The study of imams and the imamate in the Sunni tradition is a very recent phenomenon.The imamate has emerged as a space of negotiating authority, be it religious, political, or both. It has become a sign that shows the crises of governing authorities, and thus the space where they are reclaimed differently. This paper argues that the position of the European imam is being nationalized and consequently rendered more dependent on both religious scholarship and political authority where his functions take place for the transmission of an ethicist message. Three major features distinguish this position of the European Imam: 1) it is dependent on religious scholarship, and does not stand as an independent authority; 2) it is also under the sovereignty and interests of the political regime within whose institutions and territories it functions; and 3) its major message, and thus authority, is its direct contact with the community of believers to which it transmits an ethicist religious discourse. This contention is illustrated in three major steps. First, after a preliminary note on defining the imamate, this article briefly overviews the crisis of modern Islamic religious authority and its impacts in Europe; it situates the place of the imamate in Islamic scholarship to demonstrate that it (the imamate) is not an independent scholarly position but more of an administration of the religious affairs of the community of believers at the local level. Second, the article presents the Moroccan imamate model as a way of understanding the role that is expected of imams – by modern political and religious authorities. Third, reference is made to the situation of the French imamate according to recent anthropological-sociological studies to support the first two points above, and to endorse the overall argument of the paper.