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For the first time in history, a European country now has some six million Muslims, making up 10 PERCENT OF THE FRENCH POPULATION. Of that number some three million are French citizens. These statistics would place France as 15th out of the 56 countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
This represents a sociological sea-change, both within the Muslim culture and without it in
France. And increasingly, France is showing its new face. Today, approximately some 400,000 French are practicing Muslims. But they suffer from stereotypes in the media. Much of the time, they are inaccurately associated with fundamentalist Islam, and described as being
incompetent, and lesser French than other cultures and religions. A Muslim name makes it
hard to get a good job, to find housing outside Muslim ghettoes, or a place in a good school or
university. Yet the practice of Islam does not mean these French Muslims are withdrawing from French society. Like citizens of other religions, such as Christian and Jewish, most French Muslims believe in the values of the Republic.
Some portraits from a going on work
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