The Daily Lives of Muslims

This book is a European inquiry into “Muslims in daily life” due to the research project of EuroPublicIslam housed at New York’s Columbia University. The author is professor of sociology at the Parisian École des hautes études en sciences sociale. She is well known for two earlier publications, Islam in Europe (2010) and Islam and Secularity (2015). In preparation of the book under review, she identified four main clusters of controversy about Islam: the headscarf, mosque construction, halal food, and Islam’s visual representation. Holding on to these symbols, Muslims − according to Göle − express a sense of identity which clashes with the current end of multiculturalism among prevalent secular norms (p. xxiii). In her opinion, the publicly visible daily lives of Islam disturb the collective imaginary of European countries, which is shaped by the secular values of freedom and a non-religious way of life. In fact, Europe, with its Hellenistic heritage and the influence of the Church, is now living a new wave of secularization after fighting a sexual revolution (pp. 4, 6). Collectivity aside, the author found the phenomena of secularism in France, Leitkultur (culture of reference) in Germany, the rights of sexual minorities in Denmark, multiculturalism in the U.K. and Catholicism in Italy....