Pierre Manent has written an extraordinary book. It contains one statistic and no policy analysis, yet should be essential reading for policymakers. It cites no scholarly books, yet should be essential reading for scholars. How does Manent manage to appeal to so many readers despite making so few concessions to their particular methods and materials? The answer lies in the general relevance of his argument, along with the force, grace, and measure with which that argument is made.
The English translation is reliable but its title is designed to sell copies rather than reproduce the original. La Situation de la France might be rendered as The Current State of France, which captures Manent’s starting point. He treats the political situation not as it was, should be, or might be in the indeterminate future but as it stands before our eyes. France is home to a substantial, poorly integrated Muslim community that has begun to commit acts of homegrown terrorism. Hopes that secularism, individual rights, or European integration will somehow resolve these problems appear increasingly hollow. Such abstract notions fail to engender the sense of community necessary both to understand the communal character of Islam and to offer Muslims a meaningful French community with which to engage.
Manent enriches our understanding of the issue with some brilliant historical perspective. Since the High Middle Ages, European politics has been characterized by a prolonged but fruitful struggle over political form: The intermingling of empire, church, city, and state produced political forms unknown to the ancients, culminating in the modern nation. But the nation-state has been unfairly discredited by the abominable misinterpretation of it that yielded the Holocaust. Worse, the European Union that strives to replace the nation is unable to
command the allegiance of actual European communities.
During these same centuries, Islamic civilization also flourished but did not attempt to reconfigure its imperial politics. Since the collapse of these empires, Muslims have struggled to adapt to smaller political units. Manent fears the consequences of an encounter between a French community that no longer appreciates the nation and a Muslim community that has never really lived in one. The French will invoke individual rights, and Muslims will invoke communal custom and law—but neither will learn to live profitably alongside the other in a single nation.
Manent hopes that the French will revitalize their nation and summon their Muslim community to join it. Since the Muslim community cannot integrate into the formless space of a Europe dominated by human rights and secularism, it is up to the French nation to offer it a political home. Yet this French nation is no longer the place consolidated by the Third Republic: A new understanding of France is required, based on existing political resources—but also on a reinterpretation of them.
In keeping with the English title, Manent does, indeed, argue that the Roman Catholic church must help to redefine the nation, as it did during the Third Republic. Secularism should be understood as the basic separation of church and state in politics rather than the purging of religion from public life. The new nation will have a Christian mark while welcoming other faiths. The Jews, in particular, are singled out as close allies, equally privy to the biblical covenant and the French nation.
By Manent’s reckoning, France must offer its Muslim community political concessions while simultaneously making political demands. Concessions would include halal menus in schools, the right to wear the hijab, unisex hours at swimming pools; demands would include a ban on practices incompatible with the French way of life, such as the burqa, polygamy, and the intimidation of “blasphemers.” Manent’s most fraught proposal, however, is to restrict the foreign funding of Muslim religious institutions: He argues plausibly that Muslim institutions financed by foreign countries whose way of life is anathema to France should not participate in French political life.
Pierre Manent writes for the French, never straying far from his specific cultural context. But the problem he treats concerns us, too. Public life in America is not as openly secularist as in France: As Manent observes, we (unlike the French) are willing to pray in public for our country. Our Muslim community is smaller, better educated, and unencumbered by a colonial past. Yet we face homegrown Islamic terrorism, a political elite half-inclined to ignore the problem, and demagogues who feed off it. We, too, need to articulate the character of our political society and explain how our growing Muslim community can be successfully integrated into it.
Alexander Orwin is a fellow at the Program for Constitutional Government at Harvard.
