This article reviews the development of research on Islam in France in the context of renewed political and intellectual interest in Muslim societies. It examines the limits of older orientalist approaches, the emergence of new social-science perspectives, and the diversification of themes and institutions devoted to the study of Islam. The paper also provides an extensive annex identifying research centers, journals, and ongoing theses, thereby mapping the French scholarly landscape on the subject around the turn of the 1980s. It argues for more empirically grounded and methodologically plural approaches to the study of Islam and Muslim societies.
Mohamed Tozy (Sun,) studied this question.