Naissance médiatique de l'intellectuel musulman en France (1989-2005)

Conclusion

After a study revealed by the World in 2001, Franck Fregosi, sociologist of Islam at the Robert-Schuman university of Strasbourg and researcher at CNRS, draw the following conclusions :

 «It was thought up to now that the social rise almost inevitably involved a detachment of the religion. However, which reveals this survey, it is the progressive emergence of a future Moslem elite in France. With wrong way of a certain simplifying speech, according to which the Moslems of France could be integrated only while renonçant into their faith, the investigation shows that it is perfectly possible to be integrated into the French company and respectful Moslem regulations^268(*). »

Our work, which tried shown media quadruple birth of the Moslem intellectual since about fifteen years, is perhaps a modest illustration of this analysis. It is certainly necessary to underline the limits of such a classification which, not only is far from tight, but to be milked in addition period too close to us to be able to affirm that it will remain relevant in the duration. In the same way, categorization in fields can appear brutal and consolidates a vision probably a little machiavelic of the Moslem elite. Although there is one « media market of the Moslem intellectual », it should not obviously be thought that all is matter with calculations and especially not to forget that the majority of the intellectuals evoked previously are it, let us make their this credit, by conviction.

It is well with the new mediatization as of 1989 of subjects relating to directly or not Islam that journalists undertake to seek one « Moslem opinion » on quite precise topics. As Thomas Deltombe in connection with the Rushdie business explains it, the media world is not prepared to address itself to this new type of speakers : « Pressed knowledge what the «Islamic community» in France thinks, the journalists is not worried to know if such «a community» really exists nor to study possible contours of them^269(*).» Consequently, it is on a virtual and moving reality, holding more media construction, that rests since his birth the Moslem intellectual who wants to be representative.

Always it is that as of its origin, media Moslem intellectual French A for role to express itself on subjects « Moslems », of the problems implying more or less directly Islam. Is not this in contradiction with the vocation universalist of the intellectual ? If he wants to remain, the Moslem intellectual will have to thus leave what Houari Bouïssa, historian of the ideas, name it « ghettoisation of the thought^270(*) ». It would be necessary that this intellectual figure clarifies the scientific community in fields other than specifically Islamic. What one for example would have retained of the philosopher protesting Paul Ricoeur, recently disappeared, if it had been confined to treat only questions specific to Protestantism ?

But it is perhaps time to return to the interrogation caused by the reflection of Mohammed Arkoun ahead-matter. If the Moslem intellectual is spirit to be born as such in the French media since roughly speaking the Rushdie business, we cannot deny that this birth is partial. Indeed, this category of intellectual could appear because it proposed a manner of new thought, distinct, ready to compete with a relative universalism presumedly higher bus founded by the Occident. Thus, Mohammed Arkoun did not hesitate at the beginning of the years 1990 to raise the controversy violently :

« It would also be necessary that a serious debate is established in Occident on the legitimacy of a brutal disqualification of a whole culture, of a whole religion starting from postulates with philosophical claim which did not undergo, in Occident even, all the tests of a intellectual validation, or the tests of a cultural effectiveness when they are transferred to other historical, religious and psychosocial contexts^271(*). »

However what notes one if one tries to draw the assessment from the four categories which we differentiated here ? First of all, the first, that of the intellectual Moslem avant-gardist, are by definition a figure partial since the individuals who make it up do not post their faith like identity first, even less like patent of notoriety. Concerning the category of the official intellectuals, in addition to the problems inherent in the organic statute of intellectual, in opposition to the critical intellectual, we saw how much it had evil to found its legitimacy.

The two other categories clarified here, respectively the reformers and the actors of the social and political world, also pose a problem. As we saw, the personalities which defend a too singular point of view compared to « well-to think » Western are marginalized and see their statute of often disputed intellectual. To gain their gallons of Moslem intellectual, the latter are unceasingly obliged to give pledges of republicanism, of moderation with regard to their culture presented like dialectically opposed to that of the Occident, with the detriment of the singularity, essential component of their existence.

The Moslem intellectual would be he thus still-born child ? Without being prophet, that appears not very conceivable. On the contrary, the strength and new visibility of the debates within the Moslem community during the time going of 1989 with today mark doubtless a historical turning. That does not prevent us from raising the limits even contradictions of this statute. If the Moslem intellectual must be distinguished from the Western intellectual to exist, it should not be different from it either too much, with the risk to see itself disputing its posture of intellectual. Contrary, with too much approaching « politically correct », the Moslem intellectual thought can quickly be diluted in the intellectual rest of the world. Perpetuation in the future or not of the figure of the Moslem intellectual will actually depend on the following essential question : France is it lends to accept the cultural relativism, including in the intellectual field ?

* ²⁶⁸ Maintenance with Xavier Ternisien with Franck Fregosi, the World, 5/10/2001.

* ²⁶⁹ Thomas Deltombe, «  Islam with the mirror of television  », The Diplomatic World, March 2004.

* ²⁷⁰ Houari Bouissa, «  For a definition of the Moslem intellectual  », Oumma, 12/2/2005.

* ²⁷¹ Mohammed Arkoun, «  Return to the Rushdie business  », in For Rushdie, the Discovery, 1993