The French state has excluded and exploited Muslims for decades. The intensity of this assault varies, but the jihadist attacks in Paris in January and November of last year, and in Nice and Rouen in 2016, have sent it to fever pitch.
Of the 3,500 raids conducted since the start of that period, only six have led to investigations. In December, authorities in Eure et Loire admitted that they were targeting Muslims on a purely “preventive” basis, without any specific evidence against them. [...]
In pursuing these policies, French politicians have knowingly ignored the fact that long-standing and state-sponsored Islamophobia, combined with military activity in Muslim countries, has only encouraged extremism. The political classes have refused to recognize how their economic and social policies fuel the alienation that drives people to join groups like ISIS. [...]
In fact, many Muslims supported the Popular Front government in the 1930s. Today, Muslims still hold progressive views on most social questions (social welfare, redistribution, racism, and xenophobia) and are a left-of-center voting bloc. [...]
In 1982, Islam came to the forefront of French political life in the context of strikes against mass redundancies in the car industry. Immigrant workers initiated a major industrial conflict when they occupied the Citroën and Talbot factories in Aulnay and Poissy, more or less with the unions’ backing.
The factory owners believed the immigrant workers were being manipulated by unions, and pressed for police intervention and their employees’ expulsion.
This marked the first time the word “Muslim” entered public discourse as a standard label for a segment of the population, replacing class-based descriptors. Its emergence is sometimes seen as concomitant with the arrival of neoliberal political ideas in France.
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