To them, French Algeria was a brutal colonial regime that treated Algerians as second-class citizens. The party’s political ideas take advantage of the same kinds of divides over group identity and history that the monument has ignited in town. The party promotes a particular kind of French identity, one it says is based on French values as well as French citizenship, but which is implicitly white and Christian. And it fosters a sense of a divided, threatened group identity — a French “us,” distinct from the immigrant “them.”NETH. The Fréjus mosque is a gleaming white building with carved wooden doors, in a poor neighborhood on the edge of town.

Source: New York Times April 20, 2017 20:15 UTC