First moment: the inventory. Manent takes note of the disagreement between, on the one hand, a Western opinion for which society is the organization and guarantee of individual rights, and, on the other, a Muslim opinion (the author is not unaware of the multiplicity components of this opinion, but tries to identify what binds Muslims together, beyond their differences) for whom it is the set of customs, ultimately based on religious law, which provides the concrete rule of life Good.

How to arrange a political solution to this disagreement? Many in France believe that it already exists: it is the ambition of French secularism. Can't we imagine that what she accomplished yesterday with Catholicism, she is in the process of doing with Muslim mores? So, "Muslims would exercise in the future, as a private subjective right, the behavior that until then they had held by obedience to the objective and quasi-obligatory rule of morals". For Manent, this hope placed in the future transfiguration of Islam by secularism is the great illusion that closes our eyes to present reality. Because secularism does not have the power that is attributed to it. It made it possible to “neutralize the religious dimension of the State”, but “it did not religiously neutralize French society, which remained a Christian-branded society”. Muslims being, until recently, kept out of this adventure – they only participated in our history, Manent sadly admits, as subordinate workers – it is too late to ask them the same accomplishment.

It is here, second moment, that Manent proposes a true social contract with the Moslem citizens which would make them enter the City. The terms would be as follows: we renounce to transform your mores, whether it is a question of the veil, of your food, of the relations between the sexes; we open our public space to your mosques. In short, Islam is welcomed as a collective social fact in the nation. Apart from the integral veil and polygamy, which call into question the very foundations of civic participation and friendship, “our regime must yield and frankly accept your morals, writes Manent , since you are our fellow citizens”. In return, you must accept total freedom of criticism and thought relating to your religion – freedom of thought being the beating heart of European consciousness – and you must take your political, economic and cultural independence with the Islamic countries, and break definitively with the imperial dream of the ummah which inhabits the Muslim conscience. “Muslims must receive their place as Muslims. This formula, coming from a liberal Catholic philosopher, is surprising. Despite all the objections that can be made to it, it has the merit of reshuffling the cards of the problem.

About the author: Pierre Manent

Pierre Manent was director of studies at the EHESS. A founding member of the review Commentaire, he has published numerous works, including: The City of Man (1994), The Reason of Nations (2006), The Metamorphoses of the City (2010) and Montaigne. Life Without Law (2014)