ABSTRACT
Jean Bauberot’s starting point is to observe that laicite has been used primarily as a means to problematise Muslim religious practices and to resist their public visibility, and as a constitutional and ideological justification for restrictive legislative responses. For Bauberot, ‘republican fundamentalism’ refers largely to the appropriation of the republican idiom, in France, by right-wing political forces bent on manipulating concepts of liberty, equality, fraternity – and indeed, increasingly, of laicite – to support increasingly illiberal and xenophobic policies. The ‘liberal’ laicite is given expression mainly as a principle of state neutrality, preventing the establishment or endowment of religions while protecting religious liberty and equality. French law relating to religions is dominated by a single, overarching doctrine – laicite, which can be roughly, although not uncontroversially, translated as ‘constitutional secularism’. Within France itself and sometimes overseas, laicite is often understood as a French specificity.
