Questioning French secularism

About this book

"Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this book examines how contemporary secularism in France is positioned as a guarantor of Muslim women's rights. Selby analyzes public discourses on secularism in France to consider how Islam becomes subsumed under the fetishized headscarf, how women's bodies come to represent collective identities, and how the activism and engagement of suburban Muslim women with secular politics is ignored"-- "Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in a Parisian suburb, this book examines how contemporary secularism in France is positioned as a guarantor of Muslim women¹s rights. Jennifer Selby argues that the complex fetishization of headscarves in public, governmental and feminist French discourses positions publicly-visible religious women in ways that obscure their engagement with laïcité (French secularism )."--