LAI ̈CITE ́from an other, whose essence is unknown to us and speaks to man through this, his own
reason. At bottom we would perhaps do better to rise above and thus spare ourselves
research into this matter; since such research is only speculative, and since what obliges
us (objectively) to act remains always the same, one may place one or the other principle
down as a foundation.’’^29 A questioning of this modernist self-understanding is imperative
at a time when more and more people, not only Muslims, come to understand themselves
(partly) in religious terms. If we do not question the frame oflaı ̈cite ́and its counterpart,
communautarisme, we risk reducing our analyses of the problematic place of Islam in
contemporary France to accusations that political religion, or identity politics in general,
are the underlying cause of violence. Instead, we should analyze the constellation of this
violence, its social context and the place of religion within it, without any predetermina-
tions from the modernist philosophical heritage.
Olivier Roy onLaı ̈cite ́and Globalized Islam
The dichotomous conception of belonging and freedom that we have discerned in the
discourse oflaı ̈cite ́also appears in Roy’s sociological analysis of contemporary Islam,
developed most recently inGlobalized IslamandLaı ̈cite ́in the Face of Islam.^30 Roy is
critical of approaches to Islam within the framework oflaı ̈cite ́,as well as those that use
the framework of multiculturalism. According to him, bothlaı ̈cite ́and multiculturalism
assume the existence of Islamic ‘‘communities’’ or contribute to their formation. He con-
siderslaı ̈cite ́the ideology of a republic ‘‘obsessed with the religious’’ and ‘‘fascinated by
monarchy.’’^31 Laı ̈cite ́frames the claims of an Islam that wishes to become visible in the
public sphere in terms of a contest for political power, thus translatingsocialreligious
identities into political ones. In doing so,laı ̈cite ́enhances the formation of religious iden-
tities linked with political contestations, instead of facilitating their merging with more
diverse identifications and practices. Multiculturalism, by contrast, links Islam to mi-
grants’ cultures of origin and tends to grant power to conservative elites supposedly repre-
senting entire ethno-religious groups. For Roy, however, these elites at most represent
the purely religious neo-communities of those who explicitly declare themselves their
‘‘members.’’ Underlying Roy’s critique of contemporary normative philosophies of inte-
gration is a sociological analysis of contemporary Islam, particularly of the ‘‘public’’ Islam
challenging the diverse European secularisms.
Roy argues that this public Islam is not a traditional Islam inherited from migrants’
cultures of origin. Rather, it forms part of a wider ‘‘return of the religious’’ in a globalizing
world, one also apparent in, for example, Christianity and Hinduism. In the case of Islam,
the emergence of such a ‘‘neo-fundamentalism’’ is politicized because of the history of
the Middle East, but this does not prevent Islam from taking part in a dynamics of global-
ization and secularization just like other religions. This is particularly so in the West,
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