> Many French leftists are very ambivalent and often confused about
> Muslims, as are many leftists here and the rest of the EU.
The French left is collectively ambivalent because secularism is, for historical reasons, a core value for them. I don't think it's "Muslims" they're ambivalent about. Championing the rights of Muslims in North Africa against the clash-of-civilizations rhetoric of the Right was *the* defining experience of the postwar French left, like the civil rights movement and Vietnam rolled into one.
Seth