Beyond Emancipation and Oppression: Post-Secular Intersectionality and the Muslim Woman in the French Republic

This paper critically interrogates the French model of secularism (laïcité) and its implications for Muslim women’s rights in contemporary France, particularly within post-colonial and post-secular contexts. It explores how historical legacies of colonial governance continue to inform current regulatory frameworks around religious expression, especially regarding the wearing of Islamic veils in public institutions. While laïcité is officially presented as a principle of neutrality and universalism, its practical enforcement often targets Muslim women, functioning as a mechanism of exclusion that conflates religiosity with political threat. Drawing on intersectional feminist theory and recent debates on post-secularism, the paper examines how dominant feminist movements in France have struggled to incorporate the lived experiences and agency of pious Muslim women, frequently aligning with state-led narratives that instrumentalises gender equality in service of national identity and securitisation. Drawing upon the concept of intersectional post-secularity as discussed in recent scholarship, this article offers a new contextualised framework from within the French system of laïcité for analysing how secular governance, feminist discourse, and colonial legacies converge to regulate Muslim women’s visibility and subjectivity. This approach moves beyond binaries of secularism versus religion and emancipation versus subjugation, offering new insights into the entangled politics of faith, gender, and national identity. Ultimately, the paper calls for feminist and civic discourse that upholds democratic inclusivity, accommodates religious diversity, and resists the racialised governance of Muslim women’s bodies in the name of laïcité.