Prayers of Purification Among Muslim Women in France

This paper will focus on the relationship between religious practice and health and education among Salafist Muslim women in France. Based on participant observation conducted among Salafist women in the working-class urban periphery of Lyon, it asks how their approaches to health and education have changed as they have become further estranged from French public institutions such as hospitals and schools. It argues that for this commnity, religious study serves as an important substitute for secular education as well as health/healing. In the political context of state attacks on Islamic practices and increased community interest in home-schooling, Quranic study steps in as a form of self-protection from racism, anti-Islam sentiment, and state intrusion in the domains of religious practice and in education.