Beyond Migration: Islam as a Transnational Public Space

Abstract

Recent studies of transnational religious phenomena have emphasised the importance of distinguishing between transnational processes of migration and movement on the one hand, and diasporic forms of consciousness, identity, and cultural creation on the other. While this distinction is useful, it risks directing the study of transnational social phenomena in certain, limited directions. Migration and diaspora insufficiently take into account the possibility of quite distinct self‐understandings about boundaries and legitimacy on the part of both ‘host’ countries and ‘immigrant’ populations. Taking ‘Islam in France’ as an illuminating case in point because each of its two constitutive terms challenges the possibility of self‐defining through migration and diaspora, I argue that transnational Islam creates and implies the existence and legitimacy of a global public space of normative reference and debate, and that this public space cannot be reduced to a dimension of migration or of transnational religious movements. I offer two brief ethnographic examples of this transnational public space, and maintain that even as it develops references to Europe it implies neither a ‘Euro‐Islam’ nor a ‘post‐national’ sense of European membership and citizenship. Rather, current directions of debate and discussion in France are strongly shaped by, first, French efforts to define Islam within national political and cultural boundaries, and, second, efforts by Muslim intellectuals to maintain the transnational legitimacy of Islamic knowledge.

Keywords:

• Diaspora
• France
• Islam
• Religion
• Transnationalism

Notes

John R. Bowen is Dunbar‐Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, where he is also Professor of Anthropology and Chair of Social Thought and Analysis. Correspondence to: Prof. John Bowen, Box 1114, Washington University, 1 Brookings Dr, St. Louis MO 63130. E‐mail: [email protected]

I should emphasise that the authors referred to here are well aware of these internal formulations within Islam; see Vertovec (2000).

On the ways in which the movements of Turkish workers, made mainly for economic reasons, nonetheless shape religious consciousness, see Amiraux (2001) and Schiffauer (1999).

I have been struck by this use of Arabic in what might otherwise be unlikely places. Two examples will illustrate the general point. The Fiqh Council of North America does use English at their meetings but participants are expected to be able to converse in Arabic as well, despite the group's inclusion of American converts and South Asians. In the Gayo highlands of Aceh, Indonesia, where I worked for many years, ‘traditionalist’ religious scholars, all speakers of the Gayo language, generally write down the conclusions of their meetings in Arabic, a language none of them converse in fluently.

I omit discussion of the debates among Muslims about the ways to conceive of the ‘Islamic world’ and the rest: should they be considered as two distinct realms (daˆr) based on the Islamic character of the society or the government? Or should one focus instead on the degree to which Muslims are free to pursue their religious activities in different countries? For historical and comparative perspectives on this question, see Abou El Fadl (1994); Bowen (forthcoming); Kahani‐Hopkins and Hopkins (2002); and Ramadan (2002).

Zaman (2002) shows how scholarly writing and debates in today's Pakistan take place in Arabic, not in Urdu. Zaman has remarked (personal communication, 2003) that this fact explains the small number of Western scholars of Islam in South Asia competent to master the scholarly communications, in that Arabic has not been a regular part of the training of South Asianists.

In response to the North African domination of public Islamic activities, immigrants from Turkey formed their own grouping, as did a collection of Muslims from a broad array of places, including the Comoros, the West Indies, and West Africa. Because the strongest rivalries are among the three North African groups, sometimes mosques at which Muslims from more than one of these groups worship will choose someone from a smaller grouping to be the imam or mosque leader. In one mosque south of Paris, men from Algeria and Morocco laughingly (but meaningfully) recounted to me that only a Comoro man could have brought peace to their mosque. Mosques in the Paris region usually are multi‐ethnic, and preach in Arabic or French and Arabic; in cities with large populations of non‐Arabic speakers such as Marseille one finds ethnic‐specific mosques.

I would like to thank Mahmoud Abdallah for translating the Arabic speeches from my tapes.