France’s Islamophobia: Religious “Separatism” or Disciplining Muslimness

^7th Annual Paris Islamophobia Conference (Two Day Virtual Conference)

Register here:  https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_vQpqHPrYS7m-af1Yne4Gpw

France’s Islamophobia: Religious “Separatism” or Disciplining Muslimness

The recent developments in France point to an escalation in the targeting and structural exclusion of French Muslim communities, a process that has been underway since at least the early 1980s.  Here, the French Muslim citizen is a constant site of government intervention to regulate and discipline Muslimness’s expression through the deployment of French Republican values as instruments of hegemonic domination.  French Muslim citizens are on constant probation, unequal, and a site of civilizational interventionist and behavior modification project, a process that originates in French colonial epistemology and history, is currently deployed against the internal colonial subjects.  Muslim spaces, bodies, families, civil society institutions, and thoughts are subject to violent French state intervention.  The conference will interrogate the history and contemporary French state oppressive and racist projects directed at the disciplining and surveillance of the Muslim subject- the internal permanent colonial, separate, unequal, never free and not “French to the source.”

December 12

9:00am – 9:30am PST/6:00pm-6:30pm Paris Time

Conference Opening and Welcome

Hatem Bazian, UC Berkeley and IRDP

9:30am – 11:15am PST/6:30pm-8:15pm Paris Time 

Panel One: 

Chair: Hatem Bazian, UC Berkeley and IRDP

Islamophobia and the Rise of Fascism in France: The Implications and Consequences for the European Union.

Ramon Grosfoguel, Associate Professor, Chicano / Latino Studies, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

France, a Sacred Union Against Terrorism or Against Muslims?

Houria Bouteldja, Political Activist, Author and Community Organizer in Paris, France.

The French Empire Strikes Back: Separatism and Counterinsurgency in Macron’s France.

Ibrahim Bechrouri, PhD candidate at the Institut Français de Géopolitique

Adjunct Lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY)

11:30am – 1:15pm PST/8:30pm – 10:15pm Paris Time

Panel Two

Chair: Munir Jiwa, Director of Center for Islamic Studies, Graduate Theological Union

The Evolution of Legislation Regarding Terrorism and Secularism in France.

Asif Arif, Attorney Admitted to Paris Bar, www.cabinet-arif.com

François Burgat, Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman (CNRS-IREMAM) Aix-en-Provence – UMR 7310 

Centre arabe de recherches et d’études politiques de Paris (CAREP)

From radicalization to Separatism: A Brief History of France’s Contemporary Politics Towards Muslims’.

Hamza Esmili, PhD candidate in sociology at EHESS/ENS, Paris, France, and a 2018-2019 Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley (Department of Anthropology)

December 13, 2020

9:00am – 10:45am PST/6:00pm-7:45pm Paris Time

Panel Three

Chair: Elsadig Elsheikh, Director of the Global Justice Program, Othering & Belonging Institute,

 

Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France

Jean Beaman, Associate Professor of Sociology, with affiliations in Political Science, Feminist Studies, Global Studies, and the Center for Black Studies Research, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Radical Free Speech

Nadia Fadil, Associate Professor at the Interculturalism, Migration and Minorities Research Centre at KU Leuven

Neo-Nationalism and the Islamophobic Imaginary

Sayyid, Professor of Social Theory and Decolonial Thought, Head of School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds.

11:00am – 1:00pm PST/8:00pm-10:00pm Paris Time

Panel 4

Chair: Ahlam Muhtaseb, Professor in Communication Studies & Director

Center for Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies, California State University, San Bernardino

Muslim Women’s Political Participation in France: Disciplining Gendered Muslimness and Shrinking Spaces.  

Amina Easat-Daas, Lecturer in Politics at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Turkish Muslim Population in France: History, and the Islamophobia Challenge

Enes Bayraklı, Department of Political Science, Turkish-German University

Disciplining Muslims: Creating the ‘Good Muslim’ in Austria

Farid Hafez, Lecturer and Researcher, Department of Political Science, University of Salzburg (Austria) and IRDP Affiliated Faculty

Republican Values or French Double Standards

Yasser Louati, Head of the CJL (Justice & Liberties for All Committee)

Host of the podcast “Le Breakdown”

1:00pm PST/10:00pm Paris Time 

Concluding Remarks

Dr. Hatem Bazian