In France, Islamophobia is a plague that long preceded the War on Terror. A plague that befell on Muslim women first, as the disproportionate victims, then spread onward. A plague spawned and spread by a "Muslim world" that sits at the continental footstep of Europe. Where French colonialism in African and Arab nations pulled the immigrants concentrated in the banlieues into the belly of France, and the imperial conquest of Algeria that lasted from 1830 to 1962 formed a colonial bridge that Ibtissam's parents crossed into the Paris streets that saw them as imperial subjects, not citizens, the same way France sees their children and grandchildren.

DEFINE: Frames French Islamophobia as rooted in colonial history rather than post-9/11 geopolitics. XREF: Connects to broader postcolonial theory on how imperial relationships shape metropolitan attitudes toward migrants.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 723