ISLAM AND SOCIAL WORK

ISLAM AND SOCIAL WORK

Daniel Verba

IRIS/USPN

3IN Alliance

11-03-21

French findings

•  A strongly secularized society

•  A racialized society

•  Identity tensions (religious, ethnic, territorial ...)

•  A minority of radicalized young people in the social institutions

•  A deviation from the legal conception of

“laïcité”

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What is « laïcité » ?

•  Laïcité ≠secularism≠atheism

•  A legal and political principle based on three pillars :

–  Freedom to believe or not to believe –  Equality of cults

–  Religious neutrality of the state (the state has no religion, but not the society)

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Consequences for the social work

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•  Social workers are embarrassed

•  Confusion about the application of the principle of

« laïcité » in socio-educational institutions

•  Some conflicts in the educational teams

•  A difficulty in adopting a concerted and assumed educational posture in face of religious demands

•  Ethical dilemmas in the treatment of radicalisation

cases

France : a multireligious society...

•  Catholicism (50 to 75%) but poor practice (1,8% to 11%)

•  Islam (6-8%) but more believers and a more developed practice in the younger generations;

•  Protestantism (2% or 1.2 million people including nearly 400,000 Evangelists and Pencotists);

•  Judaism (1% or about 600,000 people including a majority of Sephardim from North Africa);

•  Orthodox Christians (300 to 500,000 people)

•  Buddhism (400 to 600,000 people);

•  Atypical or sectarian religious movements (eg 140,000 Jehovah's Witnesses);

•  Agnosticism (25% of the population does not identify with any religion, which does not mean that they are atheists).

Sources : INED, Institut Montaigne (IFOP)

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… But anticlerical

•  8 wars of religions

•  St Barthelemy’s slaughter (1572)

•  French revolution against catholic church (1789)

•  Dreyfus affair

•  Shoah and antisemitism

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Relationship with religion

(Observatoire de la laïcité, 2019)

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37%

31%

15%

10%

7%

Believers Atheists Agnostics Indifferents No answer

The emergence of Islam on the french religious scene

•  1989, year of mutation

•  Return of the visible religious in an anticlerical society

•  Emergence of an « ostensible halal lifestyle »

Sources : Bobineau, Hervieu-Léger, Benzine

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French Muslim population

•  Forbidden ethnic statistics

•  First muslim community in Europe

•  Between 6% to 8%

•  50% believers

•  Between 70 000 et 110 000 converts (maybe more … )

•  But a lot of Muslims leave their religion

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43%

28%

11%

9% 9%

Algeria Marocco Tunisia Africa Turquia

"Islam works as a model of collective counter-identification providing an alternative to the French identity" Lorcerie (2007)

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Typology of problem situations

•  An obstacle to social work;

•  A challenge to equality and neutrality among professionals;

•  A challenge to the ideology of the social worker;

•  Institutions do not always guarantee a clear and precise legal and regulatory framework.

Sources : Guelamine-Verba (2014); Verba (2019)

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The veil issue

•  A religious sign that refers to the past

•  A sign of women's submission to the phallocratic order

•  A sexist and anti-feminist practice

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The process of radicalisation

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Radicalisation in France

(2016)

•  12 000 profils

•  A young phenomenon (75% are under 25 years old)

•  "An overwhelming social geography"

•  35% of converts, almost 50% of whom are women

•  A recurring biographical process

•  A double spring: social and psychological

•  A favorable context

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Radicalisation and social work

•  Make a difference between piety and radicalisation

•  Teenage years are a "radical" period

•  Ethical dilemmas (report or not ?)

•  Police and General Intelligence Relations

•  Don’t forget the childcare

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Thanks for your attention

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