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Ian Coller – “The French Revolution and the Rights of Muslims” Monday, April 23rd at 5:00pm in the UCEN Flying A Studio
April 23, 2018 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
The French Revolution and the Rights of Muslims
Ian Coller, University of California, Irvine
On 24 December 1789, a deputy named François de Hell proposed to the National Assembly an explicit decree that would allow Muslims to enjoy “all the rights, honors and advantages enjoyed by French citizens.”Coller Flyer
Some historians have read this proposition as no more than a feint to appear universalist while seeking to exclude other religious minorities—and Jews in particular— from the enjoyment of equal rights. On the assumption that there were no Muslims in France in this period, they concluded that such a proposal could have no independent content.
This paper will suggest that the question of Muslim rights was both substantive and significant in terms of the direction of the Revolution. It responded to a longer tradition of reciprocal rights guaranteed by treaties between France and the Ottoman Empire. Already during the 1770s and 1780s Muslims in France were beginning to assert these rights. Yet the rights they claimed were not equal rights as citizens, but differentiated rights as subjects.
In this sense, then, rather than an empty gesture of universalism, Hell’s proposal was in fact a concrete attempt to institute unequal rights. By offering Muslims equivalent rights, but as Muslims, rather than as citizens, Hell was drawing on the existing precedents to establish differentiated categories—which could offer Jews “rights” as second-class citizens.
Instead, the Assembly voted to abolish the impediments to non-Catholic participation, while retaining the temporary suspension of a decision regarding Jews. In September 1791, when the disqualification of Jews was fully lifted, the precedent of Muslims was cited in support. In the years that followed, this conception of Muslims as citizens would become a key contention of those claiming the Revolution was an affront against Christianity and the Church. It would also set the scene for further struggles over just what role Muslims might play in the Revolution.