What is Islam's true place in France?

And why that's a question the French government will never solve

A mosque in Marseille, France.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier)

"How can one be Persian?" So asks a worldly and skeptical Parisian, assured of the universality of French values, in Baron de Montesquieu's 18th century novel, The Persian Letters. The joke is that the Parisian poses the question to a Persian who, dressed like a Frenchman, she takes for one of her own. The question, which raised smiles 300 years ago, now raises fears in France. How, indeed, can one be Persian — or, more broadly, Muslim — in France today? The country's future depends on all parties — secularists and believers, Muslims and Catholics, socialists and conservatives — getting the right answer.

The succession of massacres committed on French soil, stretching from the 2012 murder spree at a Jewish school in Toulouse to last month's execution of a priest in a church near Rouen — nearly all of them by homegrown jihadists who identify with the Islamic State — have spurred intense political debate over the place of Islam in France. Inevitably, the question is almost always tied to the issue of immigration. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right-wing Front National, has demanded that France take back control of its borders from the European Union, show "zero tolerance" for illegal immigration, and dramatically reduce the flow of legal immigration into the country. Unlike Donald Trump, Le Pen has not explicitly aimed her immigration proposals at Muslims; but like her American counterpart, she does not need to. Le Pen has variously described French Muslims as an "occupying" or "invading" force, and likened Muslim immigrants to "bacteria" endangering the nation's health.

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Robert Zaretsky

Robert Zaretsky teaches courses in modern European intellectual and cultural history at the Honors College of The University of Houston. He is the author of several books, including Albert Camus: Elements of a Life (Cornell University Press, 2010) and Camus: A Life Worth Living (Harvard University Press, 2013.) He is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times, Jewish Daily Forward, Los Angeles Review of Books and Chronicle of Higher Education.