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This essay seeks to analyze the recent reconfigurations of French nationalism, taking as an entry point the legal treatment of veiled Muslim women and prostitutes over the past two decades. [...]

The deeply held feeling of national identity among the people of France and the current trend of prejudice against Muslims and immigrant communities are discussed.

The structure of authority in French Islam based on Bourdieu's field concept, and the different types of relations between authorities and French-born Muslims that the authority being the Mosque is discussed. In the cultural capital in the post migratory Muslim field of France there is increased competition between Muslim actors in their relation to the state and believers.

The three petition which consider the compelling of the Muslim subject as secular or cultural as a new identity that ruptures French political designations and normative designations by Muslims regarding the meaning of Islam and Muslims is discussed. The secular Muslim that is a product of a historically induced and repetitive, performance of historical presentness of France's relations to its colonies that can be seen between emerging colonies is shown.

Although many accounts of transnational religious movements emphasize mobility and communication, equally important are efforts by both political actors and religious leaders to carve out distinctive national forms of religion. In this article I examine dilemmas faced by Muslims in France who seek both to remain part of the global Muslim community and to satisfy French demands for conformity to political and cultural norms. I consider the history of immigration and the importance of French notions of laicite but emphasize the structural problem of articulating a global religious field onto a self-consciously bounded French nation-state. I then draw on recent fieldwork in Paris to analyze two recent public events in which attempts by Muslim public intellectuals to develop an 'Islam of France' are frustrated by internal, structural tensions concerning religious authority and political legitimacy, and not simply by a conflict between 'Muslims' and 'France.' [Keywords: Islam, France, transnational movements, politics, religion]