“Home” during my time abroad is in Menton, France. But to effectively discuss the role of religion in the society and politics here, I really must distinguish between the two. Because, you see, there is France…and then there is Menton. Home to the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean studies branch of Sciences Po, Menton includes many students who are not French, but rather citizens of the Middle East and North Africa. Thus, this charming beachside town is a very particular microcosm that is at once reflective of and yet distinct from France as a whole.
To imagine it, insert a diverse community of Arab and/or Islamic students into the context of the traditionally Catholic, predominantly secular and socially conservative Côte d’Azur. Then add in the Western-based social and academic backdrop. The result: a hodgepodge of identities representing the greater integration challenges facing French society today that provides me with a micro-level account of how disparate religious and cultural communities integrate. In this mélange, my interaction with diverse belief systems has been largely personal. Thus, I approach this letter anecdotally to explore the influences of religion as I have encountered them, hoping to counterbalance this potentially narrow viewpoint with a valuable sense of detail and depth.
Religion proved to be a prominent aspect of life in Menton as soon as I arrived in mid-September. I lived in the student dorms, across a small street from one of the beautiful beaches that partition the rocky coast, with about 17 other male students of French and Arab origins. More than half of them were Muslim and in the midst of fasting for Ramadan. It was a fascinating and eye-opening experience to see the faith of some of my peers manifested so concretely in our shared living quarters. Some students, my neighbors, woke early to eat and pray before sunrise. At sundown, making the iftar meal to break the daylong fast took place in the common kitchen and dining area. Islam thus became a normal part of my daily environment, and I marveled as one of its five pillars constructed a tangible sense of community around me. On Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, I was even able to participate in making and eating the main meal with about 30 of my Muslim peers.
At first, I questioned my participation in the religious holiday for fear of being insensitive, even intrusive. Because not only was I the only non-Muslim partaking in the symbolic festivities, but I had also eaten incessantly rather than fasted piously for the preceding 30 days. But when I was welcomed and included with incredible warmth, my doubts were dismissed as superfluous. My Muslim friends loved sharing their traditions with me, they said, and were so glad I would join. Seated among students from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Bahrain, France, Palestine, and Algeria, I found it amazing the extent to which Islam unites the incredibly gigantic and diverse Muslim world. In my mind, I juxtaposed the differing and sometimes divisive ideas within Islam itself with the diversity I saw around me at that table, and I began to see an emerging distinction between belief systems and people. While their doctrines may clash, these friends did not. In this instance, religion existed as a positive and cohesive force begetting inclusion, camaraderie, and understanding.
Nevertheless, the sociocultural plurality I was immersed in did not always succeed in sharing space so agreeably. That same night, Eid part two was to continue alongside the long awaited and highly controversial France versus England rugby semi-final match. When the non-Muslim students began drinking alcohol, a practice not uncommon for 18- to 20-year-old Europeans, there ensued the first real cultural and religious faux pas of the school year. Immediately, the historically defended but recently challenged French separation of public and private life came sharply into question. The strong French secular tradition clashed with the open acknowledgement of the Islamic holiday. But whose beliefs drew which lines, and where? And in the absence of any authoritative figure, who was to decide? In a way, this tense situation accentuated the larger issue of how divergent and seemingly mutually exclusive communities might go about sharing space: both physical space like the TV room, and theoretical space such as identity, nationality, citizenship, or religion. It was thus in two different ways of enjoying a Saturday evening, somewhere in between the Moroccan tea and the Heineken, that I witnessed religion as a force of intense miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Besides influencing common areas and group interaction, religion reached further into my abroad experience, this time onto a personal level. Essentially, one aspect of my identity was contrary to the individual values of some of my neighbors, causing their personal beliefs to make me feel isolated from my new community. Otherwise said, homosexuality is rarely accepted in Islamic communities. So being gay in my new home and academic environment felt very much like being back in the closet. Now, without too much deviation, I must say that I personally reject the premise of a closet altogether. So for me to be back inside a metaphorical entity that I don't believe should exist in the first place means that something had quite a powerful effect on me. At first, I labeled this force religion. I even went so far as to see religion as somewhat of a threat, pushing me back into a place that was uncomfortable and alienating. For quite some time, I had a hard time opening up to the individuals living around me, unable to rectify them with their beliefs.
Taking a few steps back, I now realize that it was not religion driving this process, but the collective force of preconceptions in general; it is these preconceptions that have a huge effect on all members of a community, whether they are based on religious conviction or not. I too carried my own presuppositions about the beliefs of my neighbors and anticipated a certain reaction from them in response to my identity. The assumptions I imposed on them were an ultimately inaccurate generalization based on the beliefs of certain groups of Muslims. I have since come to realize that belief systems are not monolithic entities, and that they never work in just one direction. If I felt like religion somehow excluded me from my community, it was because I too ignored the necessity to separate religious doctrine from individual belief. Overall, it was a challenge trying to flourish in a context where I found myself suddenly relocated from the realm of halal to haram. But in the end, I realized that the intersection of religion and identity is never such a simple dichotomy.
Albeit somewhat personal, I recount this last experience because to leave it out would be to overlook a very influential part of my abroad experience, one that illustrated very clearly to me just how far religion can reach. Given a particular environment, one individual's belief system can intimately influence another individual's reality. Ideas and norms are powerful devices, and subscribing to them is a source of power in society. It is for this reason that distinctions must be made.
Regardless of whatever domain religion occupies and influences, I cannot emphasize more the importance of distinguishing between overarching belief systems and individuals. To overlook that task is to misunderstand the role that religion plays in any society and in any political system. Religion is a source of power, and as such can function as a social bond, as a source of misunderstanding, as a source of isolation or exclusion, and probably as many other things as well. But individuals transcend those systems, and are endowed with the ability to remold and reshape them. It is only thanks to this realization that I have been able to make lifelong friends here in Menton. By changing my own orientation towards religion, I have forged relationships that go beyond misunderstandings and that surpass exclusion. In short, I cannot convey how truly happy it makes me to now know my former neighbors as my good friends.
Religion proved to be a prominent aspect of life in Menton as soon as I arrived in mid-September. I lived in the student dorms, across a small street from one of the beautiful beaches that partition the rocky coast, with about 17 other male students of French and Arab origins. More than half of them were Muslim and in the midst of fasting for Ramadan. It was a fascinating and eye-opening experience to see the faith of some of my peers manifested so concretely in our shared living quarters. Some students, my neighbors, woke early to eat and pray before sunrise. At sundown, making the iftar meal to break the daylong fast took place in the common kitchen and dining area. Islam thus became a normal part of my daily environment, and I marveled as one of its five pillars constructed a tangible sense of community around me. On Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, I was even able to participate in making and eating the main meal with about 30 of my Muslim peers.
At first, I questioned my participation in the religious holiday for fear of being insensitive, even intrusive. Because not only was I the only non-Muslim partaking in the symbolic festivities, but I had also eaten incessantly rather than fasted piously for the preceding 30 days. But when I was welcomed and included with incredible warmth, my doubts were dismissed as superfluous. My Muslim friends loved sharing their traditions with me, they said, and were so glad I would join. Seated among students from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Bahrain, France, Palestine, and Algeria, I found it amazing the extent to which Islam unites the incredibly gigantic and diverse Muslim world. In my mind, I juxtaposed the differing and sometimes divisive ideas within Islam itself with the diversity I saw around me at that table, and I began to see an emerging distinction between belief systems and people. While their doctrines may clash, these friends did not. In this instance, religion existed as a positive and cohesive force begetting inclusion, camaraderie, and understanding.
Nevertheless, the sociocultural plurality I was immersed in did not always succeed in sharing space so agreeably. That same night, Eid part two was to continue alongside the long awaited and highly controversial France versus England rugby semi-final match. When the non-Muslim students began drinking alcohol, a practice not uncommon for 18- to 20-year-old Europeans, there ensued the first real cultural and religious faux pas of the school year. Immediately, the historically defended but recently challenged French separation of public and private life came sharply into question. The strong French secular tradition clashed with the open acknowledgement of the Islamic holiday. But whose beliefs drew which lines, and where? And in the absence of any authoritative figure, who was to decide? In a way, this tense situation accentuated the larger issue of how divergent and seemingly mutually exclusive communities might go about sharing space: both physical space like the TV room, and theoretical space such as identity, nationality, citizenship, or religion. It was thus in two different ways of enjoying a Saturday evening, somewhere in between the Moroccan tea and the Heineken, that I witnessed religion as a force of intense miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Besides influencing common areas and group interaction, religion reached further into my abroad experience, this time onto a personal level. Essentially, one aspect of my identity was contrary to the individual values of some of my neighbors, causing their personal beliefs to make me feel isolated from my new community. Otherwise said, homosexuality is rarely accepted in Islamic communities. So being gay in my new home and academic environment felt very much like being back in the closet. Now, without too much deviation, I must say that I personally reject the premise of a closet altogether. So for me to be back inside a metaphorical entity that I don't believe should exist in the first place means that something had quite a powerful effect on me. At first, I labeled this force religion. I even went so far as to see religion as somewhat of a threat, pushing me back into a place that was uncomfortable and alienating. For quite some time, I had a hard time opening up to the individuals living around me, unable to rectify them with their beliefs.
Taking a few steps back, I now realize that it was not religion driving this process, but the collective force of preconceptions in general; it is these preconceptions that have a huge effect on all members of a community, whether they are based on religious conviction or not. I too carried my own presuppositions about the beliefs of my neighbors and anticipated a certain reaction from them in response to my identity. The assumptions I imposed on them were an ultimately inaccurate generalization based on the beliefs of certain groups of Muslims. I have since come to realize that belief systems are not monolithic entities, and that they never work in just one direction. If I felt like religion somehow excluded me from my community, it was because I too ignored the necessity to separate religious doctrine from individual belief. Overall, it was a challenge trying to flourish in a context where I found myself suddenly relocated from the realm of halal to haram. But in the end, I realized that the intersection of religion and identity is never such a simple dichotomy.
Albeit somewhat personal, I recount this last experience because to leave it out would be to overlook a very influential part of my abroad experience, one that illustrated very clearly to me just how far religion can reach. Given a particular environment, one individual's belief system can intimately influence another individual's reality. Ideas and norms are powerful devices, and subscribing to them is a source of power in society. It is for this reason that distinctions must be made.
Regardless of whatever domain religion occupies and influences, I cannot emphasize more the importance of distinguishing between overarching belief systems and individuals. To overlook that task is to misunderstand the role that religion plays in any society and in any political system. Religion is a source of power, and as such can function as a social bond, as a source of misunderstanding, as a source of isolation or exclusion, and probably as many other things as well. But individuals transcend those systems, and are endowed with the ability to remold and reshape them. It is only thanks to this realization that I have been able to make lifelong friends here in Menton. By changing my own orientation towards religion, I have forged relationships that go beyond misunderstandings and that surpass exclusion. In short, I cannot convey how truly happy it makes me to now know my former neighbors as my good friends.
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