ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Islam is staged in French public museums. Among the many French institutions dedicated to Islam, the analysis focuses on two case studies: the Louvre museum and the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, each of which is representative of a dominant approach to how Islam is displayed in France. As the analysis shows, the treatment of Islam in French museums is caught between two parallel and competing imaginaries. On the one hand, Islam is staged through the masterpieces of Muslim civilisation, understood primarily as a long gone and distant political and cultural entity, and only marginally as a religious reality. The Louvre embodies this first model. The Institut du Monde Arabe, by contrast, embodies a model in which many facets of Islam are exhibited, especially the religious. Represented in such displays in its past and contemporary forms, through objects from the Arabian Peninsula and testimonies from the French Muslims, Islam is depicted as a ‘cool’ religion and community. As the chapter shows, the French State oscillates between these two models of cultural management of Muslim otherness. Analysing this in detail contributes to a better understanding of equivocations at the heart of French politics and society more widely.
