John Tolan:
"The great merit of Davidson's work is that it puts French debates about Islam, and French policy concerning Islam, into historical perspective, clearly showing that current debates are not new, but are variants of issues that have been prevalent for a century."
""Only Muslim is a brilliant...book. In itNaomi Davidson offers a compelling new explanation for one of the knottiest problems confronted by historians of colonial and postcolonial France: the conflation of racialethnicreligiousand national identities that underpins the seeming paradox of "anti-Muslim racism" against North Africans and prevents the French state from recognizing its Muslim subjects as full citizens...Scholars will certainly be grappling with the big arguments of Only Muslim for a long time to come."—Jennifer Sessions"
Ian Coller, La Trobe University:
"This fascinating and important book is a timely historical intervention in the debate on secularism and Islam in France. Naomi Davidson's meticulous research helps to restore the Muslim dimension of France’s recent history, offering a compelling insight into more than a century of state attempts to create an Islam français, not only in North Africa but also in the metropole. It will be required reading for students of modern France and its politics of secularization, and will raise even greater interest in the context of the changes now sweeping through the Muslim world."
Citation by the 2013 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize Committee, French Colonial Historical Society:
"Naomi Davidson's account of how many in France came to see Islam in a particular way, and how that vision determined attitudes and actions toward Muslims, is well researched, convincingly argued, and engagingly written.... In one of the book’s most valuable contributions, Davidson helps us see clearly the limits of laïcité as an explanation for France’s past and ongoing difficulties in reconciling what she calls 'Muslimness’ with republican citizenship and membership in the French national community."
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service ProfessorThe University of Chicago, author of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference:
"Naomi Davidson's book is an exemplary study of postcolonial Europe. Her well-researched, nuanced account of institutions and images—in particular the problematic idea of Islam français and the raced figure of the Algerian Muslim—that influenced French strategies for dealing with diverse Muslim immigrants and anticolonial movements of the twentieth century, enriches our understanding of what still troubles the French vision of laïcité. This book belongs equally to the two fields of modern European history and postcolonial studies."
""This well-researched book presents a richly documented institutional history of Islam in 20th century France with particular reference to the buildings in which that history has taken material form. In addition to according a central role to the best-known of those buildings — the Grande Mosquée de Paris, inagurated in 1926 — Davidson's narrative provides a wealth of information on the construction adn management of other Islamic sites both in the French capital and in the provinces. " —Alec G. Hargreaves,Contemporary French Civilization"
S. Parvez Manzoor:
"This is... a historical narrative, academically stringent and intellectually resonant, that has a point to make and consequently follows a particular line of reasoning.... What it delivers is a revealing and telling portrait of the French polity, its colonial past, its contemporary tensions and the impasse of its laïcist ideology."
Todd Shepard, The Johns Hopkins University, author of The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France:
"Analyses of the ways that race and empire shaped modern Europe are rewriting how we think about universalism, citizenship, modernity, and the nation-state. Yet the failure of this vibrant discussion to think astutely about how Islam fits in this new history has become ever more glaring. This landmark book will make all the difference. Naomi Davidson shows how the French Republic invented a 'French Islam,' which found anchor in built spaces, invested ‘Muslim’ bodies, and invaded the French imagination. This lucid and incisive history brings clarity to pressing questions about immigration, Arabs, the Mediterranean, secularism/laïcité, and European identities."
Joan Wallach Scott, Harold F. Linder Professor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, author of The Politics of the Veil:
"In Only Muslim, Naomi Davidson provides a new perspective on the place of Islam and Muslim immigrants in French history. One of the remarkable aspects of this outstanding book is its ability to make the dry stuff of bureaucratic archives come alive. With Davidson's astute readings, it becomes the material for an engaging, illuminating story."
