Cartoons, secularism, and inequality
Abdelmajid Hannoum
Abdelmajid Hannoum
teaches anthropology at the
University of Kansas. He
works on colonial and
post-colonial relations
between France and the
Maghreb. He is completing
a book manuscript titled,
Living Tangiers: Migration,
cosmopolitanism, and
citizenship in a Mediterranean
city which examines
inequality and everyday life of
Europeans and Africans in
the city. His email is
hannoum@ gmail.com.
I originally wrote this
article in the immediate
aftermath of the Charlie
Hebdo attack to discuss the
reactions of the French media
and intellectuals to the event
and to examine some aspects
of the issue of laïcité and
Islam within post-colonial
racial dynamics in France. I
subsequently revised this in
the light of Didier Fassin’s
(2015) remarkable article ‘In
the name of the Republic’,
published while mine was still
under consideration, to focus
more clearly on points where
Fassin’s and my own views
on laïcité differ.
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 31 NO 5, OCTOBER 2015
We know perfectly well that we do not have the right
to say everything, that we cannot speak of every-
thing in whatever circumstance, that not everybody,
finally, can speak about whatever. (Foucault, M. 1971.
L’ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard, p. 11).
In this article I discuss the tragic attack on the French
satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7 January
2015. Didier Fassin’s article on this subject in the April
issue of ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY is not only highly
informative but, given its circumstances, also courageous.
I particularly applaud the connection he suggests between
the ‘national and international context of degradation of
Muslims that one has to take into account when trying to
understand the reactions to the caricatures of the Prophet’
(2015: 7) as well as his point that, ‘[t]he caricatures were
one more affront in a long list’ (ibid.). Fassin
persuasively argues that Muslims in France are ‘the most
respectful of the Republican principle of laïcité’ (ibid: 5).
However, he maintains that two other principles of the
Republic – equality and fraternity – are not applied to
Muslims. He then goes on to argue that ‘[t]o understand
this lack of equality and fraternity towards Muslims, it
is, however, necessary to realize that the reason for it is
not only religious, as one would assume and as the term
Islamophobia wrongly implies: it is historical and polit-
ical’ (ibid: 5-6). It is here that I disagree with him. My
disa- greement is not about what the term Islamophobia
means or implies, but about Fassin’s view that the lack of
equality and fraternity he observes is due to religious,
political, and historical reasons.
Questioning the Republic
First, I would like to draw attention to the fact that
Fassin’s argument is predicated on a solid secular idea,
according to which ‘religion’ and ‘politics’, even if not
opposed, are at least neatly separated in such a way as to
make them clearly distinct. Politics is politics, and
religion is religion. This separation is part and parcel of
secular ideology and thus a core idea of the secular state.
Etienne Balibar (2004: 356) was right, however, when he
stated that ‘the two terms have never been, and now less
than ever, “exterior” to one another’. It is this inherent
nesting of the one in the other I would like to discuss
here. And it is this discussion that will allow me to mark
my difference with Fassin on the issue of laïcité, and to
further explain the condition of the Muslim population
that Prime Minister Manuel Valls has described as
‘apartheid’, but with which Fassin does not agree.
When Muslim leaders in colonial Algeria repeat-
edly asked the colonial authorities to apply the 1905
law of separation between religion and state, were these
Muslim leaders secular or religious? When the colonial
state refused to apply this secular principle to its ‘colonial
subjects’, was it still a secular state? When the colonial
state allocated rights of full citizenship on purely ‘reli-
gious grounds’ to one specific local population and not to
another, was it playing politics or religion?
The request to separate religion and the state was
repeated again in post-colonial France by Muslim leaders
who wished to have the first and final say in appointing
their leaders (who had previously been chosen by the
Ministry of the Interior). Is a state that manages Muslim
affairs and appoints its leaders still a secular state? The
principle of separation was applied to Muslims in France
again in 2004 with the law banning the veil (and the
wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in French
public schools) was a cover up for discrimination than a
real separation of religion and politics (Scott 2007). The
Stasi commission report, analysed by Talal Asad, clearly
shows that the state intervened in ‘religion’ to define the
veil and fix its ‘religious’ meanings (Asad, 2006). Is this
lack of separation observed in relation to Muslims (in
colonial Algeria as well as post-colonial France) then an
exception or a paradigm?
Secularism not only developed historically in a spe-
cific space where the Church reigned for centuries, but
the triumphant bourgeois state redefined its parameters,
inventing the categories of the secular and the religious
whose contents it also defined (Asad 1996, 2001). The
very concepts of secularism, Hans Blumenberg argues,
were avatars of Christian concepts (1985). Here, Michel
de Certeau’s classic remark is apt – Christianity is that
which is disavowed in France (le refoulé). But this may
not just be a refoulé, as de Certeau maintains. The heavy
Christian heritage of the state appears transparently in its
rituals and its holidays as well as in its policies within
and outside of the hexagon, i.e. France proper (e.g. its
treat- ment of citizens presumed to be of Muslim faith, its
stance towards Turkey, the declaration by the head of
state that ‘Europe has Christian roots’, the refugee status
offered to the Christians – not just the people – of Syria
and Iraq). This insular religious heritage inspired
philosopher and politician Luc Ferry to contend that the
Declaration of Human Rights and the Citizen of 26
August 1789 ‘is often nothing but a laicized and
rationalized Christianity’. However, a laicized and
rationalized Christianity is still Christianity.
There is more. The Christian heritage of the secular
state animates its highly negative view of Islam. From
medieval times all through the Renaissance, Christianity
in Europe had developed a highly negative image of
Islam as for- eign, different, and above all threatening and
dangerous, as Norman Daniel (1960) and Edward Said
(1978) have shown. ‘The Christian concept of Islam was
integral and self-sufficient’ (Daniel 1960: 252). It is also
this negative image that Nietzsche viciously attacked in a
language that was believed to be parabolic and self-
serving (and thus incorrect and manipulative).
Christianity, he wrote, ‘destroyed for us the whole
harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful
culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally
nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes
than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down – I do
not say by what sort of feet’ (Nietzsche 1920: 175).
It is the Christian legacy (with its concept of Islam)
that played out in colonial times and continues to do so
in France today. Of course Muslims were ‘not just that’,
as Scott – cited by Fassin – put it. The problem was (and
still is) that Muslims were (and still are) perceived as just
that by the secular state. This is evident in their strategy
of naming (a potent form of power) which is bestowed
upon a particular segment of the population. One group
of French citizens (now encompassing four generations)
are still identified by ‘their religion’. They are French
Muslims or Muslims of France (musulmans de France).
There is no other equivalent to this name, such as les
Chrétiens de France or les Juifs de France, or les
Boudhistes de France.1
This religious naming by the post-colonial state and
its various institutions (including its French mosques) is
21

1. On the rare occasions
that such names have
been used, they have been
vigorously contested and
rejected. Thus, when Le
Monde published an article
titled ‘Juifs de France : La
tentation du départ’ on 21
January 2015, the reaction
was swift and categorical:
rejected by many of the people of Muslim background,
and even those who may not object to it in principle, do
not use it to refer to themselves or others. It is the religi-
osity of the state that prevented Algerians during the
colo- nial period (also called les musulmans de l’Algérie)
from acquiring French citizenship unless they reneged
their faith – a condition that was not required of the rest
of the Europeans (presumed to be all Christians) or of
Algeria’s Jewish population. Ironically, as Fassin himself
noticed, even when some did renege their faith, the state
still clas- sified them as Muslims.
The medieval Christian concept of Islam has been
inher- ited by the modern state. As Joan Scott notes, the
‘negative portrayal of Islam’ remains important for the
Republic. She writes, ‘depending on particular national
histories, the ide- alization of the nation has taken various
forms. In France, it has taken the form of the realization
of the principles of the Enlightenment in their highest,
most enduring form. This image is mythical: its power
and appeal rest, to a large degree, on its negative portrayal
of Islam’ (2007: 7).
Whereas Fassin argues that the lack of equality
towards Muslims endures because of politics and
religion, I see no distinction between the two and
maintain that such inequality is the direct result of
Christian politics of the state, which perceives its Muslim
population through the lens of a highly negative image of
Islam rooted in centu- ries of deep mistrust and intense
hostility. Therefore, the idea is not that Islam is not
French enough in France – as Latour and others
mistakenly suggested in the context of the tragedies in
Paris – but rather that French laïcité is not secular
enough.
John Bowen’s most recent ethnographic study has con-
vincingly demonstrated that Islam in France is French,
and totally in line with the principles of the Republic
(Bowen 2010). The conclusion, then, is that the problem
in France is that French laïcité needs to be de-
Christianized in order that all religions may be seen as
the same, and in order that ‘there should be no more
choice between Islam and Christianity than there is
between an Arab and a Jew’ as Nietzsche wished long
ago in relation to the practices of the Church, the
predecessor of the modern state (Nietzsche 1920: 176).
A final point: both my article and Fassin’s are part of
the discourse of the ‘counterpublic’, to be sure. Its for-
mulation is important, but it is authorized and safe. The
discourse of the counterpublic is by definition part and
parcel of the discourse of the public. Even politically, this
critical discourse is important to genuine public debate,
not only because it gives it meaning (as opposites usually
do), but because it confers a plural democratic character
on the state.
However, what is most important (and less safe) is
to bring to bear the discourse of what I call the ‘sub-
public’. The sub-public is a space of discourse of those
who whisper their disagreements, like the trolls who
write anonymously in internet chatrooms and whose non-
violent comments are deleted as soon as they are posted,
even on the blogs of Le Monde, Le Figaro, and
Libération. The sub-public is indeed the space of those
who endure the violence of the discourse of the public in
silence, like the Maghrebi newspaper kiosk merchant
who gave me a look, disapproving of my purchase of an
issue of Charlie Hebdo (sold by the millions) as an act of
betrayal – not of ethnicity or faith, but of solidarity. The
sub-public is located in the zone of ‘no rights’ (of
expression) in a society that has defined itself as a society
of those ‘rights’, exercised often (as symbolic violence)
against the zone of the sub-public.
Certitude of laïcité
On display once again in the aftermath of the tragedies in
Paris, was the Republic’s laïcité (‘our’ ability to be
bound
by reason as opposed to ‘their’ inability to detach from
religion). Almost every commentator cited freedom of
expression as a major principle of the Republic; one that
must be upheld and defended against all threats – real or
imagined. The lines of argument seemed clear – we are
free in our expression; they are not. They have rules
about blasphemy, a transgression of the sacred; we do
not. They are unliberated. One commentator, a professor
of history, proudly stated (as if it were true), ‘there is no
sacred in France and therefore no sacrilege’. Ironically,
this state- ment is itself an assertion of a core sacred
value of French laïcité.
Other commentators pointed out that blasphemy is not
sanctioned by law, and that one has the right to express
oneself as long as one does not defame or attack persons
or incite hatred – arguing, of course, that Charlie Hebdo
did none of those. Others said that if the cartoons were
hurtful to the feelings of some, those people could simply
choose not to look at them. Former president Nicolas
Sarkozy meanwhile drew a dire conclusion: ‘This is a
war against civilization’, he said.2 Prime Minister Manuel
Valls was more cautious and thus more responsible when
he blamed what happened not on Islam but rather on
‘terrorism’, ‘jihadism’, and ‘radical Islam’. 3 Valls did not
venture to say, however, whether or where the line might
be drawn between ‘radical’ and ‘Islam’.
Tahar Ben Jelloun, the Moroccan writer, represented
the francophone position when he stated in a media
debate that the violence was not only against freedom of
expression, but freedom tout court. He then went on to
explain that the issue was not representation, but rather
artistic representa- tion, as in the case of The satanic
verses author, Salman Rushdie. For Ben Jelloun, the book
Mahomet by Maxime Rodinson is more extreme than the
Charlie Hebdo comics but has been spared because it is
an academic work, not literature. 4 This argument frames
those incited to anger by the comics as enemies of the
arts and advocates of barba- rism – an argument
reiterated by Fleur Pellerin, the min- ister of culture.
Speaking before the national parliament, she cited a
significant number of attacks against culture by its
enemies (that is, the barbarians) in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
Nigeria. From this, one can only infer that what happened
in France on 7 January 2015 was exported from
‘barbaric’ lands (exclusively Islamic) held by enemies
of art and civilization. Meanwhile, the assassination of
significant numbers of people that same day in various
other parts of the world did not enter the debate, despite
President Hollande’s comment that Muslims are ‘the
primary victims of extremism’.5 What was discussed, at
least in that first week following the attack, was freedom
of expression, for which the journalists of Charlie Hebdo
paid the ultimate price.
Several philosophers and commentators suddenly
became experts on Islam. Bruno Latour, a sociologist,
called for the reform of Islam (to be done by whom?) and
urged that a ‘critical theology’ of the religion be
presented (as if that were indeed absent). He reiterated
the old idea of religion versus modernity, overlooking the
fact that modernity too has a long and bloody record of
extreme violence – perhaps the bloodiest (Giddens 1990;
Hannoum 2010). ‘Modernity’, he wrote with certitude,
‘begins when religion loses its certitude’.6 Yet, French
laïcité has never lost its certitude – not in the midst of old
or even recent tragedies.
On the legacy of the colonial state
The most recent of these tragedies did not result from
some- one’s inability to accept humour and understand
freedom. The type of ‘humour’ generated by Charlie
Hebdo was not new and was itself an effect of a larger
cause: the colonial legacy of the French state.
22 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 31 NO 5, OCTOBER 2015
Fig. 1. Place de la
Republique, Paris, 11 January
2015.

‘I am not a Jew of France’;

‘No one had distinguished
us, we Jews, by our religion,
since Vichy and Petain’;
‘These words gave me a
brutal feeling of exclusion’.
See Le Monde, 23 January
2015. For more reactions,
see M blogs
http://mediateur.
blog.lemonde.fr/2015/01/23/
la-france-est-plus-forte-
quand-elle-est-plurielle-
multiple-et-genereuse/ (Last
accessed 18/8/2015).

OLIVIER ORTELPA / CC BY 2.0

2. Le Figaro, 8 January
2015.
3. The New York Times, 10
January 2015.
4. Rodinson’s book (1961)
is a scholarly work seeking to
understand the phenomenon
of prophecy. Rodinson, a
highly respected and learned
Orientalist, did not seek to
ridicule Islam, or the Prophet,
or to foster a climate of
racism or Islamophobia, but
only to explain an historical
phenomenon – the advent
of a world religion by one
man. In an interpretation of a
hadith explaining the state of
revelation, Rodinson argues
that revelation is a form of
epilepsy. The idea itself was
not original; one finds it in
the work of 19th-century
novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky,
who himself suffered from
epilepsy (see The idiot).
He also maintained that the
Prophet Mohamed might
have died from poisoning by
his Jewish wife, Safiyya Bint
Huhayy. Other than that, one
finds in Rodinson’s book an
extremely interesting Marxist
sociological study of the time
prior to the advent of Islam
in Arabia, most of it based
on Tabari’s history.
5. Le Monde, 15 January
2015.
6. Le Monde, 15 January
2015.
7. Le Monde, 11 December
2003.
8. Le Monde, 26 January
2015.
9. http://www.parismatch.
com/Culture/Livres/
Mon-livre-n-est-pas-
islamophobe-693498. The
theme of Muslims taking over
France and possibly surfaced
by October 1989 at the very
beginning of the veil affair
and only few months after the
Salman Rushdie affair.
Asad, T. 1996. Genealogies of
religion. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
— 2001. Formation of the
secular. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
— 2006. French secularism
and the ‘Islamic veil
affair’. Hedgehog Review
(Spring/Summer): 93-106.
Balibar, E. 2004.
Dissonances within laïcité.
Constellations 11(3):
353-367.
One could argue that what happened was not simply
the result of caricatures of the Prophet, or the numerous
car- toons about Muslim men and women produced by
Charlie Hebdo. Nor was it really about freedom of
expression as such. The caricatures were not a case of
blasphemy, since the cartoonists were not Muslims.
Rather, it was about the same issue that French laïcité has
long been struggling with in relation to religion in
general and Islam in par- ticular, which in a
(post)colonial context has been exac- erbated by global
events in which France is an actor, not a bystander.
A few years after France’s highly publicized banning
of the veil in 2010, described as a ‘laïcité of exclusion’
by philosophers Paul Ricoeur and Monique Canto-
Sperber7– in short, a form of religious harassment –
Charlie Hebdo re-emerged as a major source of cultural
racism targeting Muslims, Arabs, and people of colour.
Humour is one of the favourite idioms of racism. The
caricatures of the Prophet were only one example in a
system of racist sym- bols that extend the themes of an
entire vulgar repertoire of colonial racism. In other
words, if Charlie Hebdo had not produced any cartoons
of the Prophet and still published everything else that it
did, it would still have remained a paper at high risk
because of its deep involvement in a post-colonial, racial
conflict within France.
French artists such as comedian Guy Bedos, philoso-
phers such as Chantal Delsol, and former Charlie Hebdo
contributor Olivier Cyran, saw in the paper an expres-
sion of the most vulgar Islamophobia and racism. And
some of them, such as Chantal Delsol, denounced the
paper even after the attacks and argued that it did indeed
incite religious hatred. It is not surprising that a lawsuit
brought against the paper by Muslims was dismissed,
since the judiciary system is an integral part of the sec-
ular and post-colonial institutions that make France what
it is now: a country not with an immigrant problem, as
it used to be, but one with a Muslim problem. It is the
gravity of this problem that made anthropologist Talal
Asad note: ‘For a long time, and for many, Jews were the
“internal other”. In a complicated historical readjustment
this status has now been accorded to Muslims instead’
(2006: 102).
This is not the first time France has experienced ter-
rorism. There have been terrorist acts throughout the past
few decades, perpetrated by various actors. In the 1980s,
in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, these actors were for-
eigners with ideologies linked to the Iranian Revolution;
during the 1960s and 1970s, they were French citizens
with far-left ideologies. In the 1950s, they were FLN
(Front de Libération Nationale) militants fighting for the
independence of Algeria. Today, they are French youth
from the suburbs, who grew up in foster homes or in
abject poverty in a post-colonial society and are still the
victims of a colonial gaze. The most recent terrorist acts
in fact did not come out of mosques, but were fabricated
in jails; they were not the deeds of foreigners, but of
French citizens with colonial roots, living in degrading
suburban condi- tions described by Manuel Valls as
‘apartheid’.8
The problem, then, is the post-colonial structure of the
French state, not only because it has created disenfran-
chised citizens willing to commit crimes against their
compatriots, but also because the state tolerates – under
the pretext of freedom of expression – racist
communications towards Muslims which it does not
tolerate towards other minority groups. Consequently, the
state, still bearing the weight of a recent heavy colonial
legacy, does not view that segment of its population
presumed to be of Islamic faith as equal, despite its
acclaimed motto of égalité.
It is within this sad state of affairs that students – in
over 200 cited incidents in French schools – were
unwilling to observe a minute of silence and identify
themselves by the slogan ‘Je suis Charlie’. In his article,
Fassin reports of incidents where anything seen to be
deviating from ‘Je suis Charlie’, even carelessly, was
severely punished. It was a remarkably paradoxical
situation: in the midst of a patriotic celebration of
freedom of expression, one could witness one of the most
repressive moments in French society – an eloquent
demonstration that expression is never free. On the
contrary, power is always constitutive of expression.
Many French Muslims and non-Muslims see the state
as having a double standard. One can see evidence of
this in the online comments left by readers of Le Monde.
Islamophobia is rampant in France, and is more tolerated
in the media, in political discourse and in popular
discourse, than anti-Semitism and homophobia which lie
across lines that cannot be transgressed without swift and
severe sanc- tions. Consider the statement of Michel
Houellebecq, the author of a novel entitled Soumission
(2015) in which he portrays Muslims taking over France
in ways reminiscent of the caricatures of Jews taking
over the world found in Nazi Germany prior to the
Holocaust. He says, ‘My novel is not Islamophobic, but
we definitively have the right to write an Islamophobic
book’. His statement, while unthinkable for other groups,
was reported without inci- dent by the media.9
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 31 NO 5, OCTOBER 2015 23
 preted in a particular manner – and how this appeals to
a disenfranchised, poor, uneducated, racialized youth in
a global context of new, exceptionally violent disorder,
inaugurated by the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As impor-
tant as this investigation might be, it will undoubtedly be
insufficient in the face of an unexamined laïcité of exclu-
sion, rooted in an Enlightenment philosophy that was not
only anti-clerical but also highly antagonistic to
‘religion’. However, the history of laïcité with Islam is
different: it is largely unwritten, and thus unthought,
because it is closely intertwined with the colonial

US DEPARTMENT OF STATE / PUBLIC DOMAIN

question – a question that remains highly controlled and
partly censored. 

On secularism and politics:

A reply to Hannoum

Abdelmajid Hannoum here revisits, in the aftermath

Fig. 2. Wreath left outside
the Hyper Cacher kosher
supermarket in Paris, France,
by US Secretary of State John
Kerry and French Foreign
Minister Laurent Fabius as
they stopped across the city
on 16 January 2015, to pay
homage to the victims of the
shootings the week before.
Blumenberg, H. 1985. The
legitimacy of the modern.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Bowen, J. 2010. Can Islam
be French? Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Daniel, N. 1960. Islam and
the West: The making of
an image. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University
Press.
Fassin, D. 2015. In the
name of the Republic.
Anthropology Today 31(2):
3-7.
Foucault, M. 1971. L’ordre
du discours. Paris:
Gallimard.
Geertz. C. 1964. Islam
observed. Chicago:
Chicago University Press.
— 1975. The interpretation
of cultures. New York:
Basic Books.
Giddens, A. 1990. The
consequences of
modernity. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Hannoum, A. 2010. Violent
modernity: France in
Algeria. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
— 2013. De l’historiographie
coloniale à l’historicisme
national, ou comment
le Maghreb fut inventé.
Hespéris-Tamouda 68:
59-79.
Nietzsche, F. 1920. Antichrist.
New York: A.A. Knopf.
Rodinson, M. 1961.Mahomet.
Paris: Seuil.
Sadek, S. 2006. La France
et ses musulmans. Paris:
Fayard.
Said, E. 1978. Orientalism.
New York: Vintage Books.
Scott, J. 2007. The politics
of the veil. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
What happened in Paris in January 2015 were indeed
horrific, inexcusable and unjustifiable crimes, but they
were not inexplicable. Crimes are undoubtedly products
of societies. Bernard Tapie, a politician who knows the
youth of the suburbs perhaps better than any other after
years of work in these locations, wisely states that if
Islam did not exist, these young people would have
resorted to other beliefs. But there is Islam in France, and
one needs to question why, or rather how, they resorted to
it.
First, let us clarify two points. If, as many
anthropologists have observed, Islam is a system of
meanings embedded within a local culture (notably
Geertz 1964, 1975), then there are as many Islam(s) as
there are societies. France too has its own Islamic
traditions, the result of a long his- tory of both migration
and conversions dating back to the 19th century (Sadek
2006). French Islam (as we should call it) is by no means
monolithic, as was clarified by the various interventions
of French imams and French Muslim intellectuals in the
debate about the Charlie Hebdo car- toons and freedom
of expression. Second, even in the French language itself,
and contrary to the statement of Bruno Latour, there is
indeed an entire body of critical work on Islam, penned
by Malek Bennabi, Muhammad Hamidullah, Mohammed
Arkoun, Abdel Majid Turki, Abdallah Laroui, Fatema
Mernissi, Hecham Djait, and more recently Tariq
Ramadan and Malek Chebel, among others. But, again,
the fatal attacks in January did not come out of French
mosques, but French prisons. They came out of a
shadowy, combative Islam that feeds on marginali-
zation, poverty, lack of education and racism. They came
out of subaltern criminal and extremist milieux, which
are themselves the product of French post-colonial
policies.
This is not to say naively (or apologetically) with
others that ‘Islam is a religion of peace’. All religions –
and sec- ular ideologies – can be harnessed for violence.
But the magnitude of this violence depends on the
circumstances, not on some inherent characteristic of the
ideology itself. History, including our present moment,
has witnessed wars and destruction in the name of
democracy, and in the name of civilization and of
modernity. The sacred and non-sacred (that is,
exegetical) texts of Islam should also be interrogated and
critiqued to understand how certain interpretations of
them can function as justifications for murder.
Such an endeavour is essential in the face of any ide-
ology. But to do so, one cannot just go to the Qur’an and
search for verses pertaining to violence and point to them
as if they are absolutes with fixed meanings. One needs
of the Charlie Hebdo attack, the relation of the French
state’s relation with Islam and with Muslims. He does
so with strong statements and in a convincing way.
Since his article comes after mine was published in
these pages earlier this year, to engage my argument
is an editorial compulsory figure (to use an ice skating
metaphor). I willingly agree to act as his provisional
sparring partner (to borrow another sports analogy).
Dr. Hannoum discusses the term ‘secularism’, and
rightly affirms that the notion is a modern creation of
the Church and the state. I agree, and my use of the
French term laïcité precisely stressed the distance I
tried to establish from the official rhetoric of the
‘Republic’, just as I referred to the triad of liberty,
equality and fraternity, which serves as a motto to
remind Muslims their obligations toward the French
nation.
Dr Hannoum also insists on the permanence of the
Christian legacy in the supposedly secular state. I
concur with his idea and provide several examples to
which could be added the little-known fact that
French presidents are still granted by the pope the title
of sole honorary canon of Saint John Lateran inherited
from the time when France was deemed ‘the elder
daughter of the Church’. One could in fact go further
and con- sider that many of our political ideas and
institutions keep a trace of Christianity and I have
shown else- where that it is possible to analyze
humanitarianism from the perspective of a political
theology.
If, in my essay, I invite a shift from the religious to
the political and the historical – a move Dr. Hannoum
disapproves of – I do it for strategic reasons, as the
dominant focus of French commentators regarding
Muslims obscures both the inequality that affects them
and its colonial and post-colonial genealogy. By con-
sidering the latter in the light of religion, one runs the
risk of missing its racial and often racist basis. This
is the useful ambiguity that the word ‘Islamophobia’
allows one to maintain.
In this regard, Talal Asad’s ‘internal other’ does not
differ much from my ‘enemy within’. And it is a merit
of Dr Hannoum’s article that it emphasizes how this
‘other’ suspected of being an ‘enemy’ constitutes
itself as an inaudible, yet expressive, counterpublic,
which he calls a sub-public, composed of those who
know that they cannot afford to express what they
think out loud lest they be reproved, rejected or even
punished. His text and mine, I hope, open a space
where their voice can be heard.
Didier Fassin
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
dfassin@ias.edu
t o explain how and why texts lend themselves to be inter-

24 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 31 NO 5, OCTOBER 2015