In the contemporary context of French society in which the diversity is increasingly visible, as the cornerstone of its construction of nation and nation-state, the French republicanism is facing a series of challenges that cannot be ignored, especially a series of extremely acute conflicts involving ethnic and religious issues, while the latter constitute an important window to observe the many challenges that are facing the construction of the nation-community and the governance of the nation-state in Western countries.
In France, the reasons for the continued deterioration of its ethnic and religious issues are, of course, based on many historical and realistic factors, but the fundamental reason lies in the conflicts between some dominant conceptions and their values under the French republicanism and the plural reality of the contemporary French society. These ideas have shaped the French society into distortions and contradictions at multiple levels, mainly concentrated on the Muslim group and presented in the form of conflicts closely related to ethnic and religious issues. In the historical construction of the French nation-state, the concept of “civic nation”(nation civique) continued to exclude the concept of “ethnic nation” (nation ethnique), which makes many ethnic minorities in contemporary French society, including Muslims, face the predicament of identity and continues to trigger conflicts related to ethnic groups; nowadays, the principle of secularity (laïcité) is gradually deconstructed by many religious practices, that in turn leads to the secularism crisis, which further triggers the conflicts between Muslims and the native French society. The above two basic conceptions and the many conflicts behind them have profoundly affected the tone of the evolution of contemporary French ethnic and religious issues, and made its nation-state identity face great challenges.
