musulmans, 68.

87. Studying individuals’ conversion stories, John Lofland and Norman Skonovd identify six motifs (intellectual, mystical, experimental, affectional, revivalist, and coercive) based around five broad variations (degree of social pressure, temporal duration, level of affective arousal, affective content, and belief participation sequence) that permit the classification of motivations for converting. John Lofland and Norman Skonovd, “Conversion motifs,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 20, no. 4 (1981): 373-85.

88. Laurence and Vaisse, Integrating Islam, 250.

89. Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 318.

90. Keyser and Geisser, Nous sommes français et musulmans, 138-41.

91. Ibid, 134.

92. Pascal Marchand and Pierre Ratinaud, Être français aujourd’hui : Les mots du grand débat sur l’identité nationale (Paris: Les liens qui libèrent, 2012), 207-10. Many of the submissions cited France’s identity as la fille aînée de l’Église (the Church’s oldest daughter), which connotes a continued importance for Catholicism in constructing the nation’s fictive ethnicity. It is likewise interesting to note the beginning of the French debate ran parallel to the Swiss debate on a referendum to ban minaret construction, another political act that was highly covered in the French press and figured into online submissions.

93. Davidson, Only Muslim, 2.

94. Jennifer Fredette, Constructing Muslims in France: Discourse, Public Identity, and the Politics of Citizenship. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014), 18.

95. By being framed through the lens of ethnographic studies, many tropes found in colonial photography took hold as objective facts through a systemization of visual representations of the colonial “other.” See, for example, Malek Alloula, Le harem colonial, images d'un sous-erotisme (Geneva: Slatkine, 1981); Paul S. Landau, “Empires of the Visual: Photography and Colonial Administration in Africa” in Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, eds. Paul S. Landau and Deborad D. Kaspin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 141-171; Edmund Burke III, The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014); Ali Behdad, Camera Orientalis: Reflections on Photography of the Middle East (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); and Simon Dell, The Portrait and the Colonial Imaginary: Photography between France and Africa, 1900-1939 (Leuven, BE: Leuven University Press, 2020).

96. Such accommodation is not a unique French experience. Bassam Tibi calls this liberal form of Islam in which the Shari`a is abandoned and the religious experience adapted to European societies “Euro-Islam.” Similar adjustments occur worldwide as Islam seeks to fit into existing sociocultural spheres in Africa, Asia, and America. On the subject of Euro-Islam, see Bassam Tibi, “Muslim Migrants in Europe: Between Euro-Islam and Ghettoization,” in Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam: Politics, Culture, and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization, eds. Nezar AlSayyad and Manuel Castells (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2002), 31-52; and Bassam Tibi, Political Islam, World Politics, and Europe: Democratic Peace and Euro-Islam versus Global Jihad (New York: Routledge, 2008).

97. Fernando, The Republic Unsettled, 71.

98. Michel Wieviorka, “Race, Culture, and Society: The French Experience with Muslims” in Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam: Politics, Culture, and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization, eds. Nezar AlSayyad and Manuel Castells (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2002), 141.