著者

森 千香子

出版者

日本中東学会

雑誌

日本中東学会年報 (ISSN:09137858)

巻号頁・発行日

no.20, pp.323-351, 2005-03-31

---

The <<fear of Islam>> is not a new subject in France : this country's geographic location, in permanent contact with the Arab Islamic world, always brought complex relations, both close and strained, with the Islamic world. A combination of different reasons has led to the present situation : ancient history (France is a catholic nation, particularly active during the Crusade), recent history (the Iranian revolution, increasing number of <<fundamentalist's terrorist acts>> in Algeria, the September 11 attacks...), and France's sociological situation itself (with an important Muslim community). However, since several years, a sort of mutation has been taking place in Islam's representation, while the number of anti-Muslim acts is on the rise. What does this mutation consist of? What is exactly the <<new anti-Muslim phenomenon>> in French society? To answer these questions, we analyze the new anti-Islam discourses and focus on its promoters, in order to grasp the crucial issues and the underlying ideas of this phenomenon in French socio-political context. First of all, this paper will outline some of the principal characteristics of Islamophobia in France, especially the relations between ultranationalist xenophobia and current Islamophobia. Then, new forms of critical discourses towards Islam are to be studied and their relations with new Islamophobia's logics. The objective of this paper is to analyze if the latest outbreak of anti-Islamic attacks is only a variation of <<traditional>> anti-Arab racism, or if current Islamophobia presents, on the contrary, some new peculiarities, partly or entirely distinct from traditional xenophobia. Our analysis will clarify two points : first, ultranationalist racist ideology plays a nonnegligible part in the contemporary Islamophobia. This point of view, systematically amalgamating <<terrorists>>, <<fundamentalists>>, <<Muslims>> and <<immigrants>>, consists in considering the Islam as a <<potential threat>> to the French nation and, on the basis of an essentialist ideology, in excluding Islam from the phantasmagoric fabrication of a so-called <<French identity>>. Secondly, the present-day Islamophobia is nevertheless clearly irreducible to the ultranationalist anti-Arab racism : <<criticism of Islamic fundamentalists>> by several actors (experts of <<New anti-Semitism by Muslims>>, defenders of <<universal values>> or even <<Moderate Muslims>>), also exercises sometimes-in its own ways- some vicious influences on the reinforcement of anti-Muslim stereotypes, potentially leading to some latent legitimatization of its overstepped forms.