Paper short abstract:

Develops the notion of Peripheral Traditional as an alternative public reason from the fringes of Marseille and in the overlap between North African Jewish and Muslim philosophies of life and help

Paper long abstract:

Through the synagogue-come-community space of St-X in Marseille’s infamous peripheral northern districts, local urban communication and solidarity is generated via self-help initiatives that particularize humanitarianism. Because of their traditionalist Jewish and Muslim religious anchorings and the stranglehold of laïcité over the state and organized religion, post migrant North African life and shared experience in these districts are either coopted into the liberal realm of interfaith by the centre or pushed out as illiberal and dangerous because they live by other grammars of public reason. To analyse this reason and its attendant self-help, I draw on the writings of Maimonides originating from the field i.e. present in the discourse of interlocutors as a Judeoislamic philosophical and praxical touchstone that I have termed peripheral traditionalism.