Wolfreys documents modern flashpoints between the French state and Muslims through their 'provocative' acts of public religiosity over the last thirty years beginning with the "Headscarf Affair" of 1989. State intervention in the sartorial choices of female Muslims continued with the prohibition of hijabs in public schools in 2005, and in 2011, it outlawed the niqab (the full face-veil) in public places. 

A temporary 'Burkini ban' in beaches came into force in 2016 because these acts were said to violate the French tradition of secularism - laïcité, a quasi-sacred value that purports to separate state and church. In practice, laïcité gives racism a respectable veneer and simultaneously subjects Muslims to unique scrutiny and tacitly demands their invisibility.

The overarching argument of the book crystallises into the fact that Islamophobia and xenophobia have been used by state actors and supported by an increasingly populist media. Anti-Muslim animus has been embedded within the dominant culture through writers and attention-seeking 'neo-reactionary' intellectuals  such as Alain Finkielkraut, Éric Zemmour  and billionaires like Élisabeth Badinter and Vincent Bolloré, who are regularly given  public platforms to discharge their prejudice.

Badinter, for instance, in 2016 declared that "We should not be afraid of being cast as Islamophobes." A similarly prejudicial comment about Judaism is unlikely to have been made today in a nation that has a comparably troubled history with its Jewish population.

Though originally instrumentalised by the far-right Front National, Islamophobia has proved to be an election winning strategy for parties across the political spectrum. A tactic that former President Nicolas Sarkozy applied numerous times during his tenure and who went as far as stating that "we have too many foreigners" - a cruelly ironic claim  given that he himself is the son of a Hungarian immigrant.

This observation explains why Macron, presently besieged by the extent of his unpopularity, is mimicking the Front National's position on Islam. Wolfreys observes that the rising popularity of right-wing sentiment is further normalised by a deepening political crisis in which Muslims and other minorities are scapegoated for economic problems such as structural unemployment and widening social inequalities rather than then the poor policy decisions made by successive governments. 

This also distracts from a deeper problem of the crisis of French identity and the decline of its global influence. 

The author also chides the French Left for practicing its own forms of Islamophobia and recalls the attempt by the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anticapitalist Party) to propose a hijab-wearing candidate in 2010; Ilham Moussaïd withdrew after she encountered as much opposition from the Left as she did from the political mainstream.