Love as difference: the politics of love in the thought of Malek Chebel

Abstract

This article discusses the ongoing discourses on love that first developed in the 1980s in France as they are articulated through the work of Malek Chebel. It argues that for Chebel ‘love’ contributes to the ongoing negotiation between Islam and the West and of Islam in France/Europe. The article considers his discourse on love within the context of the current debates on French constructions of community and membership and examines how love engages with the question of difference and identity to decentre and de‐essentialise ‘Islam’. It concludes that the negotiation between Europe and Islam involves questioning the role of Maghrebi culture and tradition in defining ‘Islam’ in France.

Notes

I am deeply grateful to Charles Hirschkind and Natalie Rose for their ongoing critical engagement with my work. I would like to thank them, as well as Caroline Arni and Elena Arigita, for their careful readings of various stages of this article. A section of this essay was presented as a public lecture at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institute in Essen in February, 2004 entitled ‘To Be a European Muslim: Franco‐Maghrebi Intellectuals and the Politics of Love’, within the framework of a Post‐Doctoral Research Fellowship that I held at the KWI‐Essen as part of the Europe: Emotions, Identities, Politics study group. I am indebted to the members of this group, and in particular to the project leader, Luisa Passerini, who has been instrumental in shaping this essay. All the usual caveats apply.

‘Comment les Arabes aiment‐ils? … Sont‐ils un peuple romantique et tendre, autant que peuvent l'être les autres peuples?’ Chebel, L'imaginaire arabo‐musulman, p. 365. All translations in this text are mine unless otherwise noted. Chebel hyphenates Arab with Muslim in the title of his book in order to distinguish Muslim Arabs from Christian Arabs.

Of course, Islamic traditions exist in the West. The point here is not to polarise Islam from the West, nor to homogenise either category. It is simply to point out that what has been constituted as the West has not been politically or culturally built on Islamic grounds.

I use the word Maghrebi to designate a native of or inhabitant of the North African region that includes Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, or as an adjective to describe Maghrebi phenomena. However, its use is debated and many, also with good reason, prefer the designator ‘North African’. I find that for the purposes of this study, especially in the context of France, ‘Maghrebi’ best encapsulates both the complexity and the important differences between the Islamic (Arab‐Berber‐Kabyle etc.) cultures of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, notwithstanding the presence of Jewish, Christian, colonial or other communities. Furthermore, I use Franco‐Maghrebi to designate the multiple belonging (both to France and to the Maghreb) and the location of those born in the Maghreb now living in France or their descendants now living in France (or those who choose to identify as such in France or in the Maghreb), or those who commute back and forth between France and the Maghreb. In addition, when I speak about Islam in France, I acknowledge that even though I am referring to the large and dominant minority of Franco‐Maghrebis, there are also other types of Muslims from Pakistan, Africa and Turkey and French converts which this study cannot explicitly take into account.

Egejuru, ‘The Absence of the Passionate Love Theme in African Literature’, pp. 83–90.

Ibid., p. 87.

Ibid., p. 84.

Ibid., p. 89.

‘replier un voile épais … du silence gêné’ Chebel, Esprit de Serail, p. 16.

‘soigner le mal d'amour par un surcroît d'amour….’ Chebel, Encyclopédie de l'amour, p. 13.

‘l'absence de relation amoureuse normale.’ Chebel, L'imaginaire Arabo‐Musulman, p. 366.

Chebel, ‘Quand l'Oedipe interroge l'Orient’, p. 52.

Malek Chebel is the sole author of over 15 books, translated into Arabic and several other foreign languages. Born in Algeria in 1953, Chebel obtained a postgraduate degree in clinical psychopathology and psychoanalysis as well as another in political science and his Habilitation in sociology. The regular invitations he receives from various French and international press organs to address the topics of sexuality, identity and politics in Islam have made Chebel one of France's most highly profiled Franco‐Maghrebi public intellectuals. Therefore, in my analysis, I treat Chebel as a public intellectual and refer to his publications in the media—electronic, press, radio—in addition to his scholarly publications.

My point is to include a consideration of the role that religion (in this case Islam) plays in the shaping of the subjectivities and identities of Franco‐Maghrebis, in the scope of Stuart Hall's definition of ethnicity, which I have provided here: ‘The term ethnicity acknowledges the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity, as well as the fact that all discourse is placed, positioned, situated, and all knowledge is contextual.’ Hall, ‘New Ethnicities’, p. 446.

Morin, Penser l'Europe, pp. 3–25.

Passerini, Europe in Love, p. 188.

Luhmann, Love as Passion, p. 50.

Ibid.

Of course, what makes European models the standard of superiority has evolved from the ability secured by the force of Europe and the West to undermine other forms of life. The capacity of Europe to lift social controls on women is not something intrinsic to Europe and has not been evenly or automatically deployed within Europe. For example, women received the right to vote in France only in 1944 and Switzerland was the only country that approved it by a referendum, but only in 1971. Joan Scott's Only Paradoxes to Offer examines how ‘sexual difference’ constituted early feminist argumentation in France, which paradoxically pursued its eradication. In the English context the coupling of the notions of ‘freedom’ and ‘love’ is tied to the rise of the bourgeoisie. Freedom of choice in the context of bourgeois domesticity has little to do with lifting social controls on women, and the ideology of woman's ‘choice’ in love in the nineteenth century, for example, must be understood alongside premises of her passivity and her biological inability to ‘desire’. The comparative status of women in different cultures is a longstanding trope of colonial discourse and one that Western women have used to critique domestic gender relations. The rhetorics of the harem in Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) are famous examples.

However, I do presuppose a definition of ‘Islam’. I follow Talal Asad's definition in The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, p. 14. Asad speaks of Islam as a tradition composed of discourses relating to the ‘founding texts of the Qur'an and Hadith’ that seek to authorise practices by orienting themselves to a past or a history of reasoning; even though, as a tradition of discourses it aspires to coherence, it is nevertheless heterogenous.

Asad, Formations of the Secular, p. 159.

The popular festivities of ‘moros y cristianos’, the image of the Moor in Spanish literature, and the idea of speaking ‘cristiano’ or being a ‘cristiano viejo’ all point to how Spain has historically constructed itself in opposition to the Andalusian Spain of the vanquished Moor. With Spain's transition into democracy there was a popular revival of al‐Andalus in Andalucia in the 1990s related to cultural and economic interests, which has had the effect of asserting local Andalusian identity by erroneously conflating al‐Andalus with Andalucía.

Passerini, Europe in Love, p. 157.

Ibid., p. 206. The ambivalence lies in Stendhal's acceptance of Moorish conceptions of love. Passerini argues that Stendhal claimed that Moorish conceptions of love advocated the ‘equality between lovers’ and were based on pre‐Islamic Arab culture, which had ‘the greatest respect for women’. However, to this, Stendhal counterposes the image of a puritanical Mohammed ‘who killed love in the countries that became Islamic’.

Ibid., p. 188.

Chebel, Encyclopédie de l'amour, p. 642.

Alloula, Le harem colonial. It is a provocative study of how France's colonial presence has sexualised its gaze of the ‘Other’.

Gross, McMurray, and Swedenburg, ‘Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Franco‐Maghrebi Identities’, p. 119.

Jürgen Habermas & Jacques Derrida, ‘Nach dem Krieg: Die Wiedergeburt Europas’, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 31 May 2003, No. 125, p. 33. On the same day, Umberto Eco, Adolf Mueschg, Fernando Savater and Gianni Vattimo also issued statements in the leading newspapers of their respective countries and Richard Rorty presented an American reaction to the debate in the Suddeutsche Zeitung.

Belhaddad, Entre‐deux Je, p. 11. Belhaddad declares, ‘nos mères ont une obsession de l'hygiène qui n'est pas seulement maladive mais barbare’.

Jacques Chirac, speech delivered at Orléans 19 June 1991 published in Le Monde, 21 June 1991, quoted in Begag, L'intégration, p. 37: ‘Comment voulez‐vous que le travailleur français qui travaille avec sa femme, et qui, ensemble, gagnent environ 15 000 francs, et qui voit sur le palier à côté de son HLM, entassée, une famille avec un père de famille, trois ou quatre épouses, et une vingtaine de gosses, et qui gagne 50 000 francs de prestations sociales, sans naturellement travailler … si vous ajoutez le bruit et l'odeur, hé bien le travailleur français sur le palier devient fou. Et ce n'est pas être raciste de dire cela.’ See also, Gross, McMurray & Swedenburg, ‘Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Franco‐Maghrebi Identities’, p. 120.

Le Monde (4 April 1987), quoted in and translated by Gross, McMurray & Swedenburg, ‘Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Franco‐Maghrebi Identities’, p. 119.

See McMurray, ‘La France Arabe’, p. 33.

Chebel, Esprit de Sérail, p. 8.

Among them we can list the Islamic Council of Spain, the Higher Council in Belgium, the Muslim Council of Britain, the European Council for Fatwas and Research, la Fédération Française des Musulmans de France, the Young Muslims and the Islamic Society of Britain, the Jeunes Musulmans de France and the Association des Étudiants Islamiques en France. Some of these groups have been funded by the European Commission's A Soul for Europe programme. See Ramadan, To Be a European Muslim.

Ramadan, To Be a European Muslim, p. 163.

Cesari, ‘Islam in France: The Shaping of a Religious Minority’, p. 43.

Ibid., p. 47. Cesari argues that the doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood is adapted in a French context in terms of a return to the sources which does ‘not respond to the same logic as it does in the Arab world’, which she sees as an ‘increasingly positive force for social change and cultural integration’ as long as it does not take the political turn of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in order to ‘undermin[e] social order’.

Ibid., pp. 36–51; Roy, ‘Islam in France: Religion, Ethnic Community or Social Ghetto?’, p. 64; Rémy Leveau, ‘The Political Culture of the “Beurs”’, pp. 147–55.

Roy, ‘Islam in France: Religion, Ethnic Community or Social Ghetto?’, p. 58. Roy argues, ‘An Arab may see Islam as one component of his identity but the opposite is not valid’.

Chebel, ‘Psychothérapie: Sur les traces d'un psychanalyste bouddhiste’.

Ramadan, To Be a European Muslim, p. 4.

Ibid., p. 109. The Arabic terms in this text merit explanation. Fiqh is the Arabic word for jurisprudence. It is the discipline of explaining the shari‐ah—the entire body of laws regulating the conduct of Muslims. Other Arabic words referred to in this text are: hadith: transmitted reports on the sayings and actions of the Prophet and one of the bases of shari‐ah; Ummah: a community of believers, namely the Islamic one. Ummah‐al‐islamiyyah in this text is used to refer to the ‘nation’ of Islam that transcends political and ethnic definition.

I would like to thank Caroline Arni for bringing this point to my attention. The critique of the practice of arranged marriages in aristocracy and bourgeoisie and of their investment with material and strategic interest, for example, existed in Europe, most fervently within the Romantic movement and in the context of feminist and socialist marriage criticism in the fin de siècle.

Many conservative Muslims also support France's laïcité, but not in its entirety. The example of the recent law on the hidjab is a case in point. While many took to the streets to protest the ban, many were also in support of Chirac's ruling.

Cesari, ‘Islam in France: The Shaping of a Religious Minority’, p. 41.

Ramadan, To Be a European Muslim, p. 182.

Roy, ‘Islam in France: Religion, Ethnic Community or Social Ghetto?’, p. 65.

Nielsen, To Be a European Muslim, p. xii.

Leveau, ‘The Islamic Presence in France’, p. 120.

Roy, ‘Islam in France: Religion, Ethnic Community or Social Ghetto?’, p. 61.

Even though a tradition (whether liberal or Islamic) presupposes a certain unity (which regroups variability) that can in turn also presuppose a single measure as point of reference, the grounds on which we interpret the point of reference are also disputable. My aim is not to deny Ramadan the right to engage in discussion or to define what is Islamic. Instead, I would like to underscore that the question of what is Islamic or not can also be grounded in or can be interpreted in relationship to or from the perspective of the histories, languages and cultures of the Maghreb. This implies more than a simple disagreement between opposing ideas of what is or is not Islamic, and underlines the fact that these very disagreements can also be framed by a cultural politics of authenticity (or a cultural politics of authority) that legitimises certain grounds on which to carry out such interpretations.

See McMurray, ‘La France Arabe’.

‘la ‘carte du Tendre’ d'une civilisation aux multiples arcanes, arabo‐islamique, oriental, méditerranéen et semi‐tropical, bref une civilisation complexe et une mosaïque de peuplements aussi sophistiquée que toutes les grandes civilisations connues.’ Chebel, Encyclopédie de l'amour, p. 38.

Chebel, L'imaginaire Arabo‐Musulman, pp. 17–18.

‘les interférences de l'Un avec le Multiple … d'éclairer leur liaison, et de montrer leur ‘interdépendance’.’ Chebel, La formation de l'identité politique, p. 63.

‘La sexualité se situe d'emblée dans un carrefour à multiples entrées.’ Chebel, L' imaginaire Arabo‐Musulman, p. 308.

Chebel, Encyclopédie de l'amour, p. 40.

‘l'amour, sentiment humain d'une grande plasticité, se distingue par la multiplicité de ses manifestations….’ Chebel, Encyclopédie de l'amour, p. 11.

Chebel, ‘La femme marocaine tire son épingle du jeu’.

‘pluralité des savoirs….’ Chebel, ‘Quand l'Oedipe interroge l'Orient,’ p. 48.

Chebel, L'imaginaire Arabo‐Musulman, p. 350.

Ibid., p. 306. Indeed, the references abound.

Chebel, Esprit de Sérail, p. 10.

For Malek Chebel's critique of Islamic jurisprudence, see, Chebel, Encyclopédie de l'amour, p. 32.

Chebel, Esprit de Sérail, pp. 16–17.

For a critique of Chebel see Dunne, ‘Power and Sexuality in the Middle East’. Dunne argues that Chebel's discussion of homosexuality inevitably ‘sustains the ideology that positions public or visible or audible men as sexually dominant’.

‘où l'homophonie amoureuse peut sonner différemment.’ Chebel, L'imaginaire Arabo‐Musulman, p. 357.

‘l'un des plus grands thuriféraires de la nation arabe—pour autant qu'on puisse encore utiliser ce terme en lieu et place d'ethnie ou de lignage, techniquement plus précis—il n'a jamais, semble‐t‐il, renié ses origines d'affranchi ou récusé l'indigence relative de son pedigree.’

‘une antithèse violente de la chou'biya’, ‘mouvement par lequel on a essayé de dénigrer le génie arabe….’

‘qui prétend revenir à une pureté originelle qui n'a jamais existé.’ Chebel, ‘L'Homosexualité est un fait arabe.’

‘momifient, ou tentent de momifier, l'extrême pertinence des concepts coraniques.’ Chebel, Esprit de Sérail, p. 7.

‘Ils imposent une vision du monde qui est réductrice et violente.’ Chebel, Historia Thématique.

Chebel, Encyclopédie de l'amour, pp. 245–6.

Chebel's post‐enlightenment understanding of religious conviction as implying subjective belief but having no implication for practice (i.e. relating, in post‐Kantian fashion, to ‘sincere faith’ as uncorrupted by its relation to the world) is at odds both with Chebel's emphasis on sexual practices and with the conceptual world of al‐Jahiz; such a position has only been around for a few centuries.

‘il n'ya aucune vilenie à s'occuper des choses du corps lorsque l'esprit et l'âme sont gorgés de convictions religieuses et nourris d'une foi sincére.’ Chebel, Éphèbes et Courtisanes, pp. 52–3.

‘l'adulation béate … que d'établir une esthétique amoureuse qui serait libre dans ses attendues philosophiques et dans sa finalité.’ Chebel, Éphèbes et Courtisanes, p. 49.

‘Cette étude vise à mettre en évidence le fait qu'en islam, on peut être un musulman fidèle et respectueux du Texte sacré sans être un ennemi de la jouissance charnelle ni enfreindre le code social en vigueur.’ Chebel, Encyclopédie de l'amour, p. 13.

Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, p. 14.

Appadurai, Modernity at Large, p. 199.

Ibid., p. 190.

The only party on the left that opposed the law was the Communist Party but only on the grounds that the French state had more pressing social issues to worry about.

‘la grande majorité ‘silencieuse’.’ Amara, Ni putes ni soumises, p. 79.

‘Il faut redire aux jeunes qu'on peut être musulmane aujourd'hui sans porter le voile. Je suis pratiquante et je ne l'ai jamais porté, pas plus que ma mère avant moi. Ma grandmère non plus.’ Amara, Ni putes ni soumises, p. 79.

Amara's discourse can be tied more directly to the struggles of women in Algeria who are killed for refusing to veil. In February 2004, she signed a manifesto entitled Etre de culture musulmane et contre la misogynie, l'homophobie, l'antisémitisme et l'islam politique. Retrouver la force d'une laïcité vivante, which specifically supports the ‘20 ans, barakat!’ movement launched by women's associations in Algeria. However, I am not locating the ‘authenticity’ of a (non)practice' (that of not wearing the hidjab) within the cultural heritage of the Maghreb where indeed, practices of wearing the hidjab also exist. Instead, I am pointing to the fact that what is missing from these discussions is the context in which these decisions have been made in the past, as well as the stakes involved. For example, France's secularist forces surely shaped the reasoning behind these practices (to veil or not to veil, for example) when France colonised the Maghreb. The effects that colonial power had in the restructuring of Maghrebi women's lives are not uniform. See Dunne, ‘French Regulation of Prostitution in Nineteenth‐Century Colonial Algeria’. Secularist rationales against the veiling of women may have provided an opportunity for the emancipation of Maghrebi women. However, the capacity for the ‘liberation’ of Muslim women is not intrinsic to secularist ideals; studies have shown that many Muslim women were compelled to veil after being subjected to the presence of French soldiers in their environment. See Hatem, who in ‘The Politics of Sexuality and Gender in Segregated Partriarchal Systems’ convincingly argues that in Egypt the French replaced ‘patriarchal forms of formal and informal sexual control with French ones’ (p. 266). Alloula's study also points to the French investment in keeping Maghrebi women veiled.

‘Mais ce que professaient ces religieux n'avait rien à voir avec l'islam tranquille de nos parents, cette religion de tolérance…. Des disputes ont éclaté entre les parents, qui ne comprenaient pas cette pratique radicale et dangereuse, et les enfants, qui reprochaient à leur parents “ignorance” (à la fois leur analphabétisme et leur connaissance trop peu rigoureuse, selon eux, du Coran.’ Amara, Ni putes ni soumises, p. 75.

Amara, Ni putes ni soumises, p. 79.

Begag, L'intégration, p. 102.

Leveau, ‘The Islamic Presence in France’, p. 117.

Gross, McMurray & Swedenburg, ‘Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Franco‐Maghrebi Identities’, p. 129.

Souilamas, Des beurettes, pp. 257ff.

Stoquart, Dans l'enfer des tournantes, p. 12. Stoquart adds that the silence that usually structures these issues suggests that the number of those involved in gang‐rapes are much higher

‘La seule éducation sexuelle que reçoivent ces jeunes est celle des films pornographiques, ils n'ont aucun autre image de la relation amoureuse.’ Stoquart, Dans l'enfer des tournantes, p. 13.

Amara, Ni putes ni soumises, p. 52.

‘Ce qui devrait être une relation naturelle, spontanée, est vécu comme une transgression, un “péché” susceptible d'entraîner une sanction du tribunal social.’ Amara, Ni putes ni soumises, p. 53.

Ibid., p. 75.

‘L'affaire du voile est l'illustration la plus visible et symptomatique de cette dérive obscurantiste.’ Amara, Ni putes ni soumises, p. 77.

‘Ce serait par ailleurs une erreur de ne voir dans le voile qu'une question religious. Rappelons que c'est d'abord un outil d'oppression, d'aliénation, de discrimination, un instrument de pouvoir des hommes sur les femmes….’ Amara, Ni putes ni soumises, p. 79.

Even though it is urgent, Amara writes, to return to France's legal texts in order to forbid religious symbols from the public school system (p. 77), she believes this should be achieved through discussion and not through the creation of a law that bans the wearing of the hidjab in school. Amara fears the reactions this will engender among the Muslim community who will then go to the extreme of imposing ‘burqas’ (p. 79).

See Eisenstadt, ‘Fundamentalist Movements in the Framework of Multiple Modernities’, p. 193, for an analysis of the core characteristics of fundamentalist groups. Eisenstadt argues that fundamentalist movements are a modern construction of new collective and individual identities that have greatly mobilised women in the public sphere. The case of Franco‐Maghrebi women protesting France's ban or religious symbols in school not only forcefully thrust fundamentalist Muslim in the French public sphere, but also constituted one of the strongest public statements by Muslims who identified themselves both as French and as Muslim. This demonstrates the capacity of Muslim women to participate in (or produce) strong shifts in the demand for public and civil recognition by Muslims who in the past have usually publicly identified themselves (and been identified) according to their North African roots.

Lavignotte, ‘Musulmans. Les laïques se montrent … divisés’.

Mouvement des musulmans laïques de France, ‘L'appel de mai: Appel aux citoyens musulmans de France épris de paix, de justice, de liberté et de laïcité’.

Lavignotte, ‘Musulmans. Les laïques se montrent … divisés’.

Even Hakim El Ghissassi, director of La Médina magazine and of the FCCM (Forum citoyen des cultures musulmanes), declared : ‘Des musulmans laïques, ca ne veut rien dire’. Lavignotte, ‘Musulmans. Les laïques se montrent … divisés’.

Chakrabarty, ‘Reconstructing Liberalism? Notes Toward a Conversation between Area Studies and Diasporic Studies’, p. 477.

Chebel, ‘Quand l'Oedipe interroge l'Orient’, p. 51.

‘L'islam … est une “dogme”, et sa réalité actuelle n'aurait aucune cohésion s'il n'y avait la permanence d'un discours unifiant et commun….’ Chebel, Esprit de Sérail, p. 7.

‘L'islam croit avoir une réponse à tout. C'est n'est pas toujours faux.' Chebel, ‘Quand l'Oedipe interroge l'Orient’, p. 51. Emphasis in original.

Asad, Genealogies of Religion, pp. 235ff. On that point, although it is beyond the scope of this study, Chebel's cavalier use of the term lebensraum and Volksgeist in his discussion of co‐belonging and the Ummah al‐Islamia needs to be problematised. See, Chebel, La formation de l'identité politique, pp. 78ff and Chebel, Le corps en islam, p. 35. Clearly, Chebel is content with Germany's sense of co‐belonging in Europe despite the atrocities of the Nazi regime. Of course, one could respond that Chebel is not using the terms in the same way as the Holocaust perpetrators did, but that would ascribe a level of nuance to Chebel that he is not always willing to ascribe to Muslims who support the idea of the Ummah.

‘Si dans les couches paysannes, le sein continue à avoir prioritairement une fonction nourricière, sans aucune sexualisation, la fonction de cet organe, dite “secondaire” dans la classification anatomo‐médicale, est en train d’évoluer très vite. Le mimétisme des pratiques occidentales agit dans se domaine pour faire redécouvrir aux Arabes les capacités érotiques insoupçonnées du sein: ils reprennent ainsi le chemin de leurs ancêtres, lesquels avaient mis en place un véritable ars amandi où l'on vénérait les attributs de la femme sans passer par le truchement de l'alimentaire et du nourricier. En effet, tous les classiques arabes d'érotologie évoquent cette partie de l'anatomie féminine en mettant l'accent sur les différents types de seins, leur beauté, leur jeunesse et les multiples façons (plus ou moins fantaisistes d'ailleurs) de les raffermir en cas de besoin.' Chebel, L'imaginaire Arabo‐Musulman, p. 337.

Chebel, ‘La femme marocaine tire son épingle du jeu’.

See Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, for a discussion of how putting sexual practices into discourse (i.e. speaking about and mapping practices, and discursively creating categories as opposed to excluding and silencing) is fundamental to the processes of enhancement and liberation by which modern power expands its purchase. Foucault argues that the very idea of liberating sexuality was essential to the extension of governmental power over different aspects of life that included health and reproduction.

My reading of the importance of ‘ethnicity’ for understanding Chebel's discourse can be extended since the histories, languages and cultures of the Maghreb as something ‘outside’ Europe cannot, at present, be extricated from the force of the French state. The question of ‘ethnicity’ and Franco‐Maghrebis is, in this regard, complicated by France's colonial structuring of Maghrebi histories, languages and cultures, a question on which Chebel has largely remained silent.

Uday Mehta's Liberalism and Empire argues that the normative claims of liberal values should not be assumed. In the past, the idea of bringing freedom and plurality to Islam, for example, has gone hand in hand with violence and destruction that was thought to be liberating. Mehta's argument is important to the understanding that liberal values such as plurality, while opening up modern options, also break down other forms of life in order to reshape them in accordance with normative models.

Amara, Ni putes ni soumises, p. 79.