From colonial symbol to sanctuary: Paris’s Grand Mosque turns 100

Tucked away in the heart of the Latin Quarter neighbourhood, the Grand Mosque of Paris is one of the city’s essential landmarks. Inaugurated on July 15, 1926 by former French president Gaston Doumergue and Moulay Youssef, Morocco’s sultan at the time, the mosque was built as a tribute to the more than 100,000 Muslim soldiers who fought and died for France during World War I.

The Mosque‘s Hispano-Moorish architecture boasts a 33-metre-high minaret, courtyards and interior gardens inspired by Arab-Andalusian palaces and porticoes embellished with tiles hand-carved by Moroccan craftsmen in 1922. A jewel of Islamic architecture in France, the Grand Mosque of Paris has been listed as a historic monument since 1983.

This place of worship – now also a major tourist attraction – has evolved with history, as evidenced by the collaborative work published for the centenary: “La Grande Mosquée de Paris, Regards sur 100 ans en 100 événements” (The Great Mosque of Paris, Views on 100 years in 100 events). This book, edited by Mosque rector Chems-eddine Hafizn, offers photos and archival documents for a journey through time.

The iconic house of worship hides a lesser-known history between its walls. Over the years, the mosque became a major geopolitical asset for France – first as a way to exert control over Muslims in France during the colonial era, then during the Algerian War and later as a safehouse for Jews being persecuted under German occupation.

French historian Benjamin Stora has spent his career studying Algeria and France’s colonial past. While carrying out research on Algerian immigration and the relationship between Jewish and Muslim communities in France, he unearthed hidden truths about Paris’s Grand Mosque.

FRANCE 24: What did the Algerian community in France first think of the plan to build the Grand Mosque in Paris?

Benjamin Stora: There were very few places of worship for Muslims in Paris after World War I, and the Grand Mosque took time to be built.

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Opposition to the construction project began as early as 1922 and intensified upon its inauguration in 1926, a period that coincided with the founding of the North African Star (“Étoile Nord-Africaine” in French), the first Algerian pro-independence organisation led by Messali Hadj, who is often regarded as the father of Algerian nationalism. For the early Algerian nationalists, the mosque was seen as a tool through which the French authorities sought to counter the rise of Algerian nationalism.

Algerian immigrant workers in France were also wary of the institution, fearing it would be used to monitor, influence, or co-opt them. Over time, however, many gradually developed closer ties with the place of worship.

Did French authorities initially want to use the building to monitor Paris’s Muslim population?

At first, yes, of course. Around 100,000 Algerian workers of mostly Kabyle [a Berber ethnic group indigenous to the north of the country who mostly live in the Atlas mountains] origin arrived in France between 1919 and 1939. Many institutions were built as a way to monitor and control this population, including the Grand Mosque. There was also the Franco-Muslim Institute and the Franco-Muslim Hospital in Bobigny (a northeastern suburb of Paris). Surveillance was carried out by the North African Indigenous Affairs Department, built in 1925 and run by the Parisian police headquarters.

Because so much of the French colonial empire stretched across Muslim-majority countries, France had a lot of influence at the time. In the interwar period, the Grand Mosque was a way for France to exert that influence on the Muslim world. But it also let France project an image of tolerance toward Muslims and Islam. That ambivalence persisted throughout World War II and the Algerian War, which took place between 1954 and 1962.

Did surveillance intensify during the Algerian War?

Algerians were radically dispossessed of their land, which drove many peasants to leave the country. It’s impossible to understand Algerian immigration without addressing this fundamental fact, especially for those of Kabyle origin.

Once in France, Algerian immigrants were forced to weather widespread segregation and lived in slums throughout the 1950s.

Read moreFrench ‘counter-monument’ holds up a mirror to ghosts of colonial Algeria

Surveillance in France indeed intensified during the Algerian war. It was enforced through a whole range of social and charitable organisations. The Social Action Fund, for example, was founded in 1958 and aimed at providing housing for migrant workers living in slums, but it was also used to monitor them.  

Were Muslims wary when they visited the Grand Mosque?

Yes, and it took time for that mistrust to ease. Before the Grand Mosque, Muslims in Paris often held Friday prayers in private places like cafés or hotels. The mosque was one of only a few places they could pray, and it was the only visible one. Over time, it drew in more and more worshippers, but it took nearly 40 years for it to become a well-known landmark.

Is it true that, under German occupation, the Grand Mosque was a safe haven for Jews?

French officials, judges and police officers collaborated from the beginning of the German occupation during World War II. There are photos of German army officials visiting the Grand Mosque, but they would often pose in front of institutions.

From around 1942 onwards, especially after the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup (a mass arrest of Jews in Paris by French Vichy police officers), the mosque’s rector Si Kaddour Benghabrit began issuing fake Muslim IDs to Jewish children. The Jewish-Algerian singer Salim Halali, whose real first name was Simon, also took shelter in the mosque during the Occupation.

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Yet there are some critics who claim that never happened…

It’s a shame that there is controversy around this moment in the mosque’s history. There is irrefutable evidence, such as eyewitness accounts, and I myself gathered testimonials in 2010. It’s of course impossible to quantify just how many Jews were helped, but it definitely happened.

Some people are so bent on destroying any possibility of a friendly relationship between Jewish and Muslim communities that they want to erase this chapter in history. That erasure really saddens me.

Jews and Muslims lived together for 1,500 years. It wasn’t hell, nor was it paradise, but they did coexist. Maimonides, one of the most important Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages, wrote in Arabic. Jewish prayer books were written in Arabic. Now we are in the process of destroying all of that history. It’s important to try and preserve the places serving as bridges between religious communities.  

The mosque has been repeatedly attacked by the right and far right in France. Why is this?

Since its construction, the Grand Mosque has been targeted by the far right. The very idea of building a mosque in Paris was hard to accept. The far right, nationalist and royalist political movement Action Française (French Action) wanted to block its inauguration. Violent campaigns and intense hostility from the far right persisted for years.

The mosque may be an undeniable part of France’s cultural and architectural heritage now, but it still gets caught in political crosshairs. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau refused to attend the Iftar meal marking the end of Ramadan in 2025 following the imprisonment of writer Boualem Sansal in Algeria. And the mosque’s current rector Chems-eddine Hafiz is constantly criticised, attacked and vilified. He faced accusations of opacity in how the mosque carried out an exclusive mandate – granted by Algeria in 2023 – to certify halal products across the EU. The attacks targeting him are in reality targeting Algeria.

Read moreThe diplomatic gamble that freed French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal

There are also tensions between Algeria and Morocco around Paris’s Grand Mosque. Algeria has been accused of taking control of the site.

Morocco’s sultan may have initially headed the project, but Algeria gradually gained influence through its large population in France and the ripple effects its independence in 1962. Moroccans only began arriving in large numbers from the 1960s onwards. It’s just a matter of history.

This article has been translated from the original in French by Lara Bullens.