The Grand Mosque of Paris marks its 100th anniversary this year, reviving debate over its political role and its place in French history. Built to honour Muslim soldiers who died in the First World War, the mosque has become a symbol of Islam in France, and a recurring source of political tension.
The Grand Mosque's minaret rises 33 metres above the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank of the French capital. Behind the heavy wooden doors of its green and white Arabo-Andalusian buildings are tiled courtyards, a library, a restaurant, gardens with fountains, even a hammam.
It is one of Paris's most recognisable religious landmarks.
The first stone was laid in 1922 and the mosque was inaugurated in July 1926, in the presence of French president Gaston Doumergue and the sultan of Morocco, Moulay Youssef.
The idea to build the mosque dated back to the mid-19th century and was promoted by French Orientalists, including Louis Massignon, an influential Western expert on Muslim thought. It gained momentum in 1916 and was approved in 1920, after heated debate.
Over four years, 450 craftsmen and artists from the Maghreb helped to build the complex.
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Tribute and backlash
At the time, France ruled a vast empire stretching from the Levant to Africa. During the First World War, 500,000 African soldiers, most of them Muslim, fought under the French flag in mainland France. At the Battle of Verdun, one of the deadliest of the war, 70,000 of them were killed. More than 100,000 died in total.
The mosque, first called the Muslim Institute of the Mosque of Paris, was intended to express national recognition for those Muslim soldiers.
A Muslim section at the city's famed Père Lachaise cemetery had existed, at the request of the Turkish embassy, between 1856 and 1914 – but only during that period.
“When the minaret that you are about to build rises towards the beautiful sky of the Île-de-France, it will add just one more prayer and the Catholic towers of Notre-Dame will not be jealous,” Marshal Hubert Lyautey said in 1922. He was France’s resident general in Morocco until 1925, and later its minister of war.
Edouard Herriot, the mayor of Lyon and a defender of republican secularism, also supported the project.
“If the war sealed Franco-Muslim brotherhood on the battlefields and if more than 100,000 of our subjects and protégés died in the service of a homeland that is now shared, that homeland must make it a point of honour to show its gratitude and remembrance through actions as soon as possible,” he wrote.
However, resistance was strong and the mosque’s construction drew sharp criticism.
“If there is an awakening of Islam, and I do not believe there can be any doubt about it, a trophy of that Quranic faith on this hill of Sainte-Geneviève... represents more than an offence to our past – it is a threat to our future,” said Charles Maurras, leader of the far-right monarchist movement Action Française.
Criticism also came from the left. On the day of the inauguration, the Communist newspaper L’Humanité reported on a meeting organised by North African Star, an Algerian nationalist organisation.
Issuing what it called “an indignant protest against the inauguration parade of the Mosque of Paris”, North African Star said that North African Muslims did not recognise the right of the bey (a traditional North African ruler), the sultan or honorary ministers present to represent them.
Messali Hadj, a pioneer of the Algerian independence movement, called the project a “publicity mosque”, an “oriental cabaret” and “an insult to the spirit of Islam”.
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Colonial power and control
Beyond honouring the war dead, the mosque reflected France’s ambition to present itself as a Muslim power in Europe at a time of rivalry between empires. It also allowed authorities to keep watch over colonial subjects living in mainland France. Around 20,000 Muslims were living in Paris at the time.
A few years later, the state took control of the Franco-Muslim hospital in the Paris suburb of Bobigny, which admitted only Muslim patients, and created the North African Brigade, a police unit tasked with monitoring and, in some cases, repressing Arab workers during the interwar years.
The mosque project also raised a legal problem. France had separated church and state in 1905. How could it fund a religious building?
In August 1920, the lower house of parliament (then the Chamber of Deputies) passed a law granting state funding to the Society of Habous and Holy Places, a body created in 1917 to organise pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina for Muslims from the colonial empire.
Because it was based in Algeria, the society was not subject to the 1905 secularism law, even though Algeria was then a French department.
The French state granted 500,000 francs. The City of Paris provided the land and nearly 2 million francs in subsidies. The project was overseen by the society, headed by Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, who became the mosque’s first rector and raised additional funds in the Maghreb.
Algeria’s influence
Since its opening, all rectors of the Grand Mosque have been Algerian. After Algeria’s independence, the mosque’s headquarters were moved from Algiers to Paris – a decision opposed by the then rector Hamza Boubakeur, a former MP representing Algeria when it was under French rule.
In 1982, under president François Mitterrand, France agreed to return control of the mosque to Algiers as part of an oil agreement. Algeria has since paid an annual subsidy and sent dozens of imams to Paris.
In recent years, criticism of Algeria’s influence has intensified. The mosque has been accused of a lack of transparency over implementing an exclusive mandate granted by the Algerian state in 2023 to certify halal products from the European Union.
In January 2025, rector Chems-eddine Hafiz dismissed the accusations as “a scandalous and unfounded cabal”, suggesting they were part of a coordinated attack.
The strain was clear in March 2025, when Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau declined to attend the mosque’s iftar ceremony during Ramadan, breaking with an annual tradition.
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Faith, refuge and memory
Over the decades, the Grand Mosque has sought to embody what it describes as an Islam in tune with the values of the French Republic.
“By showing your unwavering attachment to the republic, to the nation, to its principles and its cohesion, you bear witness to that France, diverse and multiple, yet united around shared values,” Chirac said during a visit in 2002.
From 500 worshippers a century ago, the mosque can now welcome up to 15,000 at a time. For Eid al-Adha, as many as 30,000 people gather there.
During the German occupation of Paris between 1940 and 1944, the mosque served as a refuge for Resistance fighters, families and Jewish children. It has underground access to the Bièvre river – a small waterway that runs beneath parts of Paris – and issued false certificates of Muslim faith to Jewish men.
The mosque has also entered popular culture. In 1966, a famous scene from the movie La grande vadrouille (Don’t Look Now... We’re Being Shot At!) was filmed in its hammam, in which Louis de Funès and Bourvil sing “Tea for Two” while searching for British airmen.
Listed as a historic monument since 1983, the Grand Mosque has become part of the capital’s landscape, alongside the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame – and the Zouave statue on the Pont de l’Alma, which represents a soldier from a North African infantry unit created after France’s first colonial campaigns in 1830.
“The Grand Mosque belongs to the shared heritage of the nation,” Chems-eddine Hafiz said. “Muslims are part of the history of France [and] of its future [and the mosque will] continue to anchor Muslim citizens in the national story."
This story was adapted from the original version in French by Anne Bernas.
