Epilogue

This concluding chapter reveals that the question of Muslim citizenship and the role of Islam in the republic arose out of the Revolution itself. In short, it did not arise belatedly as a result of colonial and postcolonial Muslim migration to the metropole. Moreover, the results of that consideration can reveal much about the Revolution and its principles. The citizenship of Muslims was not only a contingent possibility but a necessary condition for liberty, equality, and fraternity to be universal principles rather than merely national ones. At the same time, at the heart of the Revolution, until the rupture of its principles in 1798, the Muslim path to citizenship had become a routine process, greeted with the indifference proper to a society of equals, leaving few traces, and for this reason there is no way to know with any exactitude how many individuals followed this path.

Bonaparte’s Burka

This chapter explores Napoleone di Buonaparte's fascination with Islam. It argues that the impulsion that eventually took him to Egypt was formed in the context of his early experience of Corsican nationalism, radical disappointment, and revolutionary commitment to the new France that emerged after 1789. The belief that this invasion would be welcomed by Muslims—indeed, that they would somehow greet the French as fellow believers—was the product of a revolutionary politicization of Islam that was further overheated under the Directory. Indeed, the era of the Directory was the scene of a curious religious experimentation. The chapter shows how the catastrophic decision to invade Egypt effectively brought the Revolution to an end: Buonaparte brought back the taste for arbitrary rule he had established in Egypt to his rule over France and much of Europe.

Islam in the Temple of Reason

This chapter explores the struggle over “dechristianization” and its ways of reconceiving Islam as a historical precedent for religious revolution, as a more rational deism better aligned with revolutionary principles, or as a fanatical superstition to be eliminated. This was not simply a conflict between religion and secularism, but a struggle over what should replace religion that divided even the radical party of revolutionaries. In this struggle, Islam was not swept aside, but on the contrary drawn to the forefront in a number of ways. If atheists saw Islam alongside Christianity and Judaism as a religion to be eliminated, they nonetheless maintained the figure of the Muslim as a test case for the universal vocation of the Revolution. For deists, too, Islam—strictly monotheistic and universalist—could seem much closer to their vision of a purified religion.

The Constitutional Mosque

This chapter traces the appearance of Muslims in debates over religious plurality and the clerical oath. As the new constitution at last came into force, revolutionary France was assailed by problems from within and without. The euphoria of success turned into fears of invasion and counterrevolution, and universality was increasingly expressed by the influential group of deputies known as the Girondins as a need to defend France by attacking the enemies of the Revolution. In this context, Muslims did not disappear from revolutionary concerns but were instead invoked repeatedly by counterrevolutionary writers, at first as threatening or ridiculous examples of the consequences of religious liberty, and then—as the religious tide began to turn against them—as precedents for their claims to freedom of religious conscience. In response, revolutionaries affirmed the new pluralism, suggesting that Muslims did indeed possess these rights, insofar as they did not disturb the civic order in the manner of “refractory” priests.

The Turbans of Liberty

This chapter investigates the wave of revolutionary universalism launched by a piece of revolutionary theater. This was symbolized by the turban, even as that universalism was riven from within by contradictions over race and religion. As the exclusions of the ancien régime were addressed, new questions emerged around the plurality of religions and their relation to the state. In June 1790, on the anniversary of the declaration of the National Assembly, the appearance of a deputation of foreigners led by the Prussian baron Jean-Baptiste (later Anacharsis) Cloots set off a remarkable chain of events that led to the abolition of noble titles in France. The visible presence of Muslims in this deputation played a key role in catalyzing the explosion of enthusiasm that followed: so much so that counterrevolutionary voices clamored to insist that these Muslims were impostors dressed in costumes from the opera.

The Turban and the Axe

This chapter traces the crisis of representation through the October Days: the march of women on Versailles. The march had unleashed a further revolutionary split over the fragmentation of monarchical sovereignty, accompanied by burgeoning anxieties around gender and the patriarchal stability of the ancien régime model. The chapter shows how, in the midst of a mounting political and financial crisis, the court at Versailles tried to promulgate a form of religious tolerance which ended up launching the imaginary “Muslim minority” in France. It was needed as a means of universalizing the notion of “natural rights” to which the monarchy appealed in order to defuse Catholic opposition. Far from a radical or revolutionary notion, this conception of rights inherent in human nature was here set against the rights accorded by citizenship. In doing so, the monarchy opened for a moment a gap between citizenship and Catholicity, and then slammed it shut again.