Refining the Umma in the Shadow of the Republic: Performing Arts and New Islamic Audio-Visual...

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SPECIAL COLLECTION

Islamic Sounds and the Politics of Listening

Refining the Umma in the Shadow of the Republic: Performing Arts and New Islamic Audio-Visual Landscapes in France

Jeanette S. Jouili, College of Charleston

ABSTRACTIn recent years, young pious Muslims in France have become increasingly active as arts practitioners, notably in the domain of music and performing arts. This engagement is often explained with the desire to offer the French Muslim community an alternative to the ubiquitous secular mass culture deemed detrimental to a pious subjectivity. Because the official structures of the Islamic revival movement have for a long time adopted quite a re-strictive stance with regard to cultural production, but also due to Muslims’ largely working class backgrounds in France, the young artists perceive their work in terms of educating the umma. In other words, they seek to develop a cultural or artistic sensibility that is nonetheless conducive to Islamic sensitivities. By examining three small performance art pieces pro-duced by a young generation of pious Muslim artists from the Paris region, I hope to extend our understanding of Islamic sensory politics, as well as aesthetic and ethical practices, in a world where entertainment, leisure, and the culture industry are considered increasingly decisive for the sus-tainability of pious self-cultivation. [Keywords: France, Islam, performing arts, audition, spectatorship]

Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 4, p. 1079-1104, ISSN 0003-5491. © 2014 by the Institute for Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of the George Washington University. All rights reserved.


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IntroductionThe transformation of Islamic revival movements worldwide through the creation of a new culture industry has been widely observed and stud-ied (Abaza 2001; Abu-Lughod 1995, 2005; Bayat 2007; Göle 2002; Gökariksel and McLarney 2010; Meyers and Moors 2006; Navaro-Yahin 2002; Saktanber 2002). The more recent emergence of an Islamic oriented artistic scene is one of the latest developments. Islamic cultural and ar-tistic practices and the interrelated debates around arts and Islam have become an attractive topic for scholarship (e.g., El-Asri 2009; Boubekeur 2007; Larkin 2004; van Nieuwkerk 2008, 2011; Salhi 2013; Stokes 2013; Winegar 2008). In a political climate where events like the Danish cartoon affair in 2006 and the series of violence in 2012 caused by a YouTube film about Islam’s Prophet have bolstered ideas about the incompatibility of Islam with creative freedom (and hence, its incompatibility with moder-nity), this literature has provided important insights into the rapid trans-formations and the multiplicity of contemporary Islamic cultural practices. Among this scholarship, some writings show a tendency to read these developments through a modernist teleological narrative.1 Other authors, however, analyze them with an underlying comprehension of artistic cre-ativity as always situated within different regimes of power. In my contri-bution, I follow this later strand. Rather than highlighting the new found possibilities (as well as the ongoing restrictions) for creative expression within the “post-Islamist” sphere, I am interested in the efforts, struggles, and complications implicit in the construction of an Islamic cultural sector situated in particular historical contexts and conditioned by different (and at times conflicting) discursive formations. I will discuss this question by focusing on the emerging Islamic cultural scene in France, which is still a fairly small, albeit growing, scene and has gone by and large unnoticed outside Islamic revival circles.2

As elsewhere, pious Muslim art practitioners in France explain their ar-tistic projects with the perceived necessity of offering the Muslim com-munity an alternative to the ubiquitous secular mass culture deemed det-rimental to a pious subjectivity. This effort materializes in two (interrelated) approaches: either the artistic projects in question obey the traditions of more conventional da‘wa activities with the aspiration to cultivate pious Islamic subjects; or they merely seek to provide a halal (meaning permis-sible) entertainment, notably by avoiding vulgarities and other illegitimate contents and conducts. Recognizing the power of arts and culture in (re-)

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fashioning sensibilities and senses, the pious artistic project entails, from its inception, a politics of the senses that hopes to contribute to the con-struction of an “ethically sustaining life-world” (Hirschkind 2006). Their ar-tistic work is grassroots, quite marginalized from mainstream artistic pro-ductions, and rarely ever funded by public or private art funding sectors.3 Although the artists address themselves first and foremost to a Muslim public, certain artists also express a growing desire to transcend their own community and to produce art that is more “universal,” echoing a com-mon argument within dominant French discourse, which pits a desirable universalisme against an undesirable communautarisme. Thus, the project of creating a faith-sustaining environment gets, at times, entangled and complicated with a civic project that seeks to contribute to larger society, thereby tying the Muslim citizen closer to the Republic.

The development of an Islamic inspired artistic scene represents an im-portant transformation of the audio-visual environment of France’s Islamic revival movement. By initiating new forms of audition and spectatorship, it requires from its publics a different deployment of the sensual register. Nonetheless, it seeks to retain a connection to prior Islamic traditions of listening. By examining the work and trajectory of three small performance art pieces produced by a young generation of pious Muslim artists from the Paris region, I hope to extend our understanding of Islamic sensory politics, aesthetic, and ethical practice in a world where entertainment, leisure, and the cultural industry are considered decisive for the sustain-ability of projects of pious self-cultivation.4

Making Arts in the French Islamic Revival SceneBecause of the contested character of arts within the Islamic Revival movement, and in spite of a growing group of supporters among locally and internationally prominent scholars and preachers,5 the young artists whose work I will discuss here have often experienced initial hesitation and self-doubt before realizing their artistic ambitions, fearing that these artistic aspirations might not be compatible with their religious practice.

Abdasamad, a young man in his early 30s, was one such case. The son of religious Algerian immigrants, Abdasamad grew up in a banlieue (suburb) of Paris. As a teenager, he discovered his passion for the stage and started working for different youth theater companies. Despite this promising start, he developed doubts as to whether his art was in accord


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with his religious principles and stopped acting. Eventually, he came to the conviction that theater was not, per se, in contradiction with Islam and decided to apply for admission to a theater school. After graduating, he created the theater company Miroir des Signes in order to reconcile his arts with his religious principles. He has written and directed three theater pieces. His first play, Les gens du Fossé (Companions of the Pit) (2004) is derived from a story mentioned in the Qur’an (Surah 85) and in different Prophetic traditions that took place in pre-Islamic times. It nar-rates the personal conflict of a child who is torn between the teachings of a magician working in the service of a despotic ruler, and the teach-ings of a hermit who guides him toward the path of meditation. His next work, Nouvelles Croisades (New Crusaders) (2006), is a contemporary, highly political piece that denounces the post-9/11 political context and the repercussions of US imperialism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The most recent play, Riche ou Pauvre (Rich or Poor) (2008), offers a parody of the neoliberal economic world market and the exploitation of Third World farmers, promoting fair trade and ethics within the economic domain. From its inception, Miroir des Signes was very much a personal project that has never benefited from any arts funding. All the actors worked on a voluntary basis with no financial benefit; the majority pursue other pro-fessions. The company’s economic problems have severely restricted its development. The fluctuation of the actors is high, and the pieces work with a small number of actors.

Samia, a young actress of Tunisian origin, has a story similar to Abdasmad’s. She, too, grew up in a banlieue near Paris and displayed an early passion for theater. After high school, she passed the entry exam for a drama school in Paris. Being the only student in her class with a migrant and working-class background, she felt, however, increasingly alienated from the bourgeois character of the theater world. Because of economic difficulties, she eventually had to quit before graduating. During this period, her religious practice also became more ardent and she decided she was ready to don the headscarf. For her, that step symbolized the break with the theater world since she knew she would no longer be able to get roles. A few years later, after seeing Abdasmad’s Les gens du Fossé, whose female ac-tors all wore hijab, her desire to act resurfaced. She contacted Abdasamad and got a role in his next play, Nouvelles Croisades. After a subsequent role in a Sufi inspired theater piece, she turned her interest to stand-up comedy. In 2008, she and another Muslim comedian started the comedy

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show Oriental Comic 100% Halal, which refused not only the vulgarity of the French stand-up scene in general, but also the stigmatizing humor em-ployed within the largely successful stand-up coming out of the banlieue (see Béru 2011), even if largely inspired by this genre. The show invited stand-up comedians (a majority of immigrant background) to perform for ten minutes each. Only one thing was required of them: that they not use vulgar language or insults. This project was a huge success in the Muslim community; all of the shows sold out weeks in advance. After personal conflicts with her collaborator, Samia continued the same concept under the name of Samia et les 40 Comiques (Samia and the 40 Comedians). In 2011, she also started to perform her own one-woman show in a comedy club, under the title Femmes de Couleurs (Women of Colors). With this show, she tours regularly in France and Belgium.

Unlike the two previous cases, my final example, the musical L’Etoile Brillante was not initiated by artists. This musical was instigated by a group of Muslim women of diverse backgrounds who knew each other from their studies at the CERSI (Centre d’Etudes et des Recherches sur l’Islam) and who regretted the lack of possibilities for cultural activities within the Islamic community, especially for women. During their sum-mer vacation in Damascus, two sisters of Syrian background discovered a religious musical about the life of the Islamic Prophet and the women in his entourage, which was performed by female actors for a women-only audience. Together with their friends from the CERSI, they decided to re-enact the play by themselves. With their own financial means, the women obtained the rights to reproduce the play on French territory and, with only the support of a DVD and some telephone advice from the Syrian cho-reographer, began to adapt the play and rehearse it. For the music, they sang along to a recording of the Syrian original. Most of them did not have any prior artistic experience, but all were animated by the desire to give life to the pious chants and texts of the play. In line with the orthodox inter-pretation defended by certain tendencies within the revival movement (ac-cording to which women’s performances are prohibited in front of mixed-gender audiences), the musical restricted itself to a female-only public. Although they originally intended to stage the show just a few times, it quickly became so popular that they continued performing it throughout the following year. From the time of its debut in spring 2010 until early 2012, the musical had been continuously staged in front of sold out halls, first in community centers, later also in more established (private) theaters.


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In June 2013, L’Etoile Brillante began mounting their second production, the musical Voyage Nocturne (Night Journey).

The women participating in L’Etoile Brillante did not have to worry about how to uphold Islamic ethics in the production. Meticulously copied from a musical circulating within the Damascene Islamic revival scene, it carried with it a stamp of authorization. The piece, performed to a female-only audience, consisted of religious chants, pious texts, and choreography with slow, soft movements; performers wore traditional costumes, neatly embodying orthodox standards of female modesty.6 For Abdasamad and Samia, however, the question has been more complicated. They created the plays or shows, and they involved both men and women on stage who performed in front of mixed-gender audiences. As such, their work was open to contestation from parts of the audience. Their desire to create a halal cultural event was, especially in their early stages, accompanied by many interrogations, hesitations, and doubts.

According to Abdasamad, creating a theater that is in line with Islamic principles implies that one pays attention to “form and content.” The mes-sage is of utmost importance; it has to promote an “ethical cause,” such as “morality and sincerity in human relations” or “social and political jus-tice.” Concerning form, he highlighted the requirement of modesty in lan-guage as well as in bodily conduct. Thus, vulgar language should be used and modesty should transfuse the ways in which actors interact with each other as well as the manner in which they embody the characters. Yet, in practice, this was not such an easy thing to realize, as the Islamic norms of modesty are not always clearly defined. As he phrased it, the main chal-lenge was that one had to constantly reflect on “where the boundaries are.” In this endeavor, the audience’s reaction was crucial. “Will they ac-cept it or not?” became the touchstone for evaluating where to place these boundaries. This attentiveness to the spectators’ (diverging) sensibilities put him in an interesting interaction with the audience that could also di-rectly impact the play, as one small anecdote reveals. The initial screen play of Les Gens du Fossé included a scene where the female actress had to hold the male actor’s hand. During one of the first performances that took place within an Islamic center, some critical voices were raised in the debate following the play vis-à-vis this physical contact, insisting that this violated Islamic modesty codes. In the following performance, the scene was modified to avoid that contact. I discussed the incident with one of the actors involved and she explained:

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This did not bother anyone of us. And it was normal for him [Abdasamad] to adapt his piece, as he plays essentially for a Muslim audience. Of course, he is Muslim, he knows the laws, but there are people who are a bit stricter than others. But when you listen to someone who comes up with a proof, here, this hadith, voilà, you can’t but submit yourself. Muslim means to submit to God, so, he didn’t question it.

For Samia, the concern for respecting Islamic etiquette likewise raised the question of form and content. As an organizer of a comedy show where she invited a wide range of comedians, she assumed responsibility not only for her own performance but also for the other actors’ performances. Since the beginning of her project, Oriental Comic, the question of what limits to give to the invited actors generated much debate. The participat-ing comedians (not all Muslims, let alone practicing Muslims) did not nec-essarily share the same understanding of what counted as vulgar. Is it only explicit language containing slurs or sexual insinuations? Is it the way the voice is used or the body moved? Or is it the story narrated in the sketch that alludes to a mode of life considered unsuitable? For instance, during one of the first Oriental Comic shows I attended, a female comedian from Switzerland talked about her experiences with her ex-boyfriend, ridiculing some rather intimate moments in their relationship. Consciously avoiding the usage of vulgar terms, she was not aware, as she admitted afterwards, that the content might have fallen out of the scope of the requirements of halal. The public was slightly irritated, as one could sense following their uneasy or embarrassed laughter. The performance by a woman of Maghrebi background with obvious mockery of Arab-Muslim traditions and body language that clearly did not correspond to notions of female mod-esty prevalent in the audience also provoked some raised eyebrows. Given these “slips,” Samia and her co-organizer felt compelled to apologize at the end of the show for some “not so halal moments,” promising that they “[would] try to improve this for the next show, inshā’ Allah.” A few days later, I met Samia and we discussed the two incidents. She notably expressed her discontent with the Maghrebi comedian, complaining that a woman of Arab-Muslim background should have known what was appropriate for a religious audience. The Swiss comedian, however, was granted more leni-ency: after receiving an explanation of the different conditions necessary for upholding halal standards, she readapted her sketch for the next show.


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Samia praised her “tolerance” and continued to collaborate with her in the following years. The Maghrebi woman was never hired again.

Samia recognized that it was not always easy for a performer to respect the conduct considered appropriate according to Islamic ethics. Rather, acting in an Islamic way requires a type of self-restraint that is not always in phase with the genre of stand-up comedy. In one of our conversations, she admitted:

Unfortunately, I have this temperament, I am very exuberant, with too many gestures, I make too much noise. Sometimes, people tell me, you should be more discreet. I don’t really feel like this, I love too much being on stage, having people look at me. But I want to link both [religion and pleasure]. The laws of God are most important to me; the priority is what God demands from you. Even if arts and the theater burn inside of me, it does not hinder me to know, within my-self, inside of me, why I am there. So, I try to stay modest.

The ideas that undergird the creative practices of my interlocutors do not always sit comfortably with the category of aesthetics as it has de-veloped within modern Western discourses. From Kant to Adorno and beyond, the idea of aesthetic autonomy has defined the parameters of ar-tistic discussion. In this tradition, art should transcend the conditions of its making, and be self-governing and independent from external rules and social conventions.7 Even if other conceptions of art exist, it is these ideas, which have been evoked, again and again, in debates around Muslims’ protest over “blasphemous” art. From such a perspective, halal art might appear as the negation of proper arts and as a violation of the right to free artistic expression. And, indeed, the artistic projects developed in this scene have been, occasionally, criticized on these terms. Samia, for in-stance, told me about several negative experiences with fellow comedians whom she consulted for cooperation. It is interesting to note here that, according to her, objections came notably from the side of those whom she described as “secular Muslims,” rather than from non-Muslims, who decried the project as an act of “censorship.”

However, for Samia and other pious Muslim art practitioners, the ques-tion of artistic freedom did not seem to be relevant. Their work reflects an approach to art where aesthetics does not stand as a “pure” entity, nor can it be conceived as separate from ethics, because beauty defines itself

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through what is “good.” In pious Muslim art circles, one is often reminded of the hadith: “God is beautiful and He loves beauty.” In this sense, not respecting Islamic ethics within one’s artwork would amount to an aes-thetic defect.8 To live up to these norms in genres like performing arts was a welcome challenge for these artists, for whom Islamic ethics increase, rather than circumscribe, creativity. As Samia put it during one of our con-versations, “I don’t see this as a constraint. What Islam requires from me, I do not feel it to be contradictory to my art. You realize that you can diver-sify and tell a story in different ways than people do commonly, and this is very interesting.” In other words, developing an Islamic-inspired perform-ing arts scene required much experimentation, not only with respect to artistic development but also with respect to Islamic normativity—given that there is no consensus about what precisely “normative” Islam entails, especially when it comes to the question of performing arts. The artists tried, corrected, and readapted their productions in different ways in an ef-fort to find a legitimate form of Islamic creative expression. The ambition to create halal arts provided a loose framework—a point of reference rather than a clear-cut formula—where individual artists could come to different conclusions at different times, conclusions which might also always be contested by other participants in the scene.

Creating a Cultivated Islamic PublicBecause the Islamic performing arts scene in France is relatively young, the artists I discuss here regarded their work to be of pioneer value, with an objective to create a Muslim public capable of appreciating culture. All art practitioners I spoke to expressed the feeling of a gap between the Muslim community and the world of culture and arts in France, which they sought to bridge. My interlocutors explained the perceived cultural “delay” (retard) as the result of two factors: the French Muslim’s working class background and the perceived disparity between the French cultural sphere and Islamic values. In one of our conversations, Samia addressed both the arguments:

Our parents came here and worked hard to make a living. There was neither time nor money to go to downtown Paris and visit a theater or a museum. Our parents never took us to these places...


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When we sit at home watching a film together, and a scene like a love scene comes up, one of us will immediately take the remote control and zap to another channel. But in a theater, you don’t have a remote control. Then you have a problem.

For artists like Samia and the others, the creation of a halal performing arts scene was meant to bridge that gap, so that French Muslims, too, could feel at ease and participate in the world of culture. Nassira, part of the core group involved in the musical L’Etoile Brillante corroborated:

We really wanted to offer a quality product to the sisters. The com-munity is not used to going to the theater. They do not feel comfort-able there. We wanted to offer them something that corresponds to their ethics.

Among the Muslim art practitioners, there was an underlying under-standing that the community’s thriving depending on its familiarization with arts and culture, because of the arts’ inherent “educational” qualities. This insight is reflected precisely in Samia’s claim: “You can educate the future generations through arts. This is why Molière included in all of his pieces a specific educative lesson.” Furthermore, it is a perception that builds on the romantic belief of the reforming qualities of arts and culture (see, for in-stance, Bennett 2000), which has led to a wide range of civilizing projects in a variety of different contexts, including Muslim-majority societies. Similar understandings have inspired many contemporary Muslim thinkers.9

Because of this appreciation of arts, the artists felt it so urgent to bring the Muslim community closer to the world of arts, a world that is not only economically out of reach but also mistrusted by many pious Muslims. And indeed, their audiences seemed to be enthusiastic about these new art experiences. After the performances, I spoke with several from the audience who admitted that they had never been in a theater before and that they had not felt inclined to go. But, as they explained to me, the ex-perience of listening to ethical messages in these performances as well as the assurance that they would not be confronted with vulgarity has opened up a new space for possibilities in terms of entertainment and cultural life. Artists and audiences alike highlighted the necessity of ap-propriating and remodeling spaces and cultural models that were often conceived as not suitable for an Islamic mode of life. It was the ability to

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selectively appropriate and creatively adapt French cultural habits to the requirements of an Islamic ethics that would prove, according to many voices among the artists and their audiences, the maturity of the Muslim community and its capacity to live piously as well as in harmony with its surrounding society. According to them, it is this capacity that would fur-thermore prove their status as coequal citizens. This sentiment is strong-ly transported in a comment written into the guest book of the musical L’Etoile Brillante, as it appears on the show’s homepage: “My congratula-tions for this high quality performance, one can see the work that has been done. I am proud to be a Muslim woman, to show that as a French citizen, we can do everything if we want.”10

But the Muslim audience’s lack of familiarity with the arts world re-quired, in the artists’ views, a clear pedagogical project. They felt that the audience did not have the habits or cultural skills necessary for the prop-er enjoyment of cultural life. Most arts practitioners identified two major flaws within the Arab-Muslim community: first, the audience rarely arrived on time; second, the audience was often too noisy, interrupting perfor-mances with inappropriate talk and bringing along young children. These identified shortcomings were often referred to in a rather amused manner, going along with jokes about the symptomatic unpunctuality (the famous “rendez-vous arabe”) and noisy gatherings of large families. While this per-ceived cultural trait is connected to familiarity and common sociality, that “cultural intimacy” becomes in the setting of aspiring bourgeois cultural life a source of “embarrassment” and “rueful self-recognition” (Herzfeld 1997:7), alluding to a certain backwardness and requiring correction. It is in this sense that Nassira explains:

From the beginnings of Etoile Brillante, we really wanted to teach the community to be on time. So, indeed, we started on time, which is something exceptional in the community—and, of course, many came too late. And we strictly forbid children under the age of seven in the audience.

Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) sociology of cultural acquisition helps to ex-plain the development of an Islamic cultural and artistic scene that is situated within a larger quest for upward social mobility existing among the children of Muslim immigrants in France. As these second genera-tion immigrants aspire to gain cultural capital, they must acquire certain


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dispositions, issuing ideally in the appropriately refined habitus.11 However, a Bourdieu-inspired model cannot quite grasp how the art practitioners strive to integrate this cultural development into a broader Islamic peda-gogy. Providing the Muslim public with halal arts is understood as part of a larger effort to help Muslims foster, sustain, and refine the ethical sen-sibilities conducive to an Islamic way of life. Therefore, punctuality and, in particular, attentive listening are not merely dispositions of a cultured middle class but become Islamic virtues that help to define the modern Muslim subject. It is in this sense that an announcement for the musical L’Etoile Brillante declares: “We remind the audience of our Islamic Golden Rule: punctuality. The curtain will be lifted inshā’ Allah at the announced times.”12 In other words, any approach that seeks to describe the “civiliza-tion process” merely in terms of cultivating bourgeois subjectivity neglects how important it is for these art practitioners to ingrain this process within what they understand to be an Islamic ethos.

As such, the effort to forge a cultured Muslim public raises a new set of questions regarding Charles Hirschkind’s (2006) notion of an Islamic “counter-public” and its soundscapes, which have so aptly described the public and the form of public address constituted by the Islamic revival throughout the world. Set up against the perceived immorality within the dominant French world of culture and entertainment (while at the same time inspired by it), this emerging counter-public does not only aim to cultivate virtuous Muslims, but also seeks to refine skills, habits, and dis-positions through exposure to culture and arts. This public is constituted through theatrical performances which generate new types of listeners and spectators rather than merely debaters—even if reason and delib-eration also always play an important role in trying to define what makes these performances halal. Nonetheless, the following section will show that listening and spectatorship, understood as ethical practices, are cru-cial for the communicative practices that make up this new public, virtu-ous and simultaneously culturally attuned.13

Refining the Senses: New Islamic SoundscapesMarch 2010, Vitry-sur-Seine, a commune in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris: On an early Saturday afternoon, I arrived at the community center sit-uated in an industrial area to see the female-only musical L’Etoile Brillante. The banquet hall had been transformed into a theater, with a stage, chairs

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lined up for the audience, and a rich decoration of flower bouquets enhanc-ing the sober design of the room. Women began to pack the hall. They were almost exclusively Muslim, from different generations, and a large majority of them veiled. The presentation opened with a refined Qur’an recitation, sung by a young woman who mastered perfectly the dictates of tajwīd (rules of Qur’anic recitation), such as timing, pronunciation, and timbre, but with a personal style of ornamentation that made the performance even more captivating. The audience was visibly moved by the recital. The mu-sical itself began with the entrance of the performers, dressed in colorful costumes reminiscent of medieval Middle Eastern sartorial styles. Several women (especially the older ones) in the audience greeted the incoming actors spontaneously with zaghārīt (traditional cries of joy) and shouts of Allahu akbar, shouts one could hear several times throughout the play. The performance that followed combined choreography, texts, Islamic chants (anashīd), extracts of the Qur’an, and invocations (du‘ā). Subtitles were provided on screens with translations of the Arabic lyrics. The slow and tempered movements of the performers embodied female modesty and piety. Through melancholic chants accompanied by recordings of a mod-ern Middle Eastern orchestra, the women gave life to the virtuosity of the first Muslim community during the Prophet’s life time. The emotion was palpable. When texts and chants recalled the advent of Islam or the cour-age of the first converts, the audience responded with joyful smiles and ex-clamations. At times—as for instance, during the narration of the Prophet’s farewell speech, which alludes to his imminent death—the audience was brought to tears. The applause at the end was intense and long. When the performers left the stage, they were congratulated by their friends with hugs and kisses. The audience repeatedly expressed their apprecia-tion, accompanied by the formula “Mashā’ Allah,” thanked them for their “wonderful and moving performance,” and evoked blessings for the entire group. A woman came up to Nassira, one of the organizers mentioned earlier, thanking her warmly and, with some embarrassment, admitted: “I could not stop weeping, it was so moving, it made me really live through this past.” Nassira laughingly replied, “Don’t apologize, let yourself go, feel free to weep as much as you want. That is exactly what we wanted.”

December 2007, 18th arrondissement in Paris: On a late Sunday after-noon, I was sitting in a small auditorium of the Théâtre de la Reine Blance, to watch a play by the theater company, Miroir des Signes. The audi-ence hardly filled one-third of the seats. A large majority of those present


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seemed to be of Muslim (Maghrebi) background, many dressed in Islamic styles. The play performed this day, “Nouvelle Croisade,” was a piece nar-rated in six acts using a minimalist style, alternating from burlesque hu-mor, to drama, to tragedy, and to pantomime. It portrayed a stark account of the history of the relations between the West and the Muslim world, epitomized in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in a post-9/11 world. While the beginning of the play provided space for laughter, gradually, the piece became more serious; the audience’s laughter was replaced by sighs and tears. One act replayed the killing of a Palestinian family. Another read the last letter of American activist Rachel Corrie, addressed to her mother and written before Corrie was killed by an Israeli bulldozer. These scenes provoked the murmuring of pious invocations such as “istaghfiru llah,” “‘a‘ūdhu bi-llah,” or “Allahu akbar” among the audience. The last act is a wrenching pantomime that symbolized death so omnipresent in this con-flict. But it also offered a glimpse of hope for peace, captured by the mel-ancholic and stirring song “Al-Quds al-‘Atīqa” by famous Lebanese singer Fairuz, a song that incarnates powerfully (at least for everyone socialized with the great Arabic singers of the second half of the 20th century) the drama and suffering that has affected the Arabic world in the last century. At this point, tears were flowing.

June 2008, 11th arrondissement in Paris: I stepped into the entrance hall of the well-known Théâtre de la Main d’Or to attend the halal comedy show, Oriental Comique 100% Halal. The room was packed, mainly with Muslims of Maghrebi background, a large number of the women in hijab. Most of them were young. At the bar, no alcohol was visible. Loud chatting and laughter were running through the two hundred seats that had filled up quickly. Finally, we were let into the theater hall. The room filled up quickly; tickets had been sold out for over a week. The organizers, Samia and Nabil, came on stage and greeted the public, joked around, and, for the next 90 minutes, the audience laughed heartily as a series of stand-up co-medians performed their routines. Many comedians were of Maghrebi ori-gin. They often mixed French with Arabic (vernacular) locutions, ridiculed cultural misunderstandings between Frenchmen and Arabs, and mocked racist attitudes. Many shared funny stories from their childhood about growing up in suburban Arab neighborhoods, recounting, for instance, their, annual trips in an overloaded, shabby car to Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia. The public seemed to take most pleasure in these kind of stories. In the first row, sat an old man with beard, dressed in jellabiya and kufi cap,

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visibly enjoying himself. Later, I learned he was the imam from a mosque situated in a Parisian banlieue.

Three settings, three different genres of performing arts that addressed a wide array of emotive states: from a performance that sought to instill pi-ety, to one that elicited a sense of collective suffering, to one that allowed for lighthearted joy and amusement. These sensations were experienced corporally through weeping, sighs, invocations, and laughter. Whereas the first two alluded to a set of emotions that were connected to those con-ventionally cultivated by the Islamic revival movement, the last one, laugh-ter, was not. Even if humor was never completely absent within Islamic traditions of audition,14 social gatherings in the French revival circles for the sole purpose of (however innocent) laughter suggest a significant ad-dition to the established catalogue of emotional and sensorial registers enacted in these milieus.15

That this realignment of the revival’s sensate atmosphere takes place in the context of the cultural sphere is, of course, not irrelevant. It points to the new means through which ethical dispositions and their correspond-ing emotions are sought to be cultivated in that sphere, as well as to a dif-ferent understanding as to the range of desirable emotions from an Islamic perspective. And it points to the particular sensibilities and tastes of the young, French-born revival participants, reflective of the social context they live in, which needs to be taken into account in the development of a French Islamic revival sociability. In his landmark piece on the task of the anthropology of Islam, Talal Asad observes: “in our own time the attempt by Islamic traditions to organize memory and desire in a coherent manner is increasingly remade by the social forces of industrial capitalism, which create conditions favorable to very different patterns of desire and forget-fulness” (1986:17). One of the important forces of industrial capitalism is the cultural industry. The desire for similar types of leisure time activities and entertainment that young Muslims see their peers engage in—as well as the specific acknowledgement of the role of culture and arts for defining citizens’ participation to society—is highly consequential for the recon-figuration of revival sociability for the artists and their audiences.

To be sure, Islamic traditions of ethical listening and norms of ethical behavior (even if reconfigured by various modern social forces) continue to shape the affective responses of the pious listeners-spectators. They enable and channel specific affective intensities, and ideally guide them to-ward a certain disciplined mode of expressing them. This was observable


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in a set of embodied reactions, such as Islamic locutions, discomfort, or embarrassment in response to illicit (vulgar) conduct or speech, or tears provoked by the intensity of love for the Prophet Muhammad or in the face of Muslim suffering. Because the effort to cultivate (or, at least, se-cure) those affective dispositions that are important for moral character was transposed here onto the project of halal performing arts, the latter stands in an interesting tension to many contemporary discussions around modern spectatorship. The dangers of passively receptive spectatorship of theatrical performances have worried a variety of thinkers throughout the ages, from Plato to Rousseau to contemporary scholars of theater.16 Consequently, much debate in theater studies has developed around the idea of “active spectatorship” (Keefe 2010). The agency of an audience, even if conceptualized by dramaturges in a variety of ways and with myriad strategies, depends on the engaged but somehow distant spectator, who willingly submits to the “game” and can be emotionally affected but still recognizes it as a representation that can be individually opposed, criti-cized, and resisted.17 The halal performances I have described here, how-ever, align themselves with those aesthetic traditions where arts’ capacity to arouse morally appropriate emotions is precisely embraced and uti-lized. Ideally, these performances aim to generate affective intensities that strengthen the ethical dispositions of the pious Muslim believer or, at least, do not harm them. From the guest book of L’Etoile Brillante one can read, for instance: “Thank you for having made the hearts vibrate in love for the Prophet sallah Lahu alay wa sallam (may Allah pray on him and grant him peace).” Or: “The performance Etoile Brillante is not simple entertainment. It is especially a powerful call for receptive souls. Not only does it valorize the woman, but it reminds her also of her important and noble role, with which God entrusted her. And it makes her want to become a better person [emphasis added].”18 These kinds of appreciations and enjoyments co-exist with a different type, as one can grasp from comments about Samia’s comedy show: “Honestly, the Jamel Comedy Club19 cannot measure up to you. It was brilliant, laughing like crazy from the beginning to the end… There is nothing better for having a good time with friends or family…One negative point, the sketch by the Swiss woman was a bit vulgar, but we forgive her.”20 If L’Etoile Brillante was understood to be more than mere en-tertainment, entertainment itself was not rejected. As long as it fulfilled the requirements of Islamic moral sensibilities, entertainment was appreciated as one element of social life.21

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Nonetheless, spectatorship and listening practices as they take place within these events are not reducible to a set of (timeless) Islamic tra-ditions, as other traditions are also determinant for understanding this emerging and growing group of Muslim theater spectators. Thus, notions of (bourgeois) silence and suitable (seated) behavior as appropriate for the cultivated theater spectator, too, pervade the conduct of these pious spectator–listeners.22 An example that exposes the relevance of this type of conduct was the audience’s varied usage of the zaghārīt exclamations during the performance of L’Etoile Brillante. These cries were not em-ployed by the majority of the audience, and only when some older women spontaneously carried out some of these exclamations, did only a few younger women hesitantly join in. This instance clearly points to divergent notions of appropriateness between generations regarding how to em-body appreciation and enjoyment vis-à-vis such a performance.

Between Umma and RepublicAs discussed earlier, the artistic projects in question have been conceived especially for a Muslim audience. Banquet halls, Muslim community cen-ters, and buildings belonging to Islamic organizations have initially pro-vided the main venues for these events. The performers have established their audience through grassroots initiatives and informal channels, such as French Muslim websites and blogs, e-mails sent to groups of friends, or social media pages. Renting public buildings from the municipality has been difficult at times, as I was told by Samia, Abdasamad, and other artists. Public officials were likely to reject projects that were deemed ex-plicitly religious or political, dismissing these initiatives as too communau-tariste.23 Interestingly, however, the artists at times employed a similar ter-minology to explain their own desire to reach out to a larger, non-Muslim public. This final section discusses precisely how the artistic projects in question intersected with and diverged from the discursive context de-fined by French republicanism.

I came to realize after attending one of the early Oriental Comique 100% Halal shows that there was not a consensus among pious Muslim cultural practitioners themselves about Muslim community arts. That afternoon, I chatted with a group of spectators in front of the theater. While all ap-plauded the initiative of providing artistic entertainment for the Muslim community that caters to their ethical sensibilities, one man in his late 30s


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who was a well-known figure within the Islamic cultural scene criticized the term halal in the announcement of the event. As he put it:

Why label this event as halal? Why make it so visibly Muslim? This seems too communautariste. This type of non-vulgar humor is some-thing for the larger society, as well. We have to leave this commu-nitarian spirit (esprit communautariste) behind and think as citizens who have something to offer to others.

For similar reasons, Samia and Abdasamad have tried, even while keeping the Muslim community as their prime audience, to simultaneously enlarge the themes of their performances to reach a broader public. The particular succession of titles chosen by Samia for her shows exemplifies this concern. The original show, Oriental Comique 100% Halal dropped its qualifier, 100% Halal, after the second show. After separating from her co-organizer, Samia even came to consider the term “Oriental Comic” to be unnecessarily “communautariste,” criticizing the fact that many of the art-ists frequently inserted Arabic vernacular into the show, thereby addressing themselves too exclusively to a Maghrebi audience. In line with her desire to build a bridge between communities, she now wanted to acknowledge that not all Muslims are Arabic speaking and non-Muslims should also feel welcome. Her follow-up comedy show, “Samia and the 40 Comedians,” avoided too many Arabic locutions and its title alluded only very indirectly to a Middle Eastern theme. A similar development can be traced with the three pieces developed by Abdasamad for his theater company Miroir des Signes. While the first piece, Les Gens du Fossé, was very much an Islamic story with a clear pious message, the second one still retained a Muslim identity even if the genre could be understood primarily as political activ-ism. The third and most recent piece, Riche ou Pauvre, did not make any explicit reference to an Islamic identity. This effort to reach beyond the Muslim audience and to make space for Muslim cultural production with-in the mainstream society interestingly qualifies the “counter” within this emerging Muslim counter-public; rather than oppositional or contestatory, the “counter-” here points to an interesting tension that characerizes the public’s relation to its mainstream counterparts.

Samia’s and Abdasamad’s concern around their own possible com-munautarism echoes, in some ways, the general French discourse on the topic, which is also related to a specific republican understanding of

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citizenship.24 However, their argument was often made with reference to a broader ethical duty grounded within (competing) Islamic notions of uni-versalism as they are also disseminated among popular preachers in the French revival movement.25 As Muslim artists, they felt obliged to con-tribute to a larger common good that transcends the limits of the Muslim community. The Islamic principles and ethics they defended are in their eyes not “communitarian” but rather universal values; and, therefore, the larger society should benefit from them as well.26 It is in this sense that Abdasamad explained to me his choice to do a piece on economic exploi-tation of Third World farmers and fair trade without referring to an Islamic identity: “To be Islamic does not mean to speak absolutely about religion; to be Islamic also means speaking about society and about justice. Fair trade is for me an Islamic notion because it aspires toward justice.”

Nonetheless, not all artists pursue a path similar to the trajectory of Samia or Abdasamad, and there is no agreement on this issue. Overtly pi-ous art projects like L’Etoile Brillante did not seem concerned about creat-ing a show that is clearly “communautarisme” in nature. Moreover, “open-ing up” to larger audiences did not always guarantee the satisfaction of the Muslim audience. Samia’s development is a point in case. In her desire to unite different groups through humor, she reinforced at one point her coop-eration with non-Muslim artists that tended to a larger white, middle-class audience. This cooperation entailed a significant change in the style of hu-mor, something which was not always well received. Even if the sketches might be acceptable in terms of non-vulgarity, the humor conveyed by these white, middle class comedians did not always speak to the majority of the audience. “Laughing together” beyond one’s own community, has to be learned, Samia underlined, and interestingly, for her, this project was connected to her effort to refine the community; leaving behind commu-nautarisme in cultural expressions was akin to enhancing one’s style, but it was also something that required habituation and pedagogy:

To a recent show that I organized, I brought an American and a lady who did comedy with a Belgian accent, and one who translated a rap song into baroque language. The problem was that the public was not used to this and they [the comedians] were not well received. It is not easy to move beyond the ghetto humor, the banlieue-style, to-ward something a bit more elevated. I wanted us to all laugh togeth-er, but the problem is that I changed the format too radically. I did


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that show with almost only non-communitarian humor, so they [the public] felt a bit abandoned. There were only one or two Maghrebis, the others were all from different backgrounds. Before, it always re-ally was mainly about the Muslim community. I think I went too fast, too brutally, I should have gone more smoothly. It also depends on the level of studies you have completed, those who have a higher level appreciate the show, the others are only used to being among wesh wesh27…“What’s that, that is not funny.” It is a problem of cul-tural references…I wanted to be a bridge between two cultures, but I went too fast.

The desire to transcend community boundaries, to aspire to a more “universal” approach, was for Samia intertwined with her ambition to re-fine the umma.28 According to Samia, the realization of these two objec-tives would eventually help overcome the Muslim community to overcome its outsider status. In Samia’s understanding, the apparent failure of her new project was especially linked to questions of education (and social location or class). However, one might also argue that the performances failed to invoke sense or to produce affect, because they rendered the audience’s experiences marginal—experiences that have already been marginalized within mainstream cultural productions. The originality of Samia’s project was precisely to valorize their own cultural and religious background and to give dignity to their marginalized and even ostracized experience, in addition to being “halal.”29

For Abdasamad, “universalizing” the message did not raise exactly the same questions. The importance of social engagement was generally rec-ognized among the revival circles I studied in France, and the idea of “talk-ing about Islam without naming it” was frequently promoted. Although his theater productions generally had significant difficulties in attracting audi-ence numbers similar to Samia’s comedy shows or to the musical L’Etoile Brillante, he nonetheless had a small, but consistent Muslim audience. Still, his move away from specific Muslim related topics entailed a de-crease in invitations from Islamic associations (in comparison to the earlier productions). At the same time, however, he succeeded for the first time in cooperating with public schools throughout the Paris region, thereby guaranteeing (also for the first time) financial benefit for the actors.

Thus, while Muslim audience members were not necessarily against the idea of disseminating ethical message in more universal ways, a

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majority among them did not seem to be profoundly affected by some of the artists’ malaise around cultural events that bare the taste of par-ticularisme. While Samia’s shows were no longer explicitly designated as halal nor did Abdasamad’s pieces overtly invoke an Islamic identity anymore, their audiences nevertheless knew and appreciated them to be so. They expected them to be reflective of their own ethics, sensibilities and tastes. Moreover, as we have seen earlier through the example of L’Etoile Brillante, for the Muslim audiences the affirmation of one’s status as French citizen did not require so much an overcoming of particularistic interests, tastes and sensibilities, but rather asserted the possibility (as a right) of freely expressing them.

ConclusionMy concern in this contribution was to analyze how these new creative practices have reconfigured the revival project of cultivating piety within a context of an all-pervasive culture industry. This industry not only seemed to compete (antagonistically) with the subject-fashioning ambitions of the revival movement, but many of its underlying assumptions about the role of culture and arts had already shaped the consumer desires of the younger revival members. As a consequence, young Muslims considered culture and the arts increasingly important for strengthening Islamic sensi-bilities, but also for reinforcing the social status of the community.

The theater or concert hall experience (even if reconstituted within the realm of suburban cultural or community centers), significantly altered the Islamic revival sphere. This experience establishes consumption and en-joyment of culture as part of the social intercourse in which a pious Muslim public engages. The emergence of these spaces as the new localities of the Islamic revival movement for the exclusive consumption of art has to be read through the ways it re-employs and alters Islamic traditions of audition by articulating them in complex ways with other traditions of spectatorship and entertainment (from bourgeois “high” culture to “banli-eue” popular culture). One cannot underestimate the significance of these spaces, as they also oblige us to think differently about these quickly evolving Islamic soundscapes.

The separate and isolated character of this nascent Muslim perform-ing arts scene from the larger world of French cultural life was a defin-ing feature of this scene. While the limited funding possibilities severely


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constrained the creative possibilities of this scene, it made them quasi “autonomous” from the state and its cultural institutions. And in spite of the art practitioners’ affiliation with revival circles, their projects were not directly sponsored nor supported by that scene. This situation has provided the Muslim artists with an interesting space to freely search for formula, which could bring together personal creative ambitions and re-ligious ethics and sensibilities. It is this context that has also enabled the emergence of a quite heterogeneous and quickly evolving artistic scene where the same overarching aspiration to do halal arts led to a wide range of individual developments. The novelty of the genre of theatrical produc-tion in the (French) revival milieu, growing at the margins of French society and of revival structures, accounts for the experimental nature of the artis-tic activities discussed here. All these artistic projects reflect the ongoing efforts of contemporary young, European-born pious Muslims to extend their religious ethics into a world from which they have been excluded or alienated, but which has nonetheless constantly been present in their lives, glanced at from a distance. n

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s :

Research for this article was supported by a post-doctoral research grant from NWO (Dutch Scientific Council) at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. I am grateful to the several anonymous reviewers for their critical reading of this article and their very helpful suggestions.

E n d n o t e s :

1This tendency is especially observable among authors who read these transformations along Olivier Roy’s (2004) idea of “post-Islamism” (see also Haenni 2002), according to which Islamic movements allow for an increasing individualization and privatization of religious practice, and are therefore in line with more general modernization paradigms.

2The artists I worked with are loosely connected to revival circles, which are affiliated with the umbrella organization Union des Organisations Islamique de France, such as the Institut Européen des Sciences Humaines (IESH) or le Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur l’Islam, and supported by prominent speak-ers such as Tariq Ramadan or Hassan Iquioussen.

3This is not to say that outspoken Muslim artists in France have not been successful in the mainstream sphere; popular hip hop artists like Kery James, Médine, or Abd Al Malik have had great success (see Drissel 2009, Jouili 2013).

4I have conducted empirical research in Paris from early 2007 to summer 2008, as well as several short fieldtrips in 2009 and 2010. I have done extensive interviews with about ten Muslim artists, and observed them during preparations, castings, repetitions, and performances. I further talked to event organizers and others involved in different ways with the Islamic cultural field.

5The most relevant of these Islamic public figures for my interlocutors are Tariq Ramadan, Amr Khaled, or Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. For instance, in his recent book, Swiss Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan (2008) deplores the lack of a high quality Muslim cultural production in the West. He sees such a production as an urgent necessity in order for Muslims to be able to resist the influence of global mass culture. On the new

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generation of Egyptian preachers who have taken it upon themselves to promote a clean and purposeful art, see Winegar (2008).

6The choreography employed in this piece has many similarities to the modern Islamic dance-theaters that exist today in Iran. They use the term “rhythmic movements” rather than “dance,” to elevate the dancer to a respectable “contented self” and to turn the movements into an embodiment of chastity and spirituality (Stellar 2011).

7In the 20th century, this independence and the concomitant idea of “disinterestedness” has been reart-iculated, notably by Adorno (1997), who proclaims the necessity of maintaining critical distance between artist and society. Although Adorno (1997) does not furnish a specific model, he demands that art con-stantly allows for the possibility of an “other-wise.” Even if the Kantian principle of disinterestedness has been critiqued since its inception, and the idea of ethics as a criterion of aesthetics defended, these ethics have been articulated around humanist values (including autonomy) rather than religious norms (i.e., Caroll 1998, Nussbaum 2000). And, according to Bourdieu (1984), this principle still defines the conventional understanding of what makes up high arts as opposed to popular arts.

8This is very similar to moralist approaches that are voiced in contemporary art debates (see, for instance, Caroll 1998).

9This idea is, for instance, put forward by influential Muslim figures in the scene, such as Tariq Ramadan (2008), who insists on the necessity for Muslims to develop an artistic culture for the social and spiritual uplifting of the Muslim community. For similar arguments by Egyptian preachers, see Winegar 2008.

10See http://etoile.brillante.over-blog.com/pages/Livre_dOr_du_spectacle-3422547.html (last accessed April 20, 2011).

11In recent years, literature has frequently emphasized the quest by second generation Muslims for upward social mobility, as it is notably reflected in new consumption patterns. See, for instance, Moors (2009).

12In the Islamic circles which my interlocutors belonged, one regularly insisted on the significance of punctuality, an “Islamic” quality supposed to be fostered notably by the punctual implementation of the five daily prayers. It is that quality, preachers emphasize, which Muslims should apply in their everyday life. Nonetheless, they always acknowledged, as the “insha’Allah” in the quote exposes, a temporality, which was not completely subjected to rational time calculation and mastery, but simultaneously demanded a submission to God’s unpredictable will.

13Hirschkind’s (2006) elaboration of a counter-public builds on and extends Michael Warner’s (2002) work. One of the aspects that render Warner’s idea of the counter-public so interesting in the context of my work, as will become evident in the following section, is his sensitivity to the aesthetic poetic dimension of corporal expression and affect. In my usage of the term, I do not want to allude to an implicit normative teleology inherent in processes of public formation, but employ it as a way to grasp the dynamics involved in these new forms of sociability, doubtlessly defined by the actors themselves in terms resonant of a modernist teleology.

14Humor as a subject matter to study within Islamic traditions of audition has not attracted much scholarly attention. Jonathan Berkey (2001:26-27) mentions in passing the popularity of preachers for containing hu-mor in their sermons in the Middle Ages. Franz Rosenthal (1956) examines a tradition of humor in early Islam.

15There is by now an important body of scholarship within anthropology that pays attention to the sen-sorium, to sensory experiences and to the multiple and culturally specific ways they can manifest them-selves in and through the body. Inspired by different philosophical traditions, they, however, vary in their understanding of the sensorium. Rather than assuming a kind of authentic and unmediated experience that humans share universally, my work follows those approaches that understand the sensorium as the result of historically sedimented ways of governing the body (e.g., Asad 2003, Hirschkind 2006).

16Plato and Rousseau were both concerned with the potentially corrupting power of passions roused by these performances as they disabled rational reflection or deliberation, crucial respectively for the partici-pation in the polis and for the exercise of democratic citizenship (Johnson 1999).

17Theater scholar John Keefe (2010), for instance, has elaborated on the idea of a spectator as spect-actor. The “ethos of spectatorship” that defines the spectators’ specific ethical relation to the stage and the actors is defined by the “complicit, knowing emphatic imagination located and manifested in the engaged but distant spect-actor, conceiving of the fiction as a ‘lie’ she is accepting to engage with for the time of the event, or, referring to a locution by Coleridge, it constitutes a ‘willful suspension of disbelief for the moment’” (2010:41).

18Accessed from http://etoile.brillante.over-blog.com/pages/Livre_deOr_du_spectacle-3422547.html on April 30, 2011.


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19The Jamel Comedy Club is one of the most famous stand-up shows with banlieue humor, but known to also make fun (in quite stigmatizing ways) of racialized minorities, even while equally criticizing racism (Béru 2011).

20Accessed from http://www.billetreduc.com/21559/evt.htm on May 2, 2009.

21Many discussions take place in the French Muslim blogosphere on the legitimacy of jokes, laughter, and amusement. In these exchanges, it is generally highlighted, that the Prophet enjoyed jokes as long as they were neither insulting nor mendacious. One of the things that might come up in these exchanges, however, is what properly conducted laughter looks like. Here, one refers occasionally to hadith: “I never saw the Prophet laugh until I saw his uvula. He only used to smile.” Still, this norm did not always seem to be consequential, at least when observing the audiences at Samia’s shows.

22On the constitution of the modern (silent) audience, the spectator-listener, bourgeois modes of listen-ing in modern concert halls, see for instance, Johnson (1996), Thompson (2002), and Crary (1992, 2001).

23This is not to say that municipalities never finance “communautarian,” even religiously defined cultural projects. An interesting example is the Institut des Cultures de l’Islam (ICI), a cultural center set up by the mayor of Paris with the objective to promote a moderate Muslim cultural heritage. As one of the officials at the mayor’s office told me, the Institute intends to counter, through culture, the more “reactionary” and “bigot” forces that he perceived as dominating Islam in France today. Interestingly, Samia and Abdasamad both expressed having had “disappointing” experiences with the Institute. Samia, who has performed in the above mentioned Sufi-inspired piece at the ICI, was refused there the opportunity to pray. Abdasamad went to the Institute just after its opening with the intention to discuss possibilities of staging his piece there, but was slightly disturbed by the paintings displayed at that moment on its walls: pictures of naked female bodies painted with henna.

24On the complicated relation in French Republicanism to universalism and particularism, see, for in-stance, Balibar (1989), Mathy (2008), Schor (2001), and Silverstein (2004).

25Tariq Ramadan is one of the most visible figures promoting this kind of thought. See, for instance Ramadan (2008).

26This is exactly an argument made by Tariq Ramadan (2008:264). In a chapter devoted to the question of arts and Islam, he pleads for a “mature” Islamic arts scene apt to resist the homogenization tendencies of the culture industry. In order to contribute creatively to the contemporary arts scene, Ramadan insists that Islamic art should not confine itself to pious preaching, but should explore issues that are universally relevant.

27Wesh wesh is a a slang word referring to young people from the suburbs, mainly to immigrant children of North African descent.

28It is interesting to note that Samia’s explanation of the audience’s resistance to this project reproduces the common representation of white, middle class taste as the more “universal” one, whereas the taste of the immigrant community (banlieue humor) is identified with particularism.

29This comes quite close to what Bourdieu has designated as “popular aesthetic”:

It is as if the “popular aesthetic” (the quotation marks are there to indicate that this is an aesthetic “in itself” not “for itself”) were based on the affirmation of the continuity between art and life, which implies the subordination of form to function…working-class people expect every image to explicitly perform a function, if only that of a sign, and their judgments make reference, often explicitly, to the norms of morality or agreeableness. Whether rejecting or praising, their appreciation always has an ethical basis. (1984:4-5)

If Bourdieu correctly recognizes that the specificity of “popular aesthetic” is a matter of ethics, his general disinterest for ethics and ethical practice leads him to ignore the many important underlying questions involved within such an approach to aesthetics (for example, many other traditions of politically or morally engaged arts).

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