Imams in France

This chapter is based on the findings of a doctoral study I conducted in France (Jouanneau, 2009a), in which I investigated how imams have progressively established themselves as one of the main embodiments of Islamic authority under the dual impetus of Muslim communities and state authorities – particularly at the local level. Imams, who lead the main rites of the daily prayers and the Friday congregational prayers in French mosques, interact with a wide range of actors: the faithful, leaders of Muslim associations, consulates of their countries of origin, local politicians, and agents of the central French authorities.

In my doctoral research, I explored why imams play a much more central role in France than they do in countries where Islam is both the state and majority religion (Frégosi, 2004, p. 137). This required retracing the socio-historical stages of their changing role(s) to identify the processes that have allowed imams to emerge as a distinct type of ‘organic intellectuals of migration’ in French places of worship. It also sheds light on the influence of civil servants in redefining the imamate in France. Indeed, civil servants have gradually made imams the objects of public policies, as they saw them as an ‘immigrant clergy’ that could have some authority over immigrants and their descendants.

I used a range of methods combining ethnographic and socio-historic approaches to conduct this research over a six-year period. In the early years, I carried out fieldwork in several Muslim prayer rooms in Eastern and Southern France to collect accounts of the life stories and practices of around 30 imams.