Jean-Pierre Filiu- Saturday, December 06, 2008
The Daily Star-Lebanon
Those who believe in the "clash of civilizations" also claim that Islam cannot flourish in the West without creating a threat there. However, such talk falls on deaf ears in France, where Islam has been present since the Middle Ages, albeit in very small numbers initially.
The Algerian conquest in 1830 and the French protectorates over Morocco and Tunisia conferred a distinctly North African tone to Islam in France. And it was to pay tribute to the sacrifice of tens of thousands of Muslim soldiers during World War I that the French Republic decided in 1922 to build the Great Mosque in the heart of Paris.
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