Max and Allah. The French Alternative Left towards Islam, from May 1968 to September 11th 2001

Islam has fuelled for several decades fierce debates within French contemporary politics. The specificities of the latter (militant secularism or "laicite," republican culture, "color-blind" approach on ethno-cultural issues) could partially explain this level of intensity. Within the French political spectrum, alternative left-wing forces (defined here as being the movements acting outside mainstream left-leaning and left-wing organizations) have been considered as being less hostile towards Islam. This article, based on archives, publications, platforms and reviews of this political sensibility, and using an interdisciplinary approach (history, political science) aims at studying how this fringe of French politics has interacted with this religion (defined here as the muslim population living in France). The study begins in 1968, a period which has experienced a surge of activities and visibility of the French alternative Left, and ends with the terrorist attacks of September 2001 on the American soil. It focused on the multiple and changing responses proposed by those specific sectors of the French political left on the issue of Islam. The variety of its sub-political cultures and the number of organizations involved have favoured an apparently important diversity of reactions, debates, theories and militant practices. On the same time, they have progressively replaced the figure of 'migrant worker" by the denomination of "muslim,"a change at odds with the traditional marxist priority given to social classes and socio-economic mechanisms. Nevertheless, these diversity and evolution could not hide that most of the French alternative left forces have been remarkably constant about Islam since the seventies. Both international crises (Islamic revolution in Iran, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, civil war in Algeria) and domestic events (strikes of the eighties, "hijab affairs" in public schools) seem to have contributed to the sedimentation of these positions rather than creating them.