This is an exceptional book that addresses a timely debate about an extremely important topic: Muslim integration in Western societies. The authors make two core contributions. The first is to the social scientific and empirical study of Muslim integration in Europe, and the second is to policy debates addressing the “discriminatory equilibrium” that exists between the French and their Muslim population.

The first part of the book is enormously successful. To control for confounders and eliminate concerns about endogeneity, Claire Adida, David Laitin, and Marie-Anne Valfort quite ingeniously identify a group of immigrants (Senegalese) who vary by religion (Muslim and Christian) but share many similar features. The authors then conduct their own surveys, interviews, experiments, lab games, and focus groups to ascertain whether there is a uniquely Muslim discriminatory trend in France. They confirm through their meticulous approach that, indeed, such discrimination exists.

What is most impressive about this first part is its careful and cutting-edge empirical work: amassing original data, implementing well-designed experiments, and paying attention to difficult identification challenges when examining the effects of homeland influences on immigrant integration. The authors should also be commended for stepping up to better understand the difficult subject of discrimination, a topic that has garnered much attention yet is still poorly understood. Adida, Laitin, and Valfort effectively raise the bar on research on immigration to Europe. And they should be very proud of the product they have produced.

The book’s second contribution is also noteworthy. Upon convincingly providing evidence that discrimination does exist toward Muslims in France, the authors turn to addressing policy recommendations. And while not everyone will agree with the policy diagnosis or its prescriptions, the authors should be credited for engaging in vital normative debates that have far-reaching consequences on Western societies. This is not an easy subject to tackle. It is complicated, complex, and quite challenging on many fronts.

The authors are troubled by the current “discriminatory equilibrium” that exists in France. Yet in their efforts to offer helpful policy prescriptions, one cannot help but wonder whether their analysis about the underlying problems withstands closer scrutiny. Let me start with the title of the book, Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies. This title is quite fatalistic, suggesting that Muslim integration is invariably doomed. However, there are examples of integration, even as measured by the authors themselves, and the empirical evidence from other Christian-heritage societies, like the United States, that does not add up. Second, France (champion of laïcité policies) is used as a case representative of Christian-heritage societies, which some might find problematic.

From the outset of the sections that deal with these normative issues, there appears to be a tension, and the authors oscillate back and forth about it throughout the book. To insert themselves in a normative policy debate, they attempt to gain a better understanding of the sources underlying French discrimination. This is an important analytical goal, especially if the policy prescriptions are to gain traction. Yet in undertaking this very challenging task, the language the authors use to explain French discrimination is, unfortunately, rather legitimating of it. The authors use terminology like “rational” versus “nonrational” discrimination, and “statistical-based” versus “nonstatistical–based” discrimination. Although common in the economics literature on discrimination, the assignment of social science terminology of “rationality” and “statistics” to better explain discrimination is a bit unsettling for any reader concerned with these normative debates. Further, the book presents very little robust empirical work to disentangle whether “statistical” discrimination is indeed a “rational” response to Muslims. Do French Muslims truly possess a bundle of undesirable qualities that makes hiring them unattractive? Or are these attributed “undesirable qualities” instead an artifact of prejudicial portrayals that poorly represent Muslims to begin with?

Chapters 6 and 7 spend ample time determining whether discrimination against Muslims in the labor market might be statistically or rationally determined–that is, if discrimination is rational because the presence of Muslims leads to economic inefficiencies. There are three primary economic reasons that might prove costly to French employers. First, Muslims possess inegalitarian gender norms that carry over into the labor market and workplace. Second, Muslim religious practices, like fasting and praying, might produce inefficiencies. And the third factor is the language barrier between immigrants and the French. Additionally, in Chapter 7 we also learn that “even if French recruiters considered Muslim candidates as strictly identical to Christian candidates in terms of productive characteristics, they would still discriminate against Muslims, out of pure distaste” (p. 105; emphasis added). Thus, the authors conclude that in France, a discriminatory equilibrium exists that must be “nudged.”

Although the authors spent almost six chapters proving the point that Muslims are indeed discriminated against because they are Muslim, and that this discrimination does not appear to be justified by Muslim practice or norms, Chapter 8 starts diagnosing the problem of discrimination by assigning blame to both sides: “We find that both Muslims and rooted French jointly bear the responsibility for Muslims’ integration failure in France” (p. 108). What is the Muslim contribution to this failure? The authors go on to say that “Muslims display characteristics that leave room for statistical discrimination [while the] rooted French exhibit unprovoked taste-based discrimination against Muslims” (p. 105). It would have been fascinating to explore which social and political processes lead certain characteristics—like religiosity or views about gender—to become salient in the first place, especially since they were much less politicized in the first few decades of Muslim settlement in France. This fact in turn suggests that what appears to be rational statistical discrimination at the individual level is at least partly founded on collective political processes that construct a distorted presentation of minority groups.

Framing the diagnosis along these lines, then, sets the stage for policy prescriptions that may not capture the essence of the problem. First of all, the authors speak of integration failure because the French are discriminatory and racist against Muslims. This is not a failure of integration as such. This is a failure of French society to deal with the integration of its minority communities. To be fair to the authors, however, they spend considerable time discussing ways to reverse French discriminatory and racist practices and norms.

Second, if indeed these “stereotypical” criteria outlined in the book are legitimately the sources of statistical discrimination—language, religious practice, and gender norms—then we should not be in an age and time where Islamophobia is at an all-time high across most Western societies. Yes, Muslims in Muslim-majority countries tend to have more inegalitarian gender attitudes than other groups worldwide, as do European Muslims when compared to European non-Muslims, but if that concern was a major factor, the authors should not find so much French discrimination against Muslim women! Moreover, the survey results in the book that examine the attitudes of first-generation Muslims against second-generation Muslims in Europe and the United States (pp. 137 and 144) illustrate that gender norms are rapidly improving across generations. In fact, the Pew Survey of Muslims Americans in 2011 shows that second-generation Muslim Americans are more likely to mirror mainstream Americans on attitudes on gender equality than are Muslims from majority Muslim countries.^{Footnote 1} So, if anything, these results show remarkable success and assimilation, not integration failures.^{Footnote 2}

On other social issues we see a similar story. I provide an example from the Pew National Surveys that have now surveyed Muslim Americans for more than a decade (2007, 2011, 2017). Concerning Muslim American attitudes towards the acceptability of homosexuality, only 27% of the US Muslim public believed that homosexuality was acceptable in 2007. By 2011, that number had reached 39% and by 2017 it had almost doubled from 2007 to 52% (The US public sits at 63% in 2017). It shows a remarkable change in attitudes toward the acceptability of homosexuality among the Muslim American community in only a decade. Similarly, the second and third generations are just as fluent in English as are the mainstream publics.

Table 1

Pew survey results of muslim american attitudes

Source: “US Muslims Concerned About Their Place in Society, but Continue to Believe in the American Dream.” http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2017/07/09105631/U.S.-MUSLIMS-FULL-REPORT-with-population-update-v2.pdf.

The second and third generation of Muslims in France remain quite devout in their practice, however. In this regard, Muslim prayers and Muslim fasting can pose inefficiencies in the labor market. But even the authors point out that prayer is not so time-consuming. After all, numerous French non-Muslim workers take breaks to smoke and drink coffee (and the fact that devout Muslims do not drink or take drugs should, if anything, be a plus from an efficiency perspective). Further, the Ramadan fast might result in inefficiencies due to fatigue. But even the most vocal firm manager in the book complains about a 10%–15% reduction in productivity (for the month of Ramadan) in a firm with a large concentration of Muslims (though, arguably, Muslims provide cheaper labor and, hence, better profit margins).

In offering recommendations, the authors take a bold and commendable position maintaining that this discriminatory equilibrium must be challenged in France at the individual level, the meso level, and the state level. And while the policy recommendations disproportionately focus on how the French might address their own Islamophobia, the authors also have advice to Muslims. There are two ways to read this advice. On the one hand, because the discrimination is so irrational, how might Muslims protect themselves? On the other hand, given that Muslims are disliked for some of these “statistical” reasons like religious practice, it is best that Muslims do not provoke the French.

This difference is not about semantics but has actual implications for how we think about this debate. The first approach suggests that Muslims are outright victims of a discourse that is stacked against them for no other reason than that they belong to a group whose religious background has been politicized in the last several decades. The latter suggests that Muslims warrant some of this discrimination because of what they think, believe, and practice. Therefore, Muslims have to consistently prove that they are not “those” types of Muslims. They must subject their leaders to adequate “training” and “socialization” so that they are more like the French. But in suggesting these solutions, are we reinforcing exaggerated and hysterical stereotypes that underlie the problem to begin with? In other words, should the burden be on Muslims to constantly prove that they are not a) terrorists, b) fundamentalists, c) women haters, and/or d) religious fanatics?

Thus, the authors’ suggestion that if Muslims did not have Muslim identifying names, this cycle of discrimination could perhaps be broken is questionable at best. Does the solution lie with Muslims to deny who they are in order to be accepted? And what does this mean for the way we think about discrimination and racialization in Western societies? The authors show that those French who interacted with Muslims (through speed-chatting games) maintained (albeit milder) prejudice against Muslims. Thus, a Muslim can change her name from Ayesha to Emily or his name from Mohammad to Mike. However, is concealment of identity markers a practical solution when the French will continue to dislike Muslims because of the way they “encounter” Muslims and Islam? The prism of suspicion and difference, and not interaction and acceptance, shapes this debate. In my opinion, trying to make Muslim identity invisible privileges and reinforces, rather than challenges, the discriminatory equilibrium.