The Bastille Day massacre on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice in 2016 is the latest high-profile incident to renew perceptions of increasing radicalism among young Muslims in France. Ten years after the Parisian banlieue riots, political leaders and the news media continue to warn of the danger of a separatist interpretation of Islam nurtured by disaffected, marginalized youth who have ‘failed to integrate’ into mainstream society. Even as the data show that the majority of French Muslims are native-born French citizens and have strong attachments to French national identity (Maxwell and Bleich, 2014: 156), the media focus on Islam as an ‘immigrant’ issue. Islam is seen as incompatible with the European way of life and is thus excluded from the majority's body politic of white, Christian Frenchmen, a position reinforced by France's particular universalist national identity. Moreover, European Muslims are subject to racialization, whereby characteristics of their personhood such as belief, ethnicity, and class are assigned racial meanings and are transformed into ‘fixed species of otherness’, as Paul Silverstein states (2005: 366). In this way, the French mainstream is fixated on the figure of the Muslim as a locus of anxiety for national identity, which is less about religion and more about a perceived threat to racial purity and homogeneity. While the term ‘Islamophobia’ is often used to refer to the discrimination against Muslims and their religious practices, it does not fully address the racial character of such stigmatization. At this critical juncture, then, confronting the discrimination against Muslims in France requires analysis of how religion is perceived within the context of race.

As the dominant form of cultural expression in the banlieues, hip-hop has been an important site of identity negotiations for minority youth in France, which represents the second world market for hip-hop. Muslim artists use the heavily mediatized and commercial platform of popular music to counteract dominant media discourses surrounding Islamic cultural practices, Muslims in France, and global events such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rap permits a timely reading on social issues in France, as rappers respond in their music to current local and global events, intervening in public debates, directly addressing politicians and leaders, and bringing alternative perspectives to the forefront.