UU150 Study Guide - Final Guide: Anders Behring Breivik, Secularism
Western Secularism and the
Integration of Muslim Immigrants
In the final pages of the chapter, the authors
discuss Western Secularism in France. Here,
Robbins, Cummings, and McGarry described the
lead-up and fall-out of the Charlie Hebdo incident
in 2015 as a means to understand the interplay
between competing worldviews (and outsider
perspectives of these worldviews), namely,
religious and national practices and beliefs. Many
pundits in the Western world have identified this
event as a terrorist attack and likened it to other
(select) attacks in Europe (notably not Norway’s
terrorist attack where Anders Behring Breivik – a
right wing extremist – killed 77 people). In short,
this event has impacted the ways in which ordinary
citizens think about their national identity and
culture and the ways in which they treat Muslims
born and raised and/or living in France.
As pointed out by Fernando (2015), “rather than
uncritically reaffim(ing) French national identity
and wring(ing) our hands about Muslims’ refusal to
integrate, we should use this moment of reflection
to understand the various ways in which Muslims
are consistently excluded from the [French]
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