Regimes of Secularity

‘It does not matter what I say I am: I am European and I am British. But it does matter how you see me. If you do not see me as a European, if you do not see me as a Brit, it does not matter what I say. Whatever I will say, I will be a Muslim.’

Western European nation-states are diverse and plural. Many Muslims are citizens of France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. While everybody seems to know to a certain extent who Muslims are and what Islam is, there is also disagreement about what this label implies. A wide variety of signifiers are attached to this name: when we think of Muslims we alternatively think of religion, we think of migrants and minorities, of populations with low socio-economic position, of terrorists and radicals and while many other images pop immediately to mind. These labels may be stereotypes. They may generalize. But they are also used as forms of self-identification. Furthermore, these meanings do not necessarily exclude each other, but together form a field of significance which is constructed by all the actors taking part in the construction of meaning: a field of Muslimness.

The liberal state looks at Muslims through two paradigms of subjectivization, one targeting their Otherness in terms of religion, namely the regime of secularity, which draws upon the concept of the secular and the way a certain understanding of the social relevance of religion was captured and minutely discussed in the theory of secularization; second, through the paradigm of citizenship, which deals with members of the nation-state in a neutral and egalitarian manner through its different institutions, various levels of governing and many mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. In this book I am arguing that these two paradigms mentioned above are essential for understanding the position of European Muslims today. Although they can be seen as a double disadvantage Muslims as members of western liberal states encounter (Modood 2005, 2010), they can also present windows of opportunity for Muslims. While the opposition between the West and the East and the special negative attention given to Islam is not new but rather a permanent feature of the history of western thought (Wheatcroft 2004), Muslims can now engage with these images from the position of citizens. One of these windows of opportunity is the possibility to rethink and re-evaluate the role and place of religion in modern society.