ABSTRACT
Within French social sciences, the dialectic relationship between religiosity and criminality, ignored for a long time, has now become an object of a perceptual inversion. Considered as an important factor in inhibiting criminal activity until late 1960’s, a person’s religiosity is now viewed, inversely, as a reason that could facilitate the adoption of deviant behavior. Both crime and religion (Islam in particular) are now perceived as fully negative spheres of practice. However, beyond these simplistic representations and based on qualitative research, we analyse the mechanisms through which religion, irrespective of the particular faith, can play a role in stopping or drastically reducing criminal activity at the individual level. It turns to the subjective experiences in a person’s biography by placing the religious exit from delinquency in its structural context, in other words by accounting for the social position of and resources and opportunities available to the research participants
