7 - Radical Right, Liberals, and Muslims in France

Summary

This chapter focuses on how the radical right and strict secularists in France exploited the international context to execute their policy preferences concerning the Muslim minority. The radical right and strict secularists utilized rising Islamophobia in Europe to restrict the public manifestation of Islamic religious symbols. By using anti-Islamic discourse, these domestic actors portrayed Islamic activism and Islamic religious symbols as a threat to French secularism and republicanism, and they built a broad coalition, which included conservatives and socialists, to ban Muslim religious symbols in the public sphere.