Paper long abstract:

The paper will address the events of the Parisian banlieus (October-November 2005) to reflect on: 1) Islam as an emerging actor in the public arena and 2) how the social discourse has incorporated it. The analysis will attempt to show how Islam, which identifies the private sphere of the individuals' practice and faith in Allah and the Koran, has become synonym and social mark of a community. People of West and North African origin, whether migrants of first generation or born to migrant parents and brought up in France, bear the stigma of a colonial past which evokes times of exploitation and war - the Algerian war of Independence (1954-1962). Islamic affiliation is fictitiously deemed to be the responsible for their social exclusion, because of its incompatibility with the Republican values; thus, a very sensitive chapter of the French history (past and present) is obliterated. Where Islam stands as a self-evident category used to interpret different realities, dynamics and origins summarily lumped together, much is still left to its understanding and to what it is supposed to explain.

The paper will argue that the riots of the banlieus decried nothing more than the social blight and exclusion of a people left at the margins, with no much hope for social promotion and recognition. Methodologically, the author will base the analysis on the data collected during her fieldwork in Paris (summer 2005- up to present).