Introduction
For decades, Western Europe has pursued a policy of multicultural integration, hoping that immigrant communities, Muslims in particular, would gradually adopt European norms while enriching national culture. Yet the experience of France, as examined in John R. Bowen’s Can Islam Be French?, shows that the opposite has often occurred. Rather than assimilating, many Muslims maintain a strong religious identity that resists secularization and views Europe not merely as a host society but as a space in which Islam should take root and expand.
As Pat Buchanan argues in The Death of the West, mass migration from culturally and religiously distinct regions combined with low native birth rates has set the stage for a demographic and cultural transformation. In this context, integration is not just failing; it is often being replaced by the creation of parallel societies with their own laws, customs, and priorities.
France’s Colonial Legacy and the Islamic Presence
Bowen’s Chapter Two, “Fashioning the French Islamic Landscape,” traces the historical roots of Islam in France to the colonial era. France’s control over Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia created large-scale migration flows that shaped the country’s Muslim population. Algerians, in particular, arrived in large numbers both during and after colonization, first as laborers for France’s industrial needs, then as political refugees and economic migrants after the Algerian War from 1954 to 1962. By the mid-1970s, Moroccans and Tunisians had also established sizable communities, joined later by Turks, Senegalese, and Malians.
By 2004-2005, France had 4.9 million foreign-born residents, with over 1.5 million from North Africa alone. Despite being born or raised in France, many in these communities still identified themselves primarily as Algerian, Moroccan, or Tunisian rather than French. This is not a casual cultural preference; it reflects a deep attachment to Islamic identity over civic identity.
The French Model of Integration Meets Resistance
France, with its staunchly secular constitution, sought to create a French Islam aligned with Republican values, an Islam of personal faith rather than public institution. The goal was to make Islam orient itself toward Paris rather than Riyadh or Algiers. In theory, this meant accepting mosques and private devotion but avoiding transnational religious authority or foreign-trained imams.
In practice, however, as Bowen documents, demands for public expressions of Islam grew. By 2003, over 1,600 mosques and prayer rooms had been constructed; people began to wear headscarves, slaughter animals for Eid, and established religious facilities in schools and workplaces. Algerian, Moroccan, and Turkish national-origin groups competed for influence over Islamic institutions, while radical factions utilized this infrastructure to recruit and mobilize. As of 2025, France is home to approximately 2,600 mosques and prayer rooms, reflecting a significant increase from the 8 mosques reported in 1975 . This growth underscores the expanding Muslim population in the country. In this context, Pat Buchanan’s warning in his book, The Death of the West, resonates strongly. Immigration without assimilation produces not cultural blending but cultural replacement. If host societies are unwilling or unable to enforce their own norms, parallel communities will expand, each with its own laws, symbols, and loyalties.
Real-Life Example Muslim Identity and Mission in Europe
During my research in the Netherlands, I met young Muslims who had never lived anywhere else yet spoke passionately about their role in carrying Islam’s message forward. The idea of the Ummah, a worldwide community bound by faith, seemed to shape their identity even more deeply than the Dutch culture in which they had grown up. A few even envisioned a future in which Europe would increasingly reflect Islamic values, a vision that many in Western societies might not fully expect or understand.
This firsthand experience confirms the broader patterns Bowen and Buchanan describe. For many Muslims in Europe, their religious and cultural identity remains stronger than any national affiliation. Rather than fully integrating, they often see themselves as part of a global mission, which complicates the notion of a shared civic identity.
Bowen’s account makes clear that the challenge is not simply prejudice or discrimination, though these exist. A more profound problem lies in conflicting visions of identiMany Muslims in France view themselves primarily as Muslims, part of a global ummah with obligations that transcend national borders, rather than as future French citizens who also happen to be Muslim.
This explains why integration policies repeatedly stall. As Buchanan notes, when a migrant community has a strong birth rate, a shared transnational identity, and a religious mission, the host society, not the newcomers, faces the greater pressure to adapt. The result is a slow but steady shift in the cultural and political character of the nation.
France’s attempts to regulate Islam through monitoring, deportations of extremists, and strict secular laws have only partially contained these shifts. The reality is that Islamic identity supersedes French civic identity, making deep integration unlikely without significant cultural concessions from the French state, concessions that would further erode secularism.
Conclusion
The question Bowen poses, can Islam be French, may already have its answer in the lived reality of France’s Muslim communities. For many, the priority is not to blend into the secular French Republic but to preserve and expand a distinct religious identity.
Buchanan’s warning applies. Without assimilation, immigration becomes a vector for transformation, not of the migrant, but of the host society. France’s example shows that integration is not simply a matter of policy design; it is a question of competing loyalties, demographic momentum, and the willingness of both sides to prioritize a shared national identity.
The evidence suggests that many Muslims in Europe do not seek to dissolve their religious mission into the civic fabric of the nation-state. Instead, they bring that mission with them, reshaping the cultural landscape in ways that make full integration not just difficult but improbable.
Muslim Population in Europe by 2016 on Map.
