Bowen asks not the usual question--how well are Muslims integrating in France?--but, rather, how do French Muslims think about Islam? In particular, Bowen examines how French Muslims are fashioning new Islamic institutions and developing new ways of reasoning and teaching. He looks at some of the quite distinct ways in which mosques have connected with broader social and political forces, how Islamic educational entrepreneurs have fashioned niches for new forms of schooling, and how major Islamic public actors have set out a specifically French approach to religious norms. --from publisher description

Islam and the republic -- Fashioning the French Islamic landscape -- Mosques facing outward -- Shaping knowledge to France -- Differntiating schools -- Can an Islamic school be republican? -- Should there be an Islam for Europe? -- Negotiating across realms of justification -- Islamic spheres in republican space.