French Muslims Express Concern as Far-Right Candidate Nears Election

"During the week following the first round, three patients called me to say they were looking to leave. Several friends are also in this state of mind," Fatma Bouvet de la Maisonneuve, a psychiatrist at the Sainte-Anne hospital in Paris and author of the book ’An Arab in France’, told the newspaper La Croix. The rise of the far right is worrying many French people, especially those of the Muslim faith. "Eleven million people voted for Zemmour or Marine Le Pen: that means these people, we can meet them on the metro, they are among our neighbors, our colleagues," she points out.

This is not the first time that an anxious climate has settled in the country and pushed French Muslims to leave. "For my husband and me, this anxious climate goes back to the terms of Nicolas Sarkozy. While waiting for the outcome of this election, we are looking at the price of rentals in Canada. I’ve already stayed there and, over there, I was really recognized as a French citizen," says Leïla T., a mixed-race woman of Algerian father and French mother, non-practicing.

This 47-year-old Parisian gallery owner fears a rise in racism if Marine Le Pen becomes President of the French Republic. "I was born in Versailles. I live in the center of Paris. Having a little money whitens you a bit, but it doesn’t prevent you from hearing horrors about your account, like those neighbors we heard say: ’Those people have no business being here.’ If Marine Le Pen passes, we’re leaving."