Between the Banlieues and the Quran: A French Muslim’s Search for Home
France told me Islam was the problem. My neighbourhood told me France was the enemy. I refused both stories.
In the banlieues of Lyon, you learn early that you exist in a contradiction. You are French on your passport and Arab in everyone’s eyes. You are told to integrate, then reminded daily that you don’t belong.
My parents came from Algeria in the 1980s. They worked factory jobs. They learned French. They paid taxes. They did everything right. And still, every time the news showed a bombing or an attack, my mother would hold her breath and pray: “Please, not a Muslim name.”
School was where the fracture was sharpest. In 2004, France banned hijab in schools. My sister Amina was fifteen. She loved maths. She loved her headscarf. She was told she could keep one. She chose the scarf and transferred to a private school that cost money we didn’t have.
I went the other direction. I stopped praying at 16. I wanted to prove I could be French — fully, undeniably French. I drank wine at parties. I laughed at jokes about Arabs. I dated a girl named Claire whose parents looked relieved that I “wasn’t like the others.”
It worked, in a way. I got into Sciences Po. I wore blazers. I spoke perfect, accentless French. But there was a hollowness that no achievement could fill.
The return was gradual. A professor assigned us Said’s “Orientalism” and something cracked open. I started reading Muslim thinkers — not just religious scholars, but Malik Bennabi, Tariq Ramadan, Abdennour Bidar. Muslims who were intellectuals. Muslims who thought deeply about being European and faithful simultaneously.
I prayed again for the first time in six years during the 2020 lockdown. Alone in my Lyon apartment. I didn’t cry. I just felt... relief. Like putting down something I didn’t realise I’d been carrying.
I’m 29 now. I work in urban policy. I pray five times a day. I speak French, Arabic, and the language of the in-between. I’ve stopped trying to convince France that I belong. I know I do. And I’ve stopped apologising for the Quran on my shelf next to Camus.
My sister Amina is now a maths teacher. She still wears hijab. She teaches in the same banlieue we grew up in. Her students look at her and see proof that you don’t have to choose. That’s worth more than any policy paper I’ll ever write.