If y’all think France’s Islamaphobia is rooted in an urge for oil and the need for a black sheep like the United States or a fear of losing “culture” and conservative values likes the UK you’re extremely wrong everyone sit down come here it’s history lesson time

So France has a long history with Muslims, dating back literally over a hundred years with the colonization of Algeria. They also colonized other African nations like Senegal, Morocco, Sudan, Gabon, Cameroon, Mali and many others. (These countries ofc aren’t all 100% muslim)

Their are a lot of other nations that felt the terrors of French colonization but we’re focusing really on these and more importantly on Algeria. For almost a century and a half Algeria was colonized by the French.

France’s aim was to recreate a petit France in Africa, they wanted more than anything to reimagine Algeria as their little French province in the desert and the heat. This meant taking on the “white mans burden” of “better” Algeria so that its people can be more “civilized”

Civilization and westernization became synonyms for each other in France as they forced children to give up their cultural beliefs. A popular theory on colonization says that if you can colonize the home you can colonize the nation (read Nancy rose hunt if ur into this theory)

Some people even take it one step further and argue that in order to colonize a nation you have to colonize the woman. This is understood as the body politic. If you can colonize a woman, you colonize the home, and thus you’ve colonized the hearts and minds of generations.

When we talk about Algeria it’s important to note the significance of the Haïk, which is a veil that women use there. It’s both cultural and religious.
If the woman is veiled, then there are two problems for the French.

Problem #1: if women make the nation, and the woman is veiled. Then the nation is veiled. This means that the colonizer is not allowed past what they can see but if the most important builders of a nation cannot be seen, then the nation will never fully belong to the colonizer.

Problem #2: if an entire group of citizens cannot be seen, they are actively choosing to be illegible to the state. The mere choice to wake up and not dress in a western manner was a symbol of resistance.

France creates a crusade built on liberation for the Algerian woman. France began pushing all forms of propaganda against the veil and forced a young girl in highschool, Monique Améziane to unveil in the city center of Constantine pretending it was of her own volition.

The French officials that coerced her into this threatened her with her brothers life. To save her brother she had to pretend that removing her veil was a personal choice, and a sign that she was more “civilized” than her community.

What’s funny, in a very not funny kinda way is Améziane never wore the haik or any kind of veil/hijab to begin with. The French just wanted a show so they could try to persuade the women who DID wear the veil.

The obsession with the veil became France’s downfall. They could only see Algerian women in two lenses.
1) the veiled: built off orientalism she is submissive, passive and backward
2) the évoluée: the one who has evolved; western. Smart, resentful to her “backwards” heritage.

Neither of these women could possibly aid in the revolution against the French right? Wrong!
The haïk was used to smuggle bombs, war plans, guns and grenades at checkpoints, but the French never thought to check the veiled woman. She is both physically and symbolically unseen.

The évoluée led the French to believe she was on their side, so they’d lower their guards around her. The évoluée still faced sexism that the French promised would be gone once the oppression of the veil was gone. She was flirted with and harassed by French officers often.

Fanon wrote “carrying revolvers, grenades ... the unveiled ... woman moved like a fish in western waters. The ... patrols smile to her ... compliment her... no one suspects her suitcases contain the ... pistol that ... will mow down four out of five members of ... the patrols.”

What the veil symbolizes for France is not the fear of the Islam like the rest of the West. It symbolizes the stupidity of their fathers, the racism and orientalism of their mothers and the shame they carried for losing the war against a “backwards” people.

It is the shame they carry at a sad attempt to push their beliefs on people that resisted.
What the French see when they see a hijab, is the hidden citizen that could never belong to them, and what they see by the unveiled North African, is an enemy is disguise.

France’s ban on the veil and their animosity towards Muslims is rooted in the colonial legacy of France’s occupation in muslim countries. While I focused mostly on Algeria, they quickly found they could never truly and completely colonize the Muslim.

If you’re interested in reading more about this lmk I wrote a paper on it Nd I have a million sources that might b useful. Anyways it’s always Nique la France .

ALSO ... not for this thread but ... think abt some of the mistreated groups in France are they not also ... ppl whose ancestors were colonized by the French. The disdain for Africans, Arabs, Asians and West Indians in France ... baby who ruined our countries Nd forced us here?

Anyways see y’all next time when I get angry enough abt something or some misinformation that somehow ends up in me doing a million mile long thread

a few ppl are asking for a bibliography/work cited, heres the one I used for my paper! A lot of these focus on theory of colonization and ofc if u want help accessing these just dm ur email addess and I can send them to u if u can get them from JSTOR or find them online for free