A new survey reveals the extent of discrimination and racism targeting Muslims in France, with 82 percent of respondents believing that hatred towards them is widespread in the country and 81 percent saying it has increased over the past decade.
Conducted by polling company Ifop among a representative sample of a thousand Muslims living in the country, the survey published on Tuesday was commissioned by the recently launched Observatory of Discrimination Against Muslims in France.
It shows that two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents have experienced racist behaviour in the past five years – a rate far higher than among the French population as a whole (20 percent) and people from other religions (18 percent).
Racist acts are more frequent towards women wearing the hijab (75 percent), people under 25 (76 percent), Muslims with a strong accent (over 81 percent) or with sub-Saharan origin (84 percent).
Furthermore, two out of three Muslims living in France say they have already been victims of some form of religious discrimination.
This happens mostly during a job search (51 percent), police checks (51 percent) and when they look for housing (46 percent).
Even public services, which are “supposed to embody state neutrality”, according to Ifop, are places of “normalised discrimination”.
According to the study, 36 percent of respondents say they have been victims of discrimination by public administration officials, healthcare professionals (29 percent) or school teachers (38 percent).
Discrimination can be aggravated by factors such as having a strong accent, living in a disadvantaged neighbourhood, being young or wearing the hijab.
These figures are three or four times higher than for followers of other religions.
Following the results, Chems-Eddine Hafiz, the rector of Paris Grand Mosque, which commissioned the survey, called for a “response to Muslimophobia”.
The term is seen as “more appropriate to describe forms of hostility towards Muslims, as it refers to the rejection of Muslims as individuals and not to opposition to Islam as an ideological-religious corpus”.
“The fight against Muslimophobia is not a community demand. It is a matter of national security and republican cohesion,” Hafiz said.
“Because a Republic that allows such inequality to flourish among its citizens betrays its very foundations.”
‘Collective anxiety’
Francois Kraus, director of the Politics and Current Affairs Division at Ifop, explained that “while it is difficult to measure the exact role of religion in these discriminatory phenomena, the intersectionality of Islamophobic discrimination is quite clear”.
“Muslimophobia structures the social experience of French Muslims in all areas of their lives. This generates collective anxiety,” he added.
According to the survey, one in two Muslims (51 percent) say they are afraid of being attacked because of their religion, with 66 percent of veiled women harbouring this fear.
In the future, 75 percent of them fear a rise in hatred towards all Muslims living in France, while 64 percent are wary of restrictions to their religious freedoms.
The figure reaches 81 percent for veiled women, as the country has taken several measures to ban the hijab and other garments perceived as Islamic in a range of situations, from school to sports.
Anti-Muslim acts have increased significantly in recent years in France, where between five and six million Muslims live, making it the country’s second biggest religion.
In July, the interior ministry noted a 75 percent rise in anti-Muslim acts between January and May 2025 compared to 2024.
To fight the phenomenon, the Paris Grand Mosque, in collaboration with Ifop, has established the Observatory of Discrimination Against Muslims in France. Its mission is to measure racism and discrimination suffered by Muslims in the country “in a more comprehensive manner than simple complaints or testimonies collected by NGOs or law enforcement”.
While the majority of racist acts are underreported in the country, according to the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, this is particularly the case for anti-Muslim acts.
According to the survey, only two out of three Muslims would consider filing a complaint with law enforcement in cases of discrimination.
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Source: MEE
