RAPPING THE REPUBLIC

Utopia, Critique, and Muslim Role Models in Secular France*

Jeanette S. Jouili Duke University

Je fus choqué dans mon intime et je vous jure, Que si j’n’avais pas eu la foi j’aurais eu honte

D’être Muslim. Après ça fallait qu’on montre aux yeux du

monde, Que nous aussi nous n’étions que des hommes,

Que s’il y avait des fous, la majorité d’entre nousne mélangeait pas, la politique avec la foi.

Abd Al Malik, “12 Septembre 2001”

Écoute mon histoire des avions en averse, c’est une triste époque, un récit que l’on traverse.

Et vous verrez, on retiendra que ce morceau, on dira de nous que nous sommes fous dans les journaux.

D’avoir écrit et fait l’apologie du crime, de se servir de la violence uniquement pour la frime.

Distribue les arguments de ma tribu, anti-américain est l’étiquette qu’on m’attribue.

Non ! Le peuple américain derrière Michael Moore ...Et malgré tout, les miens et moi on y croit,

on dépose cette pierre, alimente le débat. Et pour le dire, un album c’est trop court.

11/09 ou le récit du 11ème jour.

– Médine, “11 Septembre”

“I am extremely honored. I come from a difficult neighborhood, I am black,Muslim, I rap, and I deeply love my country, France,” declared French-

French Politics, Culture & Society, Vol. 31, No. 2, Summer 2013doi:10.3167/fpcs.2013.310204

Congolese rapper Abd Al Malik in January 2008 during his nomination asChevalier des Arts et des Lettres, a national distinction for special contributionsto French artistic creation, by the French minister for cultural affairs.1 Malik,who has won several prestigious national music awards and prizes, is todayone of the most visible hip-hop artists in France. He has attracted importantmedia attention beyond the specialized press, and appeared on national newsbroadcast, in cultural programs, and on talk-shows. He has also sparked sig-nificant interest from within the political establishment. Malik has beennamed by the mayor of Paris as patron of the Institut des cultures de l’Islam,a cultural center intended to promote a moderate Muslim cultural heritage. In2010, he was designated by the municipality of Paris to be the patron of Lasemaine du vivre ensemble (Week of Living Together), a multicultural urbanevent series. These nominations suggest that Malik is hailed for symbolizingthe success of the new multicultural France, la France plurielle.

The shifting politics of French rap—which from its inception has beendominated by children of post-colonial immigrants—has been widely discussedin the literature. This body of work showed this genre to be fluctuating fromcultural critique and political protest to its possible cooptation by the politicalestablishment.2 The strong Muslim presence and identity within French hiphop is a topic that has not yet been extensively studied.3 The present articleapproaches this theme from a specific angle. I take Malik’s success amongmedia and political establishment (he is the first Muslim rapper to havereceived this kind of attention) as an occasion to reflect about France’s need forMuslim role models. Malik, a practicing Muslim who does not shy away fromtalking publicly about his religious commitments is held to be the model citi-zen for young Muslims. That an outspoken pious Muslim like Malik obtainsthis role within a political and cultural establishment dedicated to the centralFrench value of laïcité is intriguing. What does this tell us about the possibili-ties of public Muslim identities within a regime of laïcité, allegedly striving toconfine religion to the private sphere? Laïcité is, of course, a particular instanceof secularism. In line with arguments advanced by critical scholars of secular-ity, I do not understand secularism as a political doctrine demanding the sepa-ration of church and state, but as a governmental regime that aims to reshapereligion, its underlying subjectivities and epistemological claims.4 Followingthis line of thought, the emergence of secular Muslims in the French publicsphere can be read as part and parcel of the secular project to produce a certainkind of legitimate Muslim subjectivity,5 one that must not cross “the radioac-tive line of religion” in public.6 Yet, Abd Al Malik seems to do exactly so with-out any complex. By looking at Malik’s case, I will argue that secular regimes arecharacterized, more than we have acknowledged up to now, by a remarkableflexibility to “commensurate” divergent kinds of religious subjectivities.7

I will contrast the case of Abd Al Malik to that of French-Algerian rapperMédine. Both rappers are outspoken about their Muslim identity, both deplorethe futility of French mainstream rap, and both claim to pursue a “conscious”

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rap that conveys relevant social messages. But unlike Malik, Médine has beenlargely invisible outside the hip-hop scene.

In what follows, I examine the artistic expressions of two different types of(pious) Muslim subjectivity and their possibilities for being heard within theFrench secular public sphere by drawing on a variety of material of written andspoken statements by both rappers. This includes song lyrics, interviews, and—for the case of Abd Al Malik—an array of appearances in talk-shows and cul-tural programs, as well as two book publications. My inquiry is structured intothree parts. The first and second parts explore Abd Al Malik’s and Médine’srespective work and thought with a special concern for their attitudes vis-à-visthe French republican model and the place they want to create for Muslim andother racialized minorities. The third part situates their positions within thelarger framework of France’s secular public culture. In addition, this section alsocontains a more critical engagement with both positions. Both rappers, in spiteof their contrasting approaches and affective attachments, seek to rearticulateFrench identity by promoting the idea of a multicultural France that cherishesand safeguards individual and cultural differences. I gesture at this pointtowards a reading that highlights the promises and limits of both perspectives.By using the case of these two rappers in order to study the sonic ambiguitiesof French laïcité, I bring into conversation an anthropology of Islam and of sec-ularism with French post-colonial and cultural studies.

Abd Al Malik, the Patriotic Rapper

Having already gained some notoriety with the independent rap group NewAfrican Poets, it has been especially Malik’s solo career—which introduced asignificant change in musical style—that has given him the status he enjoystoday. From his second solo album onwards his music resembles a form of slampoetry accompanied by musical arrangements that incorporate elements ofjazz and French chanson rather than hip-hop. Thirty-eight-year-old Malik hasproduced an ample body of work that enables us to explore not only histhought but also his personal life. He has authored many of the song lyrics onhis albums.8 He has also written three books: an autobiography Qu’Allah benissela France, a novel that also bears a heavy autobiographical imprint, La Guerredes banlieues n’aura pas lieu, and a collection of poems, Le Dernier Français (TheLast Frenchman).9 He has appeared many times on mainstream French televi-sion stations and given countless interviews. His writings, lyrics, and inter-views address the life of the inhabitants of the cités, the housing projects builtin the mainly immigrant suburbs of French urban centers, such as the cité inNeuhof, a banlieue in the town of Strasbourg where Malik himself grew up. Attimes admonishing them, at times cherishing them, his affection for his peersseems to be paralleled by a deep frustration about the shortcomings he per-ceives in them. Still, he never falls short of awaiting their future redemption.

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Malik also has a great deal to say about religion, that is, his thoughts onreligion and spirituality and his own religious trajectory. After converting toIslam at the age of 15, he joined the tablighi jama’at, an international pietymovement that originated in India which, though not representing the dom-inant trend within the Islamic revival scene in France, has quite a substantialfollowing.10 As time went on, however, the tabligh did not satisfy his spiritualneeds. Subsequently, he connected briefly with groups related to the Uniondes organisations islamiques en France, the major Muslim umbrella organiza-tion in France and institutional center of the Islamic revival movement, aswell as to Tariq Ramadan, the well-known Swiss-Egyptian preacher and publicintellectual.11 Eventually, he found his sense of stability within the QadiriyaBoutchichiya, a Morocco-based Sufi movement.

The chapter in his autobiography recounting the first part of his Islamicexperience, suggestively titled “Islam de banlieue,” portrays a picture quite atodds with the subsequent phase of his religious trajectory. He describes tablighreligiosity as “a morality of the bazaar” (158) in which a “vision of white andblack” makes it possible to harbor “feelings of hate” (95). This religiosity,according to him, is unable “to touch the heart” (149). The more dominantforms of the Islamic revival movement in France do not receive a better depic-tion. It is, notably, the question of music and Islam that causes Malik to dis-tance himself from his former Islamic environment. Whereas the tablighordered him to stop his musical career altogether, suggestions from the UOIFcircles and from Tariq Ramadan regarding the “correct” Islamic music formseemed equally constraining to him. The second stage of his spiritual pathrelates to the discovery of Sufism and, in particular, his entry into the QadiriyaBoutchichiya brotherhood, led by the spiritual master, the Sheikh Sidi Hamzaal-Qadiri al-Boutchichi. With this step, he professes to have left the “Islam desbanlieues” in order to penetrate into the “heart of Islam,” that is, Sufism.12

Here, he claims to have discovered the true spirituality and universality ofIslam. In Malik’s telling, he escaped the atmosphere of small-mindedness,exteriority, ritualism, and particularism of his early Islamic trajectory to find aSufi world of warmness, interiority, spirituality, and universality.

While it is my intention to question neither Malik’s personal experienceson his spiritual journey, nor his right to express his own religious truth, hisdescription of “Islam des banlieues” raises some questions. His portrayal ofthese movements as ritualistic and devoid of “true spirituality” is consistentwith secular-liberal thought that situates the essence of religion within the pri-vate, inner self.13 From this perspective, rituals, that is, external bodily prac-tices, are signifying in their nature and therefore irrelevant for the constitutionof interiority. It is precisely in these terms that Muslim piety was described inthe colonial past, and it is in these terms that contemporary Muslim piety con-tinues to be discussed in France, as epitomized in the never-ending headscarfdebates.14 By painting his early Islamic experience in such a way, Malikinevitably bolsters dominant modes of representation of revivalist Muslims,

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whose attitudes and practices are regularly depicted as impediments to theirintegration into the French nation. Yet Malik does not proclaim that “true reli-giosity” lies within the private, inner self. To the contrary, he openly opposesthis idea in interviews by repeatedly insisting on the “intimate” character ofreligiosity, which he explicitly distinguishes from the notion of the private.15

This detail is substantial: the intimate does not refer merely to the disembod-ied inner self, to the mind, as postulated by post-Enlightenment conceptionsof religion. Rather, it refers to the bodily realm and to interpersonal relations,something that is pivotal for Sufi practices. What I want to stress here, how-ever, is that Malik’s promotion of religion’s intimate nature accepts the exclu-sion of religion from public life.

Malik’s distinction between interior and exterior religiosity reinforces thedistinction he wishes to make between religion and politics. A religion that mixeswith politics—an undesirable quality of the form of Islam in which he firstindulged—is opposed to religiosity that abstains from engaging in politics. Thelatter corresponds, according to him, to the truly lived religiosity that he foundwithin Sufism. This vision is most strongly conveyed in the song “September12th.” There, as we can see in the epigram with which I began, he puts Islamicactivists of very different shades and convictions in one and the same category.It should come as no surprise that Malik’s interlocutors in the media—notablytalk show hosts and journalists—most happily take up this trope and describe theform of Islamic piety he first endorsed as evocative of an “obscurantist,” “radi-cal,” and therefore potentially dangerous Islam that lingers in French banlieues.

Malik, however, has attenuated his harsh critique. In face of the rapid pro-liferation of Islamophobic discourses in France in recent years, which feedinto a general anxiety about all kinds of Islamic practices, he has become morecautious. In more recent declarations he denounces public discourses thatfocus on the “small minority” of Muslims who adhere, according to his ownvision of correct Islamic practice, to an erroneous religious understanding. Hehighlights the fact that the majority of Muslims practice their religion peace-fully and with due respect to French laws. This shift is most evident in hisnovel La Guerre des banlieues n’aura pas lieu. He makes no mention here ofextremist Muslims, only of a positive, empowering Islamic (Sufi) spirituality.

Another important theme that comes through forcefully in Malik’s auto-biography and in countless interviews is his personal success. This story buildson three central tropes: school education, hard work, and spirituality. In hisautobiography, Malik relates how as a young boy from a cité he pursued a bril-liant career in school, even while engaging in youth criminality and rap.Because of excellent grades, he was able to enroll in one of the best highschools in his town, incidentally not a laïque state school, but a privateCatholic institution. There he came to appreciate French culture and acquiredhis lasting interest in philosophy. His enthusiasm for learning allowed him tomaintain a seemingly normal teenage life. His passion for literature and phi-losophy is frequently invoked in his narratives, and his lyrics repeatedly refer

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to famous (notably French) poets, writers, and philosophers. In his albumDante, for instance, there are traces of Deleuze, Camus, Sartre, but also Césaire.His insistence on studying hard in school goes along with a general valoriza-tion of work and individual effort.

Drawing on his personal experience, he regularly affirms the possibility ofsucceeding through hard work. This message is conveyed in several songlyrics, most obviously in “C’est du lourd” (“This is Deep”). In this piece, Malikpraises those migrants who came to France and struggled to make a living,accepting unjust working conditions without claiming rights, and he criti-cizes those many migrants who supposedly support themselves either fromwelfare or from criminal activities. In his two novels, Malik recounts in detailthe poverty and the social deprivation of the suburbs where he grew up, aswell as the impact of racism and discrimination on the psyche of its younginhabitants, the frustration, the violence, and the omnipresence of death. Theremedy for this situation that he proposes in his two novels and in many ofhis songs is the acquisition of a correct psychological mind-set.

His emphasis on personal effort, self-help, and the right mind-set as animportant means to effect positive social change seems to locate the status ofone’s social position in individual responsibility rather than in systemic fea-tures. This philosophy has exposed Malik to accusations of promoting a neo-liberal position and, consequently, of being the spokesperson of a state thatfails to redress the social ills caused by structural racism and corrosive socialand economic policies.16

While it is true that Malik’s emphasis on individual responsibility andagency dovetails neatly with neo-liberal agendas—which helps explaining hissuccess within the French political establishment—confining his vision tosuch an interpretation overlooks another important dimension within histhought, Sufism. Reading his insistence on individual effort and hard worktogether with his emphasis on spiritual revitalization exposes interesting con-vergences between certain contemporary forms of Sufi striving and liberalindividualism. For Malik, spirituality, and particularly Muslim spirituality,gives people the strength to struggle for individual as well as collective well-being. Indeed, this is a general feature of the social change discourse promotedby more recent tendencies within the Islamic revival (whether ‘orthodox’ orSufi), which neither aim to seize state power, nor issue a fundamental critiqueof the political system, but which focus instead on moral and spiritual uplift.Such an approach is pursued by Malik’s brotherhood, the Qadiriya-Boutchichiya; while claiming to be non-political, it aims to change societythrough reviving spiritual values.17

Accordingly, through his novels and lyrics, which frequently take up lifestories from the cités, Malik seeks to address his peers, encouraging them tocultivate the strength of character to succeed in life. In this sense, Malik testi-fies to how Islamic (Sufi) spirituality has enabled him to develop such an atti-tude. In his view, the lack of this spiritual framework and the decline of virtues

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within the cité have caused a profound psychological malaise, which he him-self has experienced:

Moi, moi quand j’étais petit, j’avais mal.C’était l’état de mon esprit, je suis né malade.Sur l’échelle de Richter de la misère, malade ça vaut bien 6Quelques degrés en dessous de là où c’est gradué “fou.”18

Several songs describe how (Sufi) spirituality saves the lost and desperate indi-vidual, as for instance, in “Gibraltar”:19

Sur le détroit de Gibraltar, y’a un jeune noir qui boit, dans ce bar où les espoirs se bousculent, une simple canette de Fanta. Il cherche comme un chien sans collier le foyer qu’il n’a en fait jamais eu, et se dit que p’t-être, bientôt, il ne cherchera plus. … soudain il s’fait derviche tourneur, Il danse sur le bar, il danse, il n’a plus peur, enfin il hurle comme un fakir, de la vie devient disciple. Sur le détroit de Gibraltar y’a un jeune noir qui prend vie, qui chante, dit enfin “je t’aime” à cette vie. Puis les autres le sentent, le suivent, ils veulent être or puisqu’ils sont cuivre.

Another constant theme that permeates Malik’s work is his effort to carve outa space for (“true”) Islamic religiosity within the Republic. In an interviewgiven on the occasion of the publication of his second book, he asserts:

Differences … they can be a richness for the Republic … in the sense that whenspirituality, here we talk about Islam, is lived in a healthy way … in a truly spiritualway, this nourishes the individuals, these individuals will become radiant individ-uals, and over all, useful.20

This desire to create a valid place for Muslim spirituality within French societymust be situated within his larger vision for France. While being a staunchsupporter of the Republic and its proclaimed values, he does not think ofFrance in terms of a homogenous nation. If he upholds laïcité as a core princi-ple, he understands it as inclusive of all (properly lived) religious beliefs. Thisconviction also accounts for why he often extols the compatibility between“true” Islamic belief and practice, lived at the level of the intimate, and laïque,republican values.

Malik feels that liberté, égalité, and fraternité must be reinvigorated andbrought to life once again:

These beautiful phrases, that’s fine, beautiful letters inscribed on the front of pub-lic buildings, that’s wonderful, but if it doesn’t make things move, if these phrasesstay vain, they are dead phrases; we want to give life to them in daily life.21

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Thus, he does not consider defects within French society, such as racism, asendemic to the Republic, rather, they point to the yet-to-be realized values oftrue republicanism.22 French values, in his view, authentically reflect respectfor diversity and pluralism. Consequently, he strongly criticizes dominant dis-courses that depict France in an exclusivist way and thereby deny the inclu-sion of racial and religious minorities into the French nation. And he does notshy away from denouncing the political, economic, and social marginalizationof racialized minorities. However, his analysis of racism—even if he identifiesit within the institutions of the Republic—stays at the level of attitudes ormentalities.23 This stance is forcefully revealed in his introductory poem to hisnovel La Guerre des banlieues n’aura pas lieu:

Vous dites que la différence est une chance, que c’est la France.Mais la télé, les postes d’influence ou l’Assemblée ont trop rarement avec nous de la ressemblance.

Je parle de vraisemblance, de reconnaissance, de l’amour inconditionnel que j’aipour mon pays, la France. Je ne parle pas de vengeance.Je parle en revanche d’une partie d’elle-même qu’elle stigmatise, précarise, ghettoïse dans les faits.

Forcément par ignorance… Sciemment, qui est-ce qui à soi-même du mal se ferait ? ...

Pas de cynisme, pas d’ironie, pas de mauvaise foi....Je ne pointe pas, ne menace pas.C’est une mentalité que j’incrimine: celle qui refuse le changement, celle quirefuse de voir que la France aujourd’hui est pareille qu’hier et en même tempsautrement.

It is through his understanding of republicanism as an egalitarianembracement of diversity, that he designs his cosmopolitan vision of a plural-istic French society. Notwithstanding those critics who accuse him of beingtoo consensual and idealistic in his plea for unity, he affirms his fervent beliefin the possibility of transcending divisive social cleavages. According to Malik,the French Republic and its values constitute the necessary framework for therealization of such a vision. This appreciation inspired the title of his firstbook Qu’Allah benisse la France.

In outlining his cosmopolitan ideals, Malik accords spirituality a centralplace. In his view, spirituality, notably Sufi spirituality, provides the virtuesthat cultivate tolerant, diversity-embracing citizens, by offering the spiritualfoundation for connecting different communities. Malik refers persistently toSufi proverbs, notably from his own spiritual guide, to make a case for reli-gious tolerance and interface dialogue and acknowledges that it is Sufismthat has enabled him to develop a cosmopolitan awareness.24 Malik believesthat spirituality is urgently needed to restore cohesion to a fractured Repub-lic, defined by important values which are, however, no longer lived out byits citizens.

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Malik’s expression of his convictions are not confined to his writing.Indeed, his musical style itself is a “manifesto for social ‘integration.’”25 Theidiosyncratic style he has developed during his solo career builds on a softervoice treatment, closer to slam poetry than to rap. He fuses elements fromdiverse musical traditions such as chanson française, jazz, blues, hip-hop, ormore recently Congolese rumba and pop. His musical arrangements are cre-ated in collaboration with eminent French musicians from the jazz and chan-son scene, but he also joins forces with international musicians, from NorthAmerica to Central Africa. The success of this formula was not long in coming.While a few music critics have criticized his lyrics as too heavy and overly the-atrical, most have praised his eclectic métissage and creative innovation “lib-erated from the clichés of rap,” for which he has received numerous awards.26

The music has also brought him significant commercial success: his most suc-cessful album, Gibraltar, sold more than a quarter million copies. Malik hasmade hip-hop less street and more salon, shifting his audience from banlieueyoungsters to an intellectual, liberal urban bohemia that knows how to appre-ciate a certain type of domesticated multi-culture.27

Shock-Factor Médine

Let me now turn to the second case that I want to contrast to Malik’s successstory. Thirty-year-old Médine is a native from Le Havre, a provincial town onthe Atlantic coast of France. Like Malik, he grew up in a housing projectinhabited mainly by immigrants from North and West Africa and theirdescendants. His appearance is impressive: shaved head, long beard, andsturdy physique. Unlike Malik, but similar to many of his peers, his trajectoryat school was not particularly successful. And, akin to other youth from thecités, his passion was to rap, without believing this hobby would become aprofession one day.28 Médine reveals much less than Malik about his life, buthe nonetheless gives a few important indications about his religious andmusical development in interviews and song lyrics. Two interrelatedmoments have constituted life-changing turning points for him. One is Sep-tember 11th and its aftermath, notably the negative media-coverage of Mus-lims and the repercussions he experienced.29 At that time, as he reveals in hisautobiographical song Arabospiritual, he felt the need to take a break from rapand to focus on religion. The other important moment is his discovery ofMalcolm X’s autobiography, which he read during the same period.30

Impressed by Malcolm’s own intellectual development in prison, he beganappreciating the importance of knowledge. Médine was attracted especially toliterature about colonial and post-colonial history, which motivated him toproduce politically conscious rap lyrics. It was after this retreat that his firstalbum, 11 Septembre, was released. The album launched his career on the

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French hip-hop scene and set the tone of his rap lyrics, which unleash arelentless critique of state, power, and society.

For Médine, acquiring knowledge is crucial for revising misconceptionsabout the past. He asserts that while the vanquishers have generally writtenhistory, he wants to contribute to the rewriting of history by the vanquished.31

Nonetheless, he avoids presenting himself as an erudite person. Not hiding hisunsuccessful school career, he regularly emphasizes that he is just a rapper,albeit one who educated himself.32 His song lyrics, he explains, draw heavilyon his reading and research. His politically charged and provocative lyricsmanipulate and mold French language, banlieue slang, Arabic, and Englishlocutions. Though at times satirical and even humoristic, his tone is mostoften angry, as he denounces injustice and demands redress for the oppressed.His style stands in the tradition of French hardcore rap, with sharp, edgyrhythms, distinguished by his rough voice. The melodies accompanying hisrap oscillate between the melancholic, the gloomy, and the outright menac-ing, to convey the gravity of the topics. Synthesized beats, string orchestras,and electric guitars, are accompanied by machine guns, torture, and other warsoundscapes, the voices of newscasters reporting tragic events, or recordedsound-bites of political leaders. The violence that diffuses his style is part of hiseffort to focus the audience’s attention on the seriousness of the political situ-ation—an approach that he seems to distinguish almost explicitly from Abd AlMalik’s style:

At a certain point, you have to be violent. You have to stop deceiving yourself say-ing, “yes, we will succeed by dialoguing nicely” … Of course, you have to dialogue,but sometimes it is necessary that people scream out.… For some, the discourse is,“you should not respond to their attacks, Islam is peace, we have to love eachother”: But this is nonsense. Open your eyes! Everywhere is war in this world.... So,you have to talk about this day-to-day war, and not only with sweet words.33

Médine has so far released eight (regular and special issue) albums34 and givennumerous interviews, mainly on hip-hop blogs and websites. Recently, he hasalso co-authored a book, together with a French public intellectual, in whichthey discuss issues related to immigration and Islam in France.35 His discoursemay loosely be labeled as post-colonial critique and Third-Worldism. He rhymesabout African-American history, colonial conquests by European powers, andanti-colonial struggles. In a more local context, he tackles the situation of Mus-lims and other racialized minorities in contemporary France. But neither does hespare the Muslim community, denouncing intolerance and ignorance within.

One of Médine’s objectives is to provide his peers with a kind of “sub-jected” knowledge (Foucault) in order to raise political awareness necessary toescape the precarious situation in which they find themselves. Médine con-siders knowledge of the history of colonial injustices pivotal for better situat-ing oneself in the present. Asked about the persistence of themes on thecolonial past in his lyrics, Médine replies:

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There are so many things of the colonial history that I didn’t know, that you don’tfind in history books, which I am just discovering right now. It is important for usto take this approach and try to get into this history. And because I am heard, I canexpress myself in the media and through my albums, it is my responsibility. All thatknowledge I accumulate right now and which reforms my daily life, I want to shareit. This is my approach to inform people around me, about the colonial past, aboutthe consequences, why are we here today in a deep identity crisis.36

Much of his work is imbued with African-American history and the civil rightsmovement, which provides, he says, a strong example of forceful organizationand resistance against institutional racism.37 It is in this spirit that Médine hastitled a song and an entire album Arabian Panther, alluding thereby to theintersections he sees between the histories of American and French racism.

Medine is not afraid of controversy and attacks contentious subjects. Hislyrics narrate in acrid terms the rough realities of figures, dispersed over timeand space, but all united by the common fate of having endured injusticescaused by imperial and post-colonial violence. In harsh ways, he recounts thebrutalities to which these individuals have been subjected, providingextremely graphic information about their martyrdom—perhaps most vividlywhen the figures describe their own death in the first person. In “17 Octobre,”for example, he steps into the personality of an Algerian migrant at the heightof the Algerian war, depicting the events of 17 October 1961, when Frenchpolice slaughtered Algerian demonstrators in central Paris. In “Camp Delta,”Médine invents a curious drama that takes place in Guantanamo: he imaginesthe three most popular of French personalities (the French rock-star JohnnyHallyday, soccer icon Zinedine Zidane, and former tennis star-turned-singerYannick Noah) as inmates, recounting their experiences. This fictional story,narrated over a multifaceted soundtrack, is an attempt to give a human iden-tity to a category of people whose humanity rarely seems to be acknowledged,and to denounce the inability to feel compassion for their suffering: “littlestory of a disconcerted rapper. The hardest is to feel concerned while I talk ofIslamic prisoners behind a mask representing democratic symbols.”38 Thevideo-clip (forbidden for viewers under 16) is a violent mise-en-scène of thetorture experienced by Guantanamo inmates:

Où les suicides sont des tactiques de guerre asymétriques.Où les grèves de la faim n’ont d’écho que dans les ventres vides.Où le water-boarding n’est pas une attraction, mais la noyade par simulation.Où la privation sensorielle est censée

Stopper la diffusion à profusion du sang d’innocent.

Médine also raps about the everyday racialization and discrimination ofinhabitants from the cités. In “Boulevard Auriol,” he tells the story of the 2005fire in a dilapidated house occupied by Malian immigrants that left seventeenpeople dead, including fourteen children, thereby denouncing the discrimina-tion in housing policies in France. Another issue he regularly tackles concerns the

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negative representations of the young Black or Arab male as violent and misog-ynistic. In “Ni violeur ni terroriste” (“Neither Rapist Nor Terrorist”), for instance,he responds ironically to the feminist movement Ni putes ni soumises (NeitherWhores Nor Submissives), which he regards as disseminating this discourse. In“Don’t Panik” he links this topic to a critique of the double standards in publicdebates on female emancipation and Islam. This account leads him to issue asevere assessment of the inconsistent application of republican principles:

J’arrive pour formuler nos intentions.On n’incite pas nos sœurs à être candidates à l’excision.Nous aussi on souhaite émanciper la femme,mais on ne réglera pas le problème en relookant les Afghanes.Travail égale [sic], fiche de paie inégale pour femme,c’est tout de même pas une philosophie musulmane...Nan ! Hypocrisie d’une société patriarcalequi transforme l’injustice en Patriot Act.Libertine laïcité liberticide.

Qui viole nos droits civiques sans préservatif

Along with his critique of structural racism in France, Médine tacklesIslamophobia in particular. Here Médine shares a concern with Abd Al Malik,but addresses it quite differently. Although a practicing Muslim, Médine wantshis performance of a Muslim identity to be primarily understood as a strategyto expose the anxiety around Islam reflected in many public and political dis-courses. Notably, he displays Islamic symbols that have come to represent thedangers of political Islam, thus appropriating the radical alterity this confersupon a person. With his shaven head and long beard, Médine, the “enemy ofthe axis of good,” visually embodies the proto-image of the violent Islamist.39

His song “Code Barbe” (“Beard Code”), a humoristic hymn to all beard-wear-ers, employs the language of the Black Power movement—“barbe [beard] isbeautiful.” His live performances follow a similar logic. During his 2008 con-cert tour, for instance, he first appeared with his crew in the orange suits of theGuantanamo inmates and later appeared in t-shirts with the inscription: Don’tPanik, I’m Muslim. This dictum is the title of one of his songs, an album, andhis 2008 concert tour.40

Médine responds not only to anxieties in France around Islam, but also tothe republican model of integration, based on assimilation. Unlike Malik, hedoes not have much faith in French republicanism, nor in laïcité. Indeed, Médineopenly spurns the French state’s claim to laïcité by pointing out the strong Judeo-Christian identity he sees manifest in the social, political, and cultural fabric ofFrance.41 Consequently, Médine perceives laïcité as problematic not simply for itsassimilationist tendencies, but also for providing a tacit justification for racism byconsistently favoring the religious practices of the majority:

Il y a 10 ans passé c’est dans les caves qu’ils priaient, 100 après c’est l’Église et l’État.42

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Qui hisse le Drapeau en berne pour la fin d’un pontificat. Droit de l’homme dépourvu de conviction. Malédiction de l’épiderme résumé de ma Fiction.

Laïcité pour tous en fonction de ta tête. 43

A paradigmatic case for this policy appears in many of Médine’s state-ments and lyrics, namely the 2004 law banning “conspicuous religious signs”from public schools, a law that specifically targets the Islamic headscarf:

Du pays des droits de l’homme, où il faut être light ou laïque, respectueux des valeurs de la république. Le folklore des arabes dans les bars; à l’école on t’accueille sans ta barbe et ton foulard. Assimiler l’immigré désintégré.

(11 Septembre)

Thus, Médine uses his Islamic identity primarily to denounce a particularpolitical situation, but rarely speaks in interviews about his own Islamic prac-tice. This is intentional, Médine affirms, as he fears being misunderstood as“proselytizing”: “I do not talk of my faith as a salvationary thing or a remedy.I don’t have a solution for the entire humanity. If I emphasize Islam in myraps, it is because I feel that it is today a factor of exclusion, similar to skincolor or residential area.”43 But neither does he completely hide this aspect ofhis identity in his lyrics: “The victories of this life make sense only in the after-life/they make sense only at the end of the chronometer. So, I accord my bio-logical clock to the one from Mecca.”44 When he raps in “Arabospiritual,” anautobiographical song, about the benefits that he personally has gained fromhis faith in terms of inner peace and balance, he also wants to challenge com-mon misconceptions about Islam’s lack of spirituality: “In the propheticaccounts I found my balance,” “it is my handrail which watches [me] atten-tively, it is my daily safeguard” (“mon garde-fou, celle qui garde au garde-à-vous, mon garde-boue quotidien”). If Médine denounces violence perpetratedin the name of Islam, he does not make strong distinctions between moderateand radical Muslims. He recognizes and criticizes restrictive forms of literalistIslam in the banlieues, but does not dissociate himself from the Islam of thebanlieues and its institutions.45 And while he does not hold any institutionalaffiliation with an Islamic organization, he is open about his appreciation ofand proximity to Muslim thinker Tariq Ramadan.46

Notwithstanding his declared solidarity with formerly enslaved and col-onized people worldwide, and his firm critique of the French republicanmodel of integration, Médine defines himself unambiguously as a French cit-izen. He criticizes and speaks out as a French citizen who claims the right todo so and to participate in the construction of a better future in France. Hecalls not only for the toleration of racial and religious minorities, but for the

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Republic to adapt itself to the needs of its citizens, including its Muslim citi-zens: “French institutions must recognize that there are people of Muslimfaith and that they are citizens and have rights.… This Republic needs toadapt itself to the population.”47

Médine’s critique is paralleled by concrete political demands that he reg-ularly brings forward. Most significant are the ten points he published in thebrochure of his album Arabian Panther, where he lists a number of importantpolitical, economic, and social claims for the benefit of France’s racializedminorities, much like the Black Panther Ten-Point Program. Among them arethe teaching of colonial history, the amelioration of housing conditions, fairconditions for employment, the cessation of negative media coverage of Mus-lims, and the abrogation of the 2004 law. He does not merely use his artisticwork as a platform for his political commitments, but also participates directlyin political organizations, such as the Parti des Indigènes de la République, amovement-turned-political-party consisting mainly of descendants of post-colonial immigrants.

Yet, at the end of the day—notwithstanding his provocative music and per-formances and his radical critique—Médine remains (like Abd Al Malik) an opti-mist with a firm belief in the possibility of building a better society wheredifferences can coexist. It is in this sense, he insists, that one should understandhis combative style: “I carry a message of peace behind the sword.”48 In a simi-lar vein, and against common understandings of the term jihad (literally mean-ing struggle or effort) as “holy war,” Médine evokes this notion to highlight thathis entire oeuvre is dedicated to promote peace and coexistence:

Écoute ! Mon combat c’est les autres.Vivre ensemble de l’Aïd à la Pentecôteque l’on arrive à se comprendre sans se piéger.Je sais que c’est un rêve et que beaucoup l’ont déjà fait.Mais c’est ma lutte.49

Who is the Muslim Role Model for the Secular Republic?

In contemporary France, Muslim figures who are chosen to become publicsymbols for “the universality of republican citizenship” are secular, non-prac-ticing Muslims who have “ostensibly transcended their communal origins andtheir Muslim-immigrant difference.”50 In the case of Abd Al Malik, however,the “good Muslim”51 is outspokenly pious and open about his spiritual life. Hisreligious beliefs are quite dissimilar to those liberal Muslims who questionorthodox dogma and favor secularized readings of the sacred sources. Hisenthusiastic declarations about his spirituality and his spiritual guide mighteasily be denounced as proselytism. Proselytism, alongside communautarisme(which, in French political discourse, can allude to anything from ethnic fac-tionalism to the simple valorization of community life), constitutes a serious

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violation of republican ethics, constructed around the principles of abstractuniversalism and laïcité.52 Notwithstanding his candid piety and almost zealousspirit, however, the media and political establishment still seem to regard Malikas exemplifying a form of Islamic piety that is compatible with French laïcité.By contrast, Médine is much less vocal about his own religiosity, mentioninghis faith mainly in order to defend it against assimilationist pressures. He isignored by the political establishment and does not enjoy the same media pres-ence as Malik. Even some rap and hip-hop radio channels boycott his music,accusing him of promoting Muslim communautarisme.53 The different receptionof Abd Al Malik’s and Médine’s work, notably Malik’s stunning success amongmedia and political establishment, invites us to think deeper about theendemic complexities of French laïcité. Within the French secular regime, whatare the possibilities for pious Muslims to publicly articulate themselves?

Malik and Médine are two artists who, each in their distinctive ways, seekto re-define French identity in order to create space for post-colonial minori-ties in general and for Muslims in particular. Both aim to participate in build-ing a pluralistic, egalitarian society. While these shared goals are tackled insubstantively different ways, both approaches are possible responses to a dis-cursive regime that emphasizes homogeneity, manifests anxiety towards dif-ference, and progressively consolidates Islamic difference into an abject Other,as has been apparent in recent debates about French identity. Malik not onlycelebrates diversity and difference, but he plays the role of the exemplary Mus-lim citizen, thereby challenging the idea of a national secular subject who isessentially incompatible with an Islamic subject. His postures assert the wor-thiness of Islam and of Muslims as a legitimate constituency within the Repub-lic. His lyrics, his musical style, performances, and other statements seek toestablish a common ground between French values and Islam, and to bind theMuslim subject to the Republic, ideologically, culturally, emotionally, andmorally. He continually confirms his allegiance to laïcité and its exclusion ofreligion from the political space. He repeatedly declares his attachment to thenation as an affective community bound by feelings of love. And he routinelyrefers to the icons of French cultural and intellectual life, thereby establishinghis own cultural competence and cultural literacy as a true Frenchman.Although Abd Al Malik has succeeded in creating a new space for a hithertoexcluded identity, his challenge leaves unquestioned the essential assumptionthat a Muslim subject must establish his membership in the French nation. Hedoes not object to the idea that there exists such a thing as a Muslim subjectwho is incompatible with the Republic. His promotion of an enlightened SufiIslam, depicted as the ultimate inspiration for his escape from a dogmatic andpotentially dangerous Islam, falls on fertile discursive ground in a context inwhich Sufism historically has been understood as the most advanced form ofIslamic piety.54

Médine’s performance of an Islamic identity, on the contrary, plays withthe status of the abject, so as to denounce the growing anxiety about Islam.

Jeanette S. Jouili72

Not satisfied with being a vulnerable minority, his call for self-empowermentin order to change the existing power relations builds on a language of rightsand of contestatory democratic politics, also very much present within Frenchpolitical culture. Médine himself makes this connection between political con-testation and French identity when he claims that for him, being Frenchmeans “being a revolutionary.”55

But the most significant difference between Malik and Médine, I wouldargue, lies in the contrasting affective and emotional states they display inrelation to the Republic. If Malik is grateful towards the Republic, Médine iswrathful. Médine’s lyrics are rancorous and resentful, denouncing all the pre-sent and past injustices of which France (as well as all the other imperialnation-states) is guilty. He wants to hold the Republic accountable for thewrongs it has committed as a colonial and neo-colonial nation, and hedemands that it rectifies its relationship with its post-colonial minorities. Bycontrast, Malik, does not engage in a debate on past colonial injusticesbecause, he argues, doing so would foster division, resentment, and hate,which he claims to have transcended: “Then there was colonialism … you willpay for what Africa has suffered. That was yesterday … the yesterday of somany Maliks crushed by hate.”56 Whereas Malik most often emphasizes hisparticular attachment to France, Médine embraces a transnational solidaritywith all the post-slave, post-colonial subjects around the globe.57 Malik pro-motes social change by emphasizing spiritual uplifting and moral renewal,while Médine advocates institutional change, holding those in power account-able. Whereas Malik loves France, as he never tires of declaring, Médine says:“I accept my France.”58

Malik’s love and Médine’s refusal to love must be read in the context of apolitical economy of love within post-colonial France. Contemporary Frenchpolitical discourse demands that all those who are not recognized as fullyFrench within the Republic, whether Arab, Muslim, or Black, take the Frenchnation as an object of love. As reflected in recent statements made in the con-text of debates on immigration by prominent French politicians, includingNicolas Sarkozy when he was minister of the interior, patriotic love shouldbecome one prerequisite for having the right to stay in France.59 Against thisbackground, Malik’s statements and performances can be read as aiming tosubvert the foreclosures engrained in dominant discourses on Black or Muslimyouth as antonyms to the notion of the patriot. However, he leaves unques-tioned the recurrent populist use of this requirement to love when talking ofimmigrants and their children. Médine’s refusal to love, and his mere “accep-tance” of France, is a more radical break with the affective norms that seem toconstitute the sine qua non for racialized French citizens to speak and be heard.Although he refuses to deliver the required proof, love, he accepts France,something that still requires an emotional commitment. He does not distancehimself from his France; he is a part of it, whether he wants it or not, and heassumes this responsibility.

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How do we then situate Malik’s and Médine’s prospective visions for thefuture, which are, notwithstanding their numerous differences, fundamen-tally the same? Both dream of a multicultural, cosmopolitan France in whichcitizens of different origins and religious backgrounds live together in har-mony. Whereas Malik takes this dream as a point of departure for his dis-course, Médine only sporadically arrives at this point, given his emphasis oncritique. Is Abd Al Malik a utopian and Médine a realist?

In The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx made a harsh critique of utopianthinking. While he did not take issue with the visions of the early utopianthinkers (such as Fourier or Saint-Simon), he argued that they were specula-tively constructed without any concrete analysis of present conditions, withthe result that the vision of the future was disconnected from an understand-ing of the present. Utopian thought devolves first into deficient arguments,and then into deficient political strategies.60 Ernst Bloch, one of the greatutopian Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century, responded to Marx’s assess-ment. He took up the Marxian insistence on the critique of concrete historicaland material conditions in order to bolster the utopian vision of a betterfuture.61 Failing to do so would lead to an “abstract utopia” that would,indeed, be politically deficient. If we take these insights and apply them toMalik’s cosmopolitan utopianism, it emerges more clearly that his call forinclusion and unity sounds shallow in the absence of a forceful critique of sys-temic French racism, of the (endemically linked) politics of republican inte-gration, and of the failures of the state’s social and economic policies. Médinearticulates such a critique much more clearly; and only an equivalent criticismcould raise Malik’s vision to the level of what Bloch calls a “concrete utopia,”carrying within itself the promise of change.

Talal Asad writes that French laïcité depends heavily on a national unitythat is sustained by a community of sentiments, epitomized notably throughthe principle of fraternity. Secularism, he continues, is about structure of sen-sibilities that must be cultivated within the citizen-subject, and that must reg-ulate their relation to the sovereign state to which they owe obedience.62 Bylooking at the utopian visions reflected in Malik’s entire oeuvre, it seems thatthese visions are designed to promote change without unsettling the sensibil-ities that define and sustain the French republican model. Médine, on thecontrary, seeks to provoke visceral unease and discomfort by blatantly expos-ing and criticizing these sensibilities. He undermines the assumption that asubject deemed racially or religiously Other has to demonstrate her willingnessand capacity to become part of the nation and that she does not have the rightto be a “revolutionary.” And unlike Malik he refuses to accept the more mod-est position of reassuring the affective structures of the national subject.

These differences go a long way to explain why French politicians andjournalists have embraced the one artist and not the other. It appears, then,that French laïcité is more flexible in the accommodation of piety within thenormative secular subject than commonly expected. French laïcité, like any

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other regime of secular liberal governance, displays a capacity to “commensu-rate morally and epistemologically divergent social groups.”63 In addition tomore aggressive or violent forms of suppression of Otherness (i.e., through waror policies of expulsion), liberal regimes are defined, according to ElizabethPovinelli, by the desire for a nonviolent democratic form of reconstitutingsome nominal, normative we-horizon that includes these Others.64 Becausethe overall aim is to fuse these groups into the larger national project, however,laïcité cannot afford to show the same amount of flexibility regarding the polit-ical commitments that underpin forms of piety. More than anything else, alegitimate secular subject must be characterized by her loyalty to the nation-state, displaying the corresponding affective structures, especially when she isof immigrant background. It is this quality that renders a religious, and in thisinstance Islamic subjectivity compatible or “commensurate” with republicandiscourse. If a certain kind of Islamic piety enables Muslims to cultivate thenecessary civic virtues, then the republican public sphere seems quite lenient inwelcoming it, even if it involves a certain degree of religious zeal. The kind ofreligious subjectivity promoted here, however, is not geared to mainstreamsociety; rather, the Islamic subjectivity embodied in Abd Al Malik is intendedto address Muslims, whose allegiance to the Republic and its values still mustbe cultivated, and who seem unable or unwilling to develop such a mind-setthrough references to rationalist humanist principles. Though Malik mayintend for his message to be a universal call to spiritual renewal, the politicians,journalists, and others who invite him to speak publicly, apparently do not seehim in this light, as it becomes clear when one looks at the subjects he is askedto address. While Malik’s promotion of social change through spiritual uplift-ing is not devoid of political and potentially unsettling dimensions, its non-contestatory nature ultimately has proven to be depoliticizing, therebyfacilitating the process of instrumentalization by the state. Is Malik ignorant ofthis appropriation of his figure or does he play the game? One is left to ponder.

Secular Resonances and Dissonances

We are thus presented with two models: Malik, the utopian Sufi who calls forpeace and harmony through his music, and Médine, the wrathful hardcorerapper who plays with Islamist symbols and violent lyrics. Both share a visionof a pluralist France. Both seek to promote this desired change, albeit throughdifferent means: through republican loyalty and spiritual renewal, or throughradical critique and change in power relations. These different approaches alsogenerate their respective musical styles. Here, the music of these two artistsshould not be understood as simply supporting their discursive messages;rather their music styles produce and articulate these messages. Médine’s hard-core rap is contestatory, not only in its lyrics, but also in its sound, reflectingand performing the violence contained in past and present societies. Malik’s

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spoken poetry with its softer musical arrangements epitomizes the civilizing ofrap, its relocation from the margin to the center. It performs and echoes cul-turedness, constantly citing the quintessential symbols of French musical andliterary culture. Scholars of the political significance of music, and more gen-erally of sound and listening practices, have highlighted the capacity of musicto create and propagate subjectivities as much as communities.65 It is for thisreason that, throughout history, music has lent itself to instrumentalization bypolitical forces. If Malik’s musical aesthetic appears non-violent next toMédine’s more violent aesthetic, one nevertheless may argue that violence ispresent in Malik’s music through the silencing of violence, the silencing of anallegedly illegitimate rage. Violence leaks through the foreclosure of violencereflected in the promulgation of the grateful Muslim citizen subject. And vio-lence reverberates in the promotion of a type of Muslim piety that denies pos-sibilities for contestation and confrontation. If intended as the sound ofchange, the timbre of the secular project resonating in Malik’s musical workrisks transmogrifying it into the sound of the status quo.

JEANETTE JOUILI is currently a post-doctoral fellow at Duke University. She waspreviously a fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University andhas held research positions at Amsterdam University and the InternationalInstitute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World in the Netherlands. Sheobtained her PhD jointly from the École des hautes études en sciences socialesin Paris and European University Viadrina Frankfurt-Oder, Germany. Her cur-rent research project is on the Islamic cultural and artistic scene in the UK andFrance. Jeanette is also completing a book manuscript titled “Pious Practiceand Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in France and Ger-many.” Her main interests are: Islam in Europe, secularism, pluralism, popularculture, moral and aesthetic practices, gender.

Notes

* A number of individuals offered helpful suggestions and criticisms at various stages ofthis paper. I am grateful, in particular, to Nadia Fadil, Carolyn Landau, Sara Ludin,Annelies Moors, Frank Peter, the two anonymous reviewers, and the editors of FPC&S. Ihave been generously supported during the writing phase by a post-doctoral researchgrant (2008-2011) from NWO (Dutch Scientific Council) at the Amsterdam Institute forSocial Science Research.

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1. http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2008/01/27/429536-le-rappeur-abd-al-malik-fait-chevalier-des-arts-et-des-lettres.html.

2. Olivier Bourderionnet, “A ‘Picture-Perfect’ Banlieue Artist: Abd Al Malik or the Per-ils of a Conciliatory Rap Discourse,” French Cultural Studies (2011), 154. Paul A Sil-verstein, “Why Are We Waiting to Start the Fire? French Gangsta Rap and the Critiqueof State Capitalism,” in Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the Fran-cophone World, ed. Alain-Philippe Durand (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002),45–67. André J. M. Prévos, “Two Decades of Rap in France: Emergence, Develop-ments, Prospects,” in Black, Blanc, Beur, ed. Durand, 1–22. Charles Tshimanga, “Letthe Music Play: The African Diaspora, Popular Culture, and National Identity inContemporary France,” in Frenchness and the African Diaspora: Identity and Uprisingin Contemporary France, ed. Charles Tshimanga, Didier Gondola, and Peter J. Bloon(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 248–76.

3. Little has been written about the strong Islamic identity present within Frenchhiphop. Among the exceptions are Ted Swedenburg, “Islamic Hip-Hop versusIslamophobia,” in Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, ed. Tony Mitchell(Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), 57–85 or Samir Amghar, “Rap etislam: quand le rappeur devient imam,” Hommes et Migrations 1243 (2003): 78–95.

4. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 2003). Or Saba Mahmood, “Secularism, Hermeneutics, andEmpire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation,” Public Culture 18 (2006): 323–47.

5. See, for instance, Fernando Mayanthi, “Exceptional Citizens: Secular MuslimWomen and the Politics of Difference in France,” Social Anthropology 17, 4 (2009):379–92. Paul Silverstein, “Sporting Faith: Islam, Soccer, and the French Nation-State,” Social Text 18 (2000), 42. Nacira Guénif-Suleimas, “Zidane: Portrait of theArtist as Political Avatar,” in Frenchness and the African Diaspora, ed. Tshimanga,Gondola, and Bloon, 205–26.

6. Ibid., 212.7. Elizabeth Povinelli, “Radical Worlds: The Anthropology of Incommensurability and

Inconceivability,” Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001): 326.8. Le Face à face des cœurs (Atmosphériques, 2004); Gibraltar (Atmosphériques, 2005);

Dante (Atmosphériques, 2008). His most recent album, Chateau Rouge (Barclay/Uni-versal, 2010), is not part of the here analyzed material.

9. Qu’Allah bénisse la France (Paris: Albin Michel, 2004). (This work is translated intoEnglish, with the translation funded by the French government: “Sufi Rapper: TheSpiritual Journey of Abd Al Malik,” [Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2009]); LaGuerre des banlieues n’aura pas lieu (Paris: Le Cherche Midi, 2009); Le Dernier Français(Paris: Stock, 2012).

10. On the success of the tablighi jama’at among certain segments of the Muslim youthin France, see Moussa Khedimellah, “Jeunes predicateurs du mouvement Tabligh.La dignité identitaire retrouvée par le puritanisme religieux?” Socio-Anthropologie 10(2001), http://socio-anthropologie.revues.org/index155.html.

11. For a useful, albeit quite dated, overview of the spectrum of Islam in France, see, forinstance, Jocelyne Cesari, Musulmans et républicains: Les jeunes, l’islam et laFrance (Paris: Éditions Complexes, 1998).

12. Sufis commonly depict Sufism as representing the heart of Islam.13. For a critique of this understanding, see Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, or Saba

Mahmood, “Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire.”14. Tomoko Mazusawa, for instance, discusses how this normative definition of reli-

gion was used in colonial discourses on Islam. The Invention of World Religions: Or,How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago andLondon: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 179–97. How these assumptions aretranslated into the headscarf debates in France, see Talal Asad, “Trying to Under-

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stand French Secularism,” in Political Theologies: Public Religions in a post-secularWorld, ed. Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan (New York: Fordham UniversityPress, 2006).

15. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcidfw_abd-al-malik-la-guerre-des-banlieue_ -news#from=embed.

16. Faysal Riad, “Un truc de malade, Abd Al Malik, ou la pétainisation du slam,” http://lmsi.net/spip.php?article850#nb17.

17. The Boutchichiya was successful in re-islamizing large sectors of Morocco’s (French-speaking) elite. While upholding Sharia-conformity, it has emphasized (non-polit-ical) spiritual revival, using a language thoroughly embedded in Westernunderstandings of mysticism, as formulated by French perennialist Réné Guénon.Mark Sedgwick, “In Search of a Counter-Reformation: Anti-Sufi Stereotypes and theBudshishiyya’s Response,” in An Islamic Reformation? ed. Michaelle Browers,Charles Kurzman (Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2004), 125–46.

18. “Les Autres” (Gibraltar, 2005).19. ”Gibraltar” (Gibraltar, 2005). 20. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcidfw_abd-al-malik-la-guerre-des-banlieue_ -

news#from=embed.21. www.dailymotion.com\\video\\x479tc_beni-snassen-abd-al-malik-interview_ -

music.22. On this point, see also Mayanthi Fernando, “Exceptional citizens.”23. This approach causes him to treat white supremacist racism on the same level as

anti-white feelings among descendents of post-colonial migrants. This is evident inhis song “Noir & Blanc,” in which he recounts the redemption of a young whiteand a young black man who overcome their feelings of hate.

24. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x479tc_beni-snassen-abd-al-malik-interview_music.

25. Bourderionnet, Olivier, “A ‘Picture-Perfect’ Banlieue Artist: Abd Al Malik or the Per-ils of a Conciliatory Rap Discourse,” French Cultural Studies (2011), 154.

26. Freyburger, Sylvain, “Abd Al Malik, sage poète de la rue ?” http://www.lalsace.fr/loisirs/2011/11/18/abd-al-malik-sage-poete-de-la-rue.

27. Abd Al Malik had enjoyed significant popularity among banlieue youth when amember of NAP. Today, his main audience shifted in terms of class, age, and eth-nicity, as one can easily tell when attending his concerts. His musical transforma-tion has caused some critics to state that Malik has lost his “street credibility.”

28. “Interview de Médine,” n.d., http://www.waxxmusic.com/artistes/interview/Medine_204.html.

29. “Interview Médine,” 30 August 2008, http://www.abcdrduson.com/interviews/181-medine.html.

30. “Interview de Médine,” n.d., http://www.waxxmusic.com/artistes/interview/Medine_204.html.

31. “Interview Médine,” 30 August 2008, http://www.abcdrduson.com/interviews/181-medine.html.

32. “Interview de Médine,” n.d., http://www.waxxmusic.com/artistes/interview/Medine_204.html.

33. Giovanni, Gauhy, “Médine explique l’album ‘11 septembre,’ Entretien exclusif avecMédine,” Saphirnews, 19 Juillet 2005, www.saphirnews.com/Medine-explique-l-album-11-septembre_a1362.html.

34. 11 Septembre, récit du 11ème jour (Din Records, 2004); Jihad, le plus grand combat estcontre soi-même (Din Records, 2005); Table d’Écoute (Din Records, 2006); Don’t PanikTape (Din Records, 2008); Arabian Panther (Because Music, 2008); Table d’Écoute 2(Warner Music France, 2011); Made in (Because Music, 2012, MP3); Protest Song

Jeanette S. Jouili78

(Warner Music France, 2013). His two most recent albums are not part of the ana-lyzed material.

35. Don’t Panik, n’ayez pas peur, co-authored with Pascal Boniface (Paris: Desclée deBrouwer, 2012).

36. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7kic3_médine-et-houria-bouteldja_news.37. Ibid.38. Médine’s lyrics resonate with Judith Butler’s critique of Western humanism in the

age of the War on Terror, which, she contents, seems to have declared Islamic pop-ulations as “‘outside’ the cultural conditions for the emergence of the human.”Judith Butler, “Sexual Politics, Torture, and Secular Time,” The British Journal ofSociology 59 (2008), 15.

39. In his song “Ennemi d’État.”40. Don’t Panik is also the title of his recent book.41. Ibid.42. He refers to the 1905 law which established the official separation between church

and state.43. “Ennemi d’État” (Jihad, 2005).44. “Médine, rap de Mecque,” Libération, 26 January 2010, http://www.liberation.fr/

culture/0101615659-medine-rap-de-mecque.45. “Jeune Vétéran” (Table d’Écoute, 2006).46. “Medine et le rap ‘conscient’” (Interview), 9 January 2009, http://prisedirecte-

banlieue.typepad.fr/lire_la_suite/2009/01/medine-et-le-rap-conscient.html.47. “Médine, rap de Mecque,” Libération, 26 January 2010.48. Interview Médine, “On doit se servir de la philosophie des Afros,” 15 January 2010,

http://rapadonf.fr/blog/2010/01/medine-on-doit-se-servir-de-la-philoshophie-des-afros-itw/.

49. “Arabospiritual” (Arabian Panther, 2008).50. “Ma part de Jihad” (La Boussole, Le savoir est une arme, 2004).51. Mayanthi Fernando, “Exceptional citizens,” 390.52. Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots

of Terror (New York: Three Leaves Press Doubleday, 2004). 53. These principles also provide the basis for much theorization on immigration

among French intellectuals. See, for instance, Dominique Schnapper, La Com -munauté des citoyens (Paris: Gallimard, 1994) or Gérard Noiriel, Le Creuset français:Histoire de l’immigration, XIXe-XXe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 1988).

54. Interview Médine, “Je ne veux plus être joué sur Skyrock,” 18 December 2009,http ://rapadonf.fr/blog/2009/12/medine-je-ne-veux-plus-etre-joue-sur-skyrock-interview/.

55. On the nineteenth-century valorization of Sufism by European Orientalists, seeMazusawa, The Invention of World Religions, 197–206.

56. Interview Médine, “Je ne veux plus être joué sur Skyrock.” 57. “Noir & Blanc” (Le Face à face des cœurs, 2004).58. Malik’s strong attachment to a transnational Sufi brotherhood, qualifies, of course,

this discourse and provides a more complex account of his belongings. 59. http:// www.dailymotion.com/video/x989ig_medine-la-france-est-elle-un-pays-

r_music.60. During a speach in which he laid out his doctrine of “chosen immigration,” Sar-

kozy evoked: “Quant à ceux qui n’aiment pas la France ... qu’ils ne se gênent paspour la quitter. ” http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1uxjh_sarkozy-france-aime-la-ou-quitte-la_news.

61. Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Gateway Editions, 1985). 62. Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, three volumes (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,

1986).

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63. Asad, “Trying to Uunderstand French Secularism,” 494–26.64. Povinelli, “Radical Worlds,” 326.65. Ibid.66. See, for instance, Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1992), or Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening, trans. C. Man-dell (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007).

Jeanette S. Jouili80