France built the Grand Mosque of Paris a century ago to honor Muslim soldiers from its colonies who fought in the First World War, and the Latin Quarter monument now serves as a place of prayer, a tourist attraction and an unresolved argument about who belongs to the nation that commissioned it. [1]

Its 33-meter minaret, tea room and hammam make an agreeable postcard, but the less decorative history includes both the colonial troops whose sacrifice France memorialized and imam Abdelkader Mesli, who sheltered Jews and provided false papers during the Nazi occupation before being deported, according to rector Chems-eddine Hafiz. [1]

Hafiz describes the institution as a symbol of diversity and interfaith dialogue while warning that hostility toward Muslims persists before a 2027 presidential campaign in which the far-right National Rally has targeted Islam and immigration, while one volunteer criticized restrictions on Muslim headscarves and another worshipper described the mosque as open to Muslims and tourists. [1]

Those voices matter because they restore daily citizenship to a building often reduced to architecture or campaign scenery, but they do not constitute a national poll, and neither one rector nor one volunteer, worshipper or Friday congregation can speak for every French Muslim.

No verified X post was recovered, yet the centenary's sharper question survives without one: whether France can remember Muslim soldiers as part of its past while treating Muslim worshippers as part of its present.

-- CHARLES ASHFORD, London