Having visited Paris twice before, I thought I knew what to expect from the City of Love this time around. Sure enough, my wife, our Egyptian friends and I discovered even more sides to the French capital’s urbane splendour.
We tried a sublime lobster roll from the city’s latest Instagrammable hole in the wall, Homer, and discovered the delights of dipping into a crêperie on Rue Mouffetard, or sampling Parisian chocolatier’s hot cocoa, on a crisp winter’s evening. Meanwhile, Le Casanova in Vitry-sur-Seine introduced us to real brasserie food away from the Paris’ touristic centre.
And, sorry, Lisbon – which has its own fair share of excellent jazz clubs – but nowhere plays Django Reinhardt like the legendary guitarist’s own hometown. Le Piano Vache on the Rive Gauche made extra standing room for us to enjoy perhaps the best jazz set I’ve seen anywhere.
Speaking of which, forget Montmartre, with its thousands of Emily in Paris fans flooding the streets once frequented by Renoir, Rimbaud and Picasso and other great artistic and literary figures, none the wiser. Butte-aux-Cailles, another hilltop neighbourhood just south of the Seine with an equally quaint, bohemian vibe, is the perfect place for a morning coffee (preferably with one Lorette’s pastries), or an evening stroll by lamplight. In short, Paris is still a special place to visit, with an infinite array of wonders to be found there.
Paris has one of Europe’s largest population of Muslims
Greater Paris is also home to at least 1.2 million Muslims, around 10 percent of its demographic, and among the largest Muslim populations of any metropolitan area outside the Arab world. Muslim and Arab Parisians were conspicuously part of the fabric of the city almost everywhere we went, from fast food vendors in Le Marais to supermarket and cafe owners in Saint-Denis.
It made us feel that we would be welcome in Paris, regardless of the fact that one of our friends happens to wear a hijab covering her hair. It was her first trip to Europe, and she was already self-conscious about her head covering after being asked (illegally) to take it off by a border guard at Madrid airport. But this incident pales in comparison to the ugly situation we faced during our penultimate night in Paris, which made us realize that Muslims aren’t welcome everywhere in France’s capital city.
Unfortunately, stories proliferate about Islamophobia being whipped up in France around Muslim women covering their hair. But we still didn’t expect this to be an issue right in the heart of the country’s cosmopolitan capital, which is visited by tens of thousands of people from around the world on a daily basis.
Refused entry for wearing a headscarf
At the tail end of a night out, we found what felt like the only bar on the Rive Gauche still open to new customers. It was a scenic Parisian coffeehouse overlooked by the Eiffel Tower, which stood at the other end of a tree-lined boulevard.
A waiter at Le Recrutement Cafe greeted my wife and our veiled friend by attempting to stop them from entering his establishment. “We don’t serve hot drinks,” he told them, staring with disdain at our friend’s hijab. What he clearly meant was, “We only serve people who drink alcohol. No Muslims.” Doubling down on his effort to turn them away, he added, “We’re closing in 20 minutes.” The bar stayed open for at least two more hours, welcoming several other groups of new customers after us.
After my wife and her friend insisted that we enter, they raised a complaint with the bar manager about what had happened. Another waiter overheard the complaint and leapt to his colleague’s defence, claiming nonsensically, “We don’t speak English, sorry.” When my wife suggested that maybe they should learn for the sake of their customers, he replied in English, “I speak four languages, but French is the best.”
Then things turned violent ….
We paid up and left the bar as quickly as we could. Just as we did so, the stem of a worn-out wine glass on our table snapped as my wife moved it to pick up her purse. Not wanting to cause a fuss, given how badly we’d been treated, we left the broken glass where it was and quietly departed.
One block down the street, my wife was pushed hard in the back, and turned around to be confronted by several of the bar’s staff, who accused her of breaking the glass on purpose. She calmly insisted she didn’t, and offered to pay for it. Our male friend then moved to stand between her and the group bearing down on us, and one of the staff hit him in the face. To be absolutely clear: our friend is Egyptian, from a Muslim background, and looks unmistakably Arab.
Immediately after this assault took place, we tried calling the police to report it. The Parisian police officer on the phone was dismissive of our claims, particularly when he heard that this was an attack motivated by Islamophobia. An English translator on the call pushed the police to treat the case seriously in accordance with the law, and after repeated requests for help they eventually agreed to come to the bar.
They never showed up, despite us waiting for an hour and a half and calling them repeatedly.
Meanwhile, as we waited outside the bar for the police to do something, the staff continued challenging us to a fight, and the waiter who’d initially refused our entry shouted, “You, who only want hot drinks [i.e. non-drinking Muslims], you are shit! You are garbage! You think the police are coming? They will never come for you! They don’t come for garbage!” The rest of the bar sat and watched with bemusement, before a regular customer brought us a black woman from inside to prove that the place wasn’t racist.
This was in central Paris, in 2025.
It makes me wonder whether there is any city truly safe for a Muslim to be in Europe these days – especially a veiled Muslim woman. Our visit to Paris included plenty of magical moments. But it also taught me a lesson about the different version of Paris, and of Europe, experienced by those who are increasingly subject to the most appalling discrimination, due to the rising tide of anti-Islamic sentiment across the continent.
Alex Beaton
Alex Beaton is a writer from London, UK. His published works include a guide to starting a business in Warsaw, a fictionalised account of his time living in Egypt, and a 2013 report of the political situation in Bulgaria. He has also written extensively about his travels in France, Portugal, Italy and Malta.
