Between Normalisation and Exception: The Securitisation of Islam and the Construction of the Secular Subject

Abstract

In recent political and scholarly debates, the notion of ‘securitisation of Islam’ has acquired increasing relevance, yet very little attempt has been made to investigate the theoretical implications of the securitisation of Muslim subjects carried out by secular regimes for thinking security. This article aims to partially fill this gap by exploring the securitisation of Muslim minorities in Western societies as a process of construction and reproduction of secular modes of subjectivity. To this end, the article outlines the contours of an approach to securitisation which draws on both the Copenhagen and the Paris schools of security studies, as well as on a gender/body perspective which focuses on the subjectivities that securitisation aims to produce. Following some illustrations of the securitisation of Islam in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, an exploration of a Western notion of subjectivity revolving around the securitisation of Christianity and the construction of Islam as a threatening deviation from this historical trajectory, and an analysis of the securitisation of the headscarf and the burqa in France, the article concludes that securitisation rests on both logics of political normalisation and exception which warrant an exploration of the discursive sediments which make them possible.