New books on contemporary France: Islam, Pluralism, and Religious Difference

This roundtable session focuses on two new books on religion and politics in France: Muslim and Catholic Experiences of National Belonging in France: Rethinking Boundaries, Inequities, and Faith in the Republic (Bloomsbury Academic 2024), by Carol Ferrara; and Fraternal Critique: The Politics of Muslim Community in France (Chicago, March 2025) by Kirsten Wesselhoeft. Together, these two works not only shed fresh light on recent French politics related to religion that receive scarce attention in anglophone discourse, but they each develop core central concepts – francité, for Ferrara, and fraternal critique, for Wesselhoeft – that have broad applicability for scholarly analysis of religious communities and the politics of belonging in multiracial postcolonial nation states. The interdisciplinary panel of discussants will open up the wider questions and interventions that come out of these two works taken together, and will underscore their impact for the study of religion in and beyond Europe.