Certaines demandes de reconnaissance formulées par les musulmans sont parfois perçues comme autant de potentielles atteintes à la neutralité des États qui se veulent laïcs. Face à une population de plus en plus diversifiée sur les plans religieux et culturels, ces États doivent-ils repenser la place à aménager à cette diversité grandissante et parfois déconcertante? La religion musulmane encourage-t-elle une confusion des pouvoirs temporels et spirituels au point qu’il serait impossible pour un musulman de pratiquer son culte dans un contexte laïc? Rejetant cette dernière hypothèse, qu’il attribue à une interprétation désuète de l’islam, Tariq Ramadan affirme qu'il est tout à fait possible d'être à la fois un musulman fidèle et un bon citoyen européen ou nord américain. De son côté, Mohammed Arkoun (2007) considère que cette confusion n’est pas de nature théologique, elle est plutôt le résultat du travail de l’histoire. Ramadan et Arkoun proposent chacun une pensée reliant islam et laïcité. Quelle est la contribution de ces penseurs dans le cadre des conflits entourant les demandes de reconnaissance des musulmans dans un contexte laïc? Afin de penser le dialogue démocratique dans des sociétés contemporaines de plus en plus caractérisées par une « étrange multiplicité », James Tully (1999) s’inspire de L’Esprit de Haïda Gwaii, une œuvre du sculpteur haïda Bill Reid. Au milieu d’un canot, avec à son bord un équipage hétéroclite, se trouve le Chef (conçu comme un médiateur) qui prête une oreille attentive aux perspectives des uns et des autres. Par le biais de cette métaphore, Tully suggère un type d’accord constitutionnel respectueux des aspirations de chacun, tant à la liberté critique qu’à l’appartenance. Inspirée par le travail de Tully et guidée par des principes herméneutiques tirés de la pensée de Gadamer, cette thèse propose d’approfondir l’analyse du rôle et de la contribution du médiateur. Ainsi, ce travail s’articule autour de l’hypothèse suivante : Soucieux d’apaiser ces conflits, le médiateur agit comme un critique social. Il propose de repenser le rapport entre islam et laïcité et cherche à faciliter le dialogue entre les parties en conflit. Dans ces circonstances, les notions de « subversion » et de « réforme » respectives à Arkoun et Ramadan incarnent toutes deux une pensée de la médiation. Cependant, la réforme de Ramadan s’appuie davantage sur la dimension de l’appartenance (médiation identitaire), tandis que la subversion chez Arkoun fait davantage appel à la liberté critique (médiation critique).

Islam and the Reflection in Multiculturalism in Great Britain

M.A. (Islamic Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The following is intended to suggest a fairly simple contention concerning a number of interconnected propositions made in connection with the debates on modernity and secularism. None of these propositions is particularly novel, nor is this the first time that they have been put forward. Yet the issues raised have remained with us and become all the more pressing; I can see that points that were made, against the flow, more than two decades ago, now stand out more cogently than ever, and are being revisited, rediscovered or simply discovered by many. The simple contention I wish to start with concerns Islamism, often brought out emblematically when secularism and modernity are discussed. Like other self-consciously retrogressive identitarian motifs, ideas, sensibilities, moods and inflections of politics that sustain differentialist culturalism and are sustained by it conceptually, Islamism has come to gain very considerable political and social traction over the past quarter of a century. This had until recently reached the extent that it, as a perceptual grid of social and cultural purchase relating to societies and countries that many associate with Islam, has become hegemonic in public discussions about society and politics and, until recently, hegemonic without serious challenge. It has also been crucial for triggering the latest round of antisecular discussions and polemics. The following discussion will proceed in three stages. First, an overall characterisation of anti-secular polemics and motifs in their broader discursive and other contexts and motifs will be offered, with special attention to writings characterised as post-colonialist. Next will be offered a discussion of some keywords that come up in this context and which indicate the conceptual profile in question. The essay will then move on to discuss two specific methods of using history in arguments against secularism. Finally, the essay will concentrate on post-colonialist discussions of Islam and secularism, exemplified in a particular case.:1 Sentiment, Pathos, Rhetoric........................................................................4 2 Moods and Keywords.................................................................................11 3 Actually Existing Secularism and the Challenge of Fate........................21 4 One Genealogy of Post-colonialist Eminence.........................................38 5 Bibliography.................................................................................................51

Muslims in Morocco and across the globe practice a form of healing and exorcism known as al-ruqya al-shar‘iyya. The primary technique in this system of healing consists of Qur’anic recitation. In order to understand the role of the Qur’an as a healing object, this project examines the history of Qur’anic healing, classification of disease in al-ruqya al-shar‘iyya, the steps of Qur’anic operations, and the development of healing networks. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted primarily in Fez, Morocco, I demonstrate that the Qur’an has material agency. Specifically, the Qur’an acts upon human and social bodies in order to heal them from a series of occult infections. I investigate the role of revelatory speech in Muslim societies and its relationship to individual human bodies. This investigation reveals not only information about how Muslims use the Qur’an in their daily lives, but also information about the relationship between the experience of human illness and a wider social environment. Al-ruqya al-shar‘iyya offers a book as a solution to these trials and tribulations. In the process, however, this system of healing demonstrates that the Qur’an in Muslim societies is a book that transcends both sound and page. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2019. / March 13, 2019. / Al-ruqya Al-shar'iyya, Islam, Morocco, Qur'an / Includes bibliographical references. / Adam Gaiser, Professor Directing Dissertation; Trevor Luke, University Representative; Joseph Hellweg, Committee Member; John Kelsay, Committee Member.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-94). / In current scholarship, the colonial period within Africa has long been defined as a controversial era, almost encapsulating the entirety of Occidental hubris in one distinct age of time. By and large, the European powers invaded foreign lands, claimed them as their own by right of superior cultural standing, attempted to spread their way of life, and manipulated both the occupied territories and their inhabitants for their own economic, cultural, and spiritual gain. Such incursions were morally justified by the Oriental paradigm, which broadly claimed that European cultural and intellectual superiority gave the cultural Occident the authority to control, speak for, and know the entirety of the Oriental world. As a colonial power, France brought its own unique perspective to the pursuit of colonial might in the form of the concept of the mission civilisatrice and the legacy of the French Revolution. Within the auspices of the larger Orientalist paradigm which guided the second colonial empire, France imposed its civilizing mission on the largely Muslim North and West African colonies. These occupied lands posed a special threat to French hegemony because they shared a common monotheistic religion which could not be easily dismissed on the basis of Orientalist logic and could potentially pose a very real threat to French control. Thus, French policy toward Islam was unceasingly suspicious of Islam ' evolving in its understanding of the religion and Muslim African culture but always with an eye to the practical aspects of administrating and controlling an Islamic colony. This paper utilizes the larger complexities surrounding the French relationship with Islam as the basis for an examination of the lives of two colonial figures, Octave Houdas and Xavier Coppolani. Both men were prominent Islamists with career trajectories deeply steeped within Orientalist rhetoric in the late nineteenth-century and with strong ties to Algeria. However, a detailed and comprehensive accounting of the significance of their contributions and how they each advanced the Orientalist perspective has not yet been a focus of scholarly historical inquiry. Octave Houdas functioned within the realm of scholarly study ' educating a new generation of Orientalists at institutions in both Algeria and France and translating documents relative to the Islamic histories of North and West Africa. In contrast, Xavier Coppolani worked as a self-styled Islamists for the French colonial government, exploring and writing strategic treatises on how the pre-existing Muslim culture could be best employed to French gain. During their respective lifetimes both men played a critical role in the evolving French conceptions of Islam yet have had their lives and works essentialized and undervalued by modern historical study. By employing a wide variety of their works, spanning from French archival material to government reports to textbooks, this paper will address both their individual contributions to Franco Islamic relations and the larger roles they, as the Orientalist scholar and administrator, respectively, played in the perpetuation of the Orientalist paradigm. Many documents represented primary sources which were in French and were reviewed at locations in France.

Bibliography: leaves 82-86. / The Islamist/fundamentalist movements of the twentieth century, such as the Jama' ate Islami of Pakistan, the Ikhwan al Muslimin of Egypt, and the FIS of Algeria, have committed themselves to the ideal of attaining an 'Islamic state'. In their quest for the realization of this objective, they envisage a total mobilization of Muslim societies in accordance with "the Islamic shari'a law" under a universal state. The main architects of this ideal of Islamic state in recent times have been Sayyid Abu al-A'la Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb. This thesis is an attempt to appraise these Islamist theories of statehood and governance in the light of traditional juristic theories of governance as well as modern and postmodern forms of democratic political formations. In this thesis I assert that the contemporary Islamist political blueprint, like traditional Muslim political philosophy is geared towards the establishment of Gemeinschaft (community) in the traditional sense, and not Gesellschaft (society/state) in the modern sense. State in the modern sense is to be understood as a complex form of social organization and public power that has authority independent from any particular office holder such as a king. The modern state is an association between the members of a society which assumes supreme authority to make and enforce laws that regulate social arrangements and social relationships. It encompasses various diverse groups, a multiplicity of religious communities, and largely disparate interests, under certain broad common goals. It is also a contention of this thesis that while Islamist political ideology condemns and challenges modernity and its modem forms of political and social organization, it has itself acquired very 'modern' traits of power, control, and statehood. It is further asserted that the juristic model of state, upon which the Islamist worldview is selectively based, is incapable of functioning as a power polity in the world of territorial states.

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