Islamophobia and French academia

Abstract

The aim of this article is to study the French academic controversy related to Islamophobia. It raises the general question of the autonomy of social sciences in relation to the political-media field and the capacity of researchers to be reflexive and to distance themselves from the mainstream Islamophobic discourse. Drawing on the publications produced by French academics about Islamophobia, the article first analyses the space of controversy, showing that it does not take place in the central social science journals but on their periphery, or even outside the academic field. It then focuses attention on the logic of avoiding the (rare) French accounts on Islamophobia, which not only results in a timid academic disputatio but also in a disqualification of the concept of Islamophobia that mobilizes arguments similar to political-media discourses. The tension between factual judgement and value judgement is also analysed, highlighting how researchers working on Islamophobia are charged with a lack of scientific rigour and the unacknowledged political bias of the deniers. Finally, the article highlights the instrumentalization of the reference to Pierre Bourdieu by the deniers of Islamophobia. Thus, the forms of the French academic controversy on Islamophobia are indicative of the denial of Islamophobia and the influence of the media on the academic field.