PARIS - Mahmoud Bourassi speaks softly about tolerance here, about the need for his country to respect his religion and for people of his faith to remember that beyond being Muslim they are also French.
To many of his countrymen, though, Bourassi is someone they should fear. They see him as a terrorist in the making, if not a terrorist already, a young man moving toward a brand of religious extremism responsible for everything from the sexual mutilation of thousands of French Muslim girls to deadly attacks on Western targets around the world.
Their evidence: his age and his attention to Islam. He is 28. He prays five times a day. He does not drink alcohol. He is mildly political. His mother covers her head with a scarf.
"There is no conflict in being French and Muslim at the same time, in my view," Bourassi said. "I'm French in my way of speaking, in my sense of humor, and I look at the world through French eyes.
"But a lot of French don't want to see me as French. They want me invisible, and if they see me as Muslim, they associate that with violence, terrorism and hate."
The government and Muslim leaders agree on at least one thing: The number of real fundamentalists is growing.
"There is no question, fundamentalism is growing everywhere, and, of course, we see it more and more in France," says Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, a researcher at the prestigious Institute of Political Science and a Paris immigration attorney who advises the government on how to integrate Muslims into French society.
"All of this can lead to violence," she says. "It already has."
In her view, and that of the government, the threat of violence born of religious extremism is here, now, and growing - in the Muslim ghettos that ring Paris and Lyon, in the underground mosques within walking distance of the Louvre.
France is home to about 5 million Muslims - 8 percent of the population - and their numbers are increasing quickly. People such as Bourassi are being tarred as potential terrorists, and more young Muslim men, increasingly feeling isolated, are in turn listening to prayer leaders who talk of the evils of the West.
As one way to protect itself against religious extremism, the French government is clamping down on religious symbolism. This month the French parliament approved a ban on head scarves in public schools; its passage into law is expected this spring.
