Reading done in Fall 2018 semester
Book: "Radicalized Loyalties: Becoming Muslim in the West"
- by Fabien Truong - 2018
Fabien Truong sheds new light on the daily lives of 6 young men from Grigny (Adama, Radouane, Hassan, Tarik, Marley and a ghost: Amédy Coulibaly).In hopes of understanding terror, Fabien Truong returns to Amédy and his "life before", by gaining the trust of the people who knew him. In Grigny, these boys learn to become men by experiencing competing loyalties towards their neighbourhood, their friends and their families, towards France, economic competition that might lead some towards underground economy. At some point, some turn towards the Muslim religion, which stands as a last resource. A slow reconversion begins, which allows introspection and a change of path.
Some factors that played a role in the delinquency of Adama:
-feeling of injustice
-prospect of different future
- feeling of safety in the cité because of the big brothers of cité who would protect him.
"Real Men" in the banlieue (the cité)
"public recognition is asserted above all through a strong body" (Truong 2018, 70).
"Physical capacities are sign of moral qualities" (Truong 2018, 70).
"Radouane, Tarik, Marley, adama, Amédy, and Hassan all share a concern with increasing their muscle mass" (Truong 2018, 70).
"Their muscles, and the knowledge that they can be put to use in a fight, make up for any physical characteristics that could detract from their virility, like not being "tall" (Truong 2018, 70).
"The pursuit of muscles is a "solitary pilgrimage," in the words of former bodybuilder Samuel Fussell" (Truong 2018, 70).
" Body and soul, [Radouane] plunged into his studies, his weights, and Islam (Truong 2018, 71).
"That the search for a shared authenticity should be expressed in the language of religion is hardly surprising" (Truong 2018, 74).
""[G]etting interested in Islam at the same" in the hope of finding "balance"" (Truong 2018, 74).
"Rioting is also a way of warding off fate, adding pleasure, excitement, and play to the ambient tone of suffering and humiliation. It's a festive occasion that becomes a spectacle when boys see themselves reflected through the eyes of others and learn from those more experienced than themselves. Such moments of socialization and group celebration are unpredictable, and thus seductive. Improvisation heightens the feeling of freedom and jubilation generated by a fleeting role-reversal in the game of hunter and hunted" (Truong 2018, 79).
"The shortcomings of politics, the economy, and the education system, along with disdain for artistic creation, make it difficult to frame beliefs or ideas suited to the world's contradictions. What then remains is a religion rooted in the historical pathways of immigration and decolonization: Islam" (Truong 2018, 82).
"[...] religious communities appear an especially integrated force, in that they bring human beings together not because of what they have or what they are, but because of what they believe. This notion lies at the heart of the Muslim religion, with the Umma denoting the pivotal moment when the very first believers rejected clan-like organizations to join a new, single community of faith. It supposedly takes concrete form in unconditional solidarity among all Muslims - extending even to the creation of an Islamic nation (Truong 2018, 84).
"FT: Are you more optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
Radouane: Here? Pessimistic. It isn't possible to live here in France. For a Muslim who wants to practice his faith 100 percent, it won't be possible.
FT: You feel like you're sort of making a compromise...
Radouane: Well yeah, you can't practice your religion.... Here's something that sucks: my work contract is going to expire. You see my beard? If a Frenchman has a beard the same length it's fine! Well, it won't be fine for me, 'cause they'll think, he's Muslim, he does the daily prayers, etc. With me looking like an Arab.... You see what I mean, it sucks! Even, like, a Muslim girl who wears the veil - she can't go to a job interview like that. Some of them make concessions and take off their veil when they're at works, even though what they're doing is crazy. They know very well that what they're doing is terrible, unfortunately. But there's nothing they can do. It's either that or they don't work. They don't make any money and can't be independent" (Truong 2018, 85).
"Although all the boys invoke family tradition or a return to origins when they embrace Islam, the desire for community is a label, more than anything. What lies behind it is an imagined narrative of a long collective history. Within families, it often appears as a pious hope. The gap between religion as practiced by the parent and that embraced by the children shows how far two different social worlds set them apart. For the parents, it's an ancient practice, often more cultural than religious, carried out discreetly. Islam was imported from the countries of their birth to a secular republic that only belatedly discovered the existence of a large Muslim population on its soil. For the most devout, faith flows from repeated readings of verses and surahs in an Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Malian, or Senegalese context. It conveys snippets of a national history that has come to a close. For the sons, Islam holds the allure of renewal, a spiritual quest, fidelity to an inexpressible authenticity" (Truong 2018, 85-86).
"The about-turn is a paradoxical attempt at individual empowerment. As a result, "with the help of a different 'generation' of emigrants, a 'shameful Islam' - hidden, eliminated, and eliminating itself from the public square and public commitments - was replaced by an avowed and declared Islam, which asserted itself religiously, of course, but also, beyond religious assertion - and perhaps more centrally - it asserted itself culturally and politically; in short, a militant Islam (Sayad L. as cited in Truong 2018, 86)"" (Truong 2018, 86).
"[R]econversion, which leads to a reordering, reorganizing, and re-appropriation of one's life. In Islam, this is given a name: reform (islah). The process unfolds over a lifetime - or "longevity," in Radouane's slip of the tongue. That lapse is a reminder that becoming religious is a way of confronting the existential anguish of death, a cross between deliverance and rebirth" (Truong 2018, 97).
"This systemization of self-perfection takes place through routines and rituals. They draw a line of demarcation between past impurity and the purity to come (cleanliness, hygiene, helping others, respecting the environment, etc.)" (Truong 2018, 99).
"The "established truths" are the result of a personal confrontation with the texts, whereas the "doctrinal truths" are there to justify ritual practices. The former are the product of critical re-intellectualization; the latter, of the comfort of de-intellectualization" (Truong 2018, 103).
"Belief in the existence of an ultimate truth is the cornerstone of the moral, emotional, and societal security that religious reconversion achieves" (Truong 2018, 103).
"The comforts of de-intellectualization seems to have won out, bringing forth a twin threat: the "ignorance" and "intolerance" of the reconverted" (Truong 2018, 103).
"These three dynamics [the universal tendency towards "fundamentalist intolerance of other 'species' is the product of group belonging that finds itself strengthened by these 3 dynamics] - religious, economic, and social - arer not causes in themselves. They crystallize a climate spurs people to find confirmation of their own virtuosity in a rejection of "others" " (Truong 2018, 104).
"According to Olivier Roy, the breeding ground of this rejection is "holy ignorance," the product of an age in which "religion and culture part ways." In the context of globalization, decolonization, and social media, he argues, the experience of faith has become decontextualized, stripped of all "religious markers."[30] Given the individualisti logic of conversion, it's the spectacle of rupture and the desire for renewal that win out. The born-again convert is then at an impasse, since it's impossible to pass on the experience of rupture - the very expereince to which it owes its existence. This leads Roy to argue that the problem of "globalized Islam" is mainly a product of autodidactism and a desire to stand out: "The sectarianism lies in the mindset, not in the ideas [...] one wishes to be a 'taliban' (student) and yet also to be an expert right away. But the final word is that ascribed to the expert: the real expert, who harkens to tradition; the autodidact does not invent, he mimics.[31] For him, virtuosity is a leitmotif and a pretense: it hides the comfort of de-intellectualization under the façade of an impatient claim to imagined excellence" (Truong 2018, 104-105).