We report the words of Olivier Roy. Olivier Roy, born in 1949, is a French political scientist specializing in Islam.
Since September 2009, he has been a professor at the European University Institute in Florence (Italy), where he directs the Mediterranean Programme.
What is your assessment of the place of Islam today in France and more broadly in Europe in public debate?
Olivier Roy: The place of Islam is central in public debate today in France and Europe. However, it overlaps with other themes: that of immigration, brought by the National Front in France from the late 1970s; that of refugees, as if the latter were all Muslim; or that of attacks. These three perceptions are linked to the idea of an external threat. And we encounter the fundamental question of identity, which is presented as being essentially linked to Islam but in reality goes much further. The identity question, and particularly the feeling of identity insecurity observed almost everywhere, mainly arises from the crisis of the nation-state, a nation-state challenged by European construction on one side and by immigration on the other. It’s no coincidence that many Islamophobes today are also anti-European.
The second element is the interpretation in terms of a clash of civilizations: European values said to be founded solely on democracy, human rights, homosexual rights, etc., are opposed to Islam. Yet there are other value families in Europe: there is the liberal one encompassing these rights, especially around the status of women and sexuality, but there is also the Christian one, which is very different: one cannot say that the Church defends homosexual rights and has a very feminist view on women’s emancipation. It notably fought strongly against the teaching of “gender theory” in schools recently. We do not want to see this ambiguity that exists about European identity, sometimes founded on Christianity, sometimes on the liberal gains of the 60s. The question is therefore very poorly framed from the start. A secular vision responds to an identity question, and in France, the left refuses to face the Christian question, as if it were definitively settled by the 1905 law. Yet there still exists today a religious Europe. And by wanting to completely expel the Church from the public space in France, we are playing into the hands of the far right, which takes it up.
How is the question of Islam today linked to that of insecurity, especially following the attacks of 2015 and 2016?
Olivier Roy: The fundamental question is to what extent this Islamic terrorism is connected to Islam? Because there are other terrorist acts, like Anders Breivik, for example, who murdered in Norway in the name of white Catholicism in 2011. But since 2001 indeed, most terrorism acts in Europe have claimed to be Islamic. But is this terrorism a consequence of the radicalization of religion, or do we observe, as I claim, an Islamization of radicalism? What relationships do these marginal young people who have committed terrorist acts have with the religious community they claim to be from? There is a debate to be had about violence among young people, which is certainly not just a question of Islam. Whether they are converts or second-generation, it is clear that their rebellion is expressed within an Islamic discourse. But that’s because the Islamic model is the most present on the radicalization market. And if it’s the most present, it is also because left-wing radicalization has disappeared from the global scene. There has always been left-wing terrorism in Europe for many decades: whether it be the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof gang, etc. But on the global contestation market, unfortunately, today, there is only Daesh.
Do you explain the rise of xenophobic parties in Europe by the identity insecurity felt by part of the population faced with Islam’s place in public debate? How to respond to this?
Olivier Roy: The identity insecurity that is developing is not caused by Islam, but indeed by the crisis of the nation-state. The question of “identity” is rather new, it is a newcomer in the political field. Before, this question existed only on the far right, with an author like Alain de Benoist. It’s Nicolas Sarkozy who gave in France to the identity debate its “letters of nobility”. If this concept is ultra-dominant today, it’s mainly because other concepts are no longer operational, like class struggle, the left-right divide, etc. The left has become liberal on the economic level but has abandoned the values’ liberalism. Conversely, the right has opened up in terms of values. Until the 80s, the right defended traditional values. Then there was Margaret Thatcher, Nicolas Sarkozy, etc. Today, the new generation of the Spanish Popular Party, for example, has become liberal in terms of values, as has the Italian right becoming epicurean with Berlusconi, etc. The left did not see it coming, whether in terms of classes or values. Only identity or, conversely, anarchism remains to position oneself.
It seems to me that we must stop worrying about what the Quran says and cease doing theology, to manage Islam concretely. Religion is treated as if it is a threat to human rights, but religious freedom is part of human rights. No political actor today demands the ordination of women from the Church, yet everything is allowed with Islam. We must rethink the issue of Islam within the framework of religious freedom offered by a modern democracy and return to the concrete, to a legal and constitutional vision of the religious question. By doing basic sociological statistics, we will find that there are Muslim middle classes in France and Europe and that social mobility has been possible. But in people’s minds, Muslims are young people from the suburbs and “bearded men”. We have an imaginary and fantasized vision of Islam and do not see the real, actual changes. It’s urgent to open our eyes.
Does the political power and the legislator currently seem to provide the right responses to the challenges of identity security?
Olivier Roy: From a security standpoint, the current policy is a classic security policy that aims to be effective in terms of the physical protection of the population. By definition, such a security policy is in tension with liberties and the preservation of human rights. We can then have legitimate debates on the balance to be found between security and respect for freedoms. Of course, it is an important issue, but the urgency, it seems to me, is above all not to mistake the threat. If, for example, we consider that any sign of religious radicalization constitutes an indicator of potential terrorism, we mistake our target and may overlook real threats. Banning the veil at universities, for instance, hunting halal products, or removing vegetarian meals in cafeterias by conflating them with some kind of terrorist threat is completely scandalous.
What would be the right responses, both political and economic, and social, in your view, to adopt to address this identity insecurity and the fear of Islam currently rising everywhere in France and Europe?
Olivier Roy: We are in a crisis of political imaginations. And the European Union is unable to offer us a desirable imagination. We have reached the limits of the European model. It is absolutely necessary to democratize European institutions, and the European Parliament must notably play a greater role. We must also rethink the nation-state based on a rehabilitation of civic political life, and start from the bottom at the municipal level. It is absolutely essential to develop local democracy instead of reducing it. On the economic level, the left has unfortunately completely missed the meeting with the suburbs, particularly regarding police violence. The French are “champions” in Europe when it comes to violence in police-citizen relations. We must also take the consequences of religious freedom into account and stop, for example, portraying the people of the Manif pour tous as fascists. Yes, there are many believers, and not all of them are potential terrorists. We need to reassess this authoritarian conception of secularism that leaves religion to the margins and radicals. We need to imagine a peaceful relationship with all religions. We always talk about Muslim communalism, but it is also developing among Orthodox Jews, notably in the educational space. The State ends up pushing religions to constitute themselves as a counter-society. It is about rethinking religious freedom in France within the framework of the 1905 law, which is an excellent law.
