French Muslim presence traces to Algeria’s 1830-1962 colonial conquest

Evidence

The French term “Islamophobie” first appeared in print in a 1910 book entitled La Politique Musalmane dans l’Afrique Occidentale Francoise. In that book, the author criticized the anti-Muslim views of France’s colonial administrators working in former Muslim-majority colonies such as Benin, The Gambia, and Senegal in western Africa. “Islamophobie” was also used in a biography on the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that was completed in 1916 by another Frenchman named Alphonse Etienne Dinet. The author dedicated his book to the brave Muslim soldiers in the French army who died in battle during World War I. — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 484 (#expands, via linked claim)

As for France, if at every hand in Algeria one could detect the roots, and pattern, of the war of 1954–62, so too in a similar fashion did the civil war between Algerians of the 1990s soon overflow across the Mediterranean. In 1995 and 1996 feuding between rival clans of the GIA brought terrorism to the Paris Metro, killing and wounding over eighty persons. Supposedly aimed at dissuading the French from backing the repression of the Algiers government, in what could have been a hideous preview of 9/11, an Air France plane hijacked, pointedly, on Christmas Eve, 1994, was evidently programmed to be flown suicidally into the Eiffel Tower. The problem of immigration became an ever hotter issue for any French government to handle, as carnage in Algeria—on top of overpopulation—persuaded increasing numbers of Algerians to seek refuge, and employment, in France. In the winter of 2005–6, outbursts of rage in the overcrowded banlieues, with their substandard housing, gave the lie to the Gaullist notion that, with the end of the war in 1962, France could wash its hands of the “Algerian Problem.” Now there are over five million of Algerian extraction living in France. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 46 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: The Algerian War’s aftermath migrated with émigrés into France’s banlieues; Thousands of French urban poor were deported to colonize Algeria between 1848 and 1851; Cooperation between settlers and Muslims could have preserved a European future in Algeria — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1672 (+7 more)

Related

• The Algerian War’s aftermath migrated with émigrés into France’s banlieues (similarity 0.86)
• French Islamophobia is shaped by Islamic conquest history resting at the present’s doorstep. (similarity 0.86)
• Islamophobia began as colonial administrators’ anti-Muslim views across French west Africa (similarity 0.86)
• Le Pen’s anti-Muslim rhetoric tapped Algerian War post-colonial resentments (similarity 0.84)
• French Islamophobia predates the War on Terror and traces to Algerian colonialism (similarity 0.84)
• French colonial rule of Algeria from 1830 to 1962 produced France’s present-day Islamophobia (similarity 0.84)
• French colonial justice policy tried to stop Islam’s spread by grouping Africans by ethnicity (similarity 0.83)
• Algeria’s civil war terrorism carried the conflict into France itself (similarity 0.82)
• Postwar Europe’s Muslim population traced to French and British colonial ties (similarity 0.80)
• France feared a shift from Arabisation to Islamisation of minorities (similarity 0.80)
• France’s large Muslim population results directly from its colonial empire (similarity 0.80)
• The Algerian War was anticolonial, not religious, yet seeded later jihad (similarity 0.80)
• France’s geographic proximity to Muslim lands makes its Islamophobia more layered (similarity 0.79)
• French colonial propaganda falsely depicted pre-conquest Algeria as anarchic (similarity 0.79)
• Fear of extremist propaganda drove colonial surveillance expansion in French West Africa (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Islamophobia began as colonial administrators’ anti-Muslim views across French west Africa #expands (0.35) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 484
• Algeria’s civil war terrorism carried the conflict into France itself #expands (0.30) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 46