Community leaders attempt to deflect the stigma of the “angry” and “disorderly” Muslim by participating in local politics. In the wake of urban unrest affecting disadvantaged neighborhoods in France, Muslim leaders of the UOIF have leveraged their community influence to facilitate the integration of migrant-origin populations and keep these neighborhoods quiet. This chapter sheds light on their politics during episodes of social turmoil, such as the 2001 unrest in Lille and the 2005 riots throughout France. Beyond times of crisis, their role as social troubleshooters is reflected in the dissemination of an ethos of responsibility. Through various activities, including charitable assistance, professional insertion, and campaigns against drugs, these Muslim leaders partially converge with public authorities about the need to preserve order in “sensitive neighborhoods.” In ways reminiscent of Black middle-class reformers in the early twentieth-century US, UOIF leaders promote the uplift ideology that values self-reliance, discipline, and hard work. They seek to transform young urban worshippers into moral subjects, committed to avoiding the dishonorable pitfalls of idleness and incivility. However, positioning themselves as social troubleshooters is costly as these leaders unwittingly reproduce the dominant representations of migrants’ neighborhoods as problematic and, consequently, tend to divert attention from the structural causes of marginalization.

Muslim leaders of the UOIF further cement their claim to respectability through an elite project of community-building. This project consists of forming a respectable class of Muslims who embody the petit bourgeois values of hard work, politeness, and individual responsibility. This is concretely enacted through various institutions, starting with private Muslim schools, and implemented through a range of regular activities, such as reading groups, diploma ceremonies, and self-development workshops. This chapter draws on comparisons made with Black elites in the US and upper-class Jews in nineteenth-century Europe to show that French Muslim leaders’ uplift ideology is also scripted into bodies. Physical exercise, hygienic practices, and appropriate outfits comprise the primary medium of perfectionist politics seeking dignity. These politics are articulated using the language of Islamic virtues – the centrality of education is predicated upon the Quranic injunction iqrāʾ (“read”), the search for professional accomplishment is understood as a duty of iḥsān (excellence), and the importance of behavioral exemplarity is reasoned in reference to ādāb (good manners) and akhlāq (ethical conduct). These moral principles, however, are also consistent with neoliberal definitions of social worth and rely on the continuous erection of boundaries against lower-class, “undeserving” coreligionists.