French Muslims are seething and whining: Veiled threats. (Hat tip: scaramouche.)

Like most French Muslims, Nora, 25, who declined to give her full name for security reasons, had trouble understanding why Islamic militants in Iraq had captured two French journalists and linked their lives to the repeal of the country’s headscarf ban.

Nor did she see why her phone should attract abusers. “Islam has a bad reputation in France and it is misunderstood,” she says. “We are French first and foremost. Everybody is united against the hostage situation. That shows we are all French.”

But as the Chirac Government’s ban on wearing headscarves and other conspicuous religious symbols came into effect in an attempt to protect the nation’s secular tradition, it became apparent that many Muslims feel isolated and confused.

Misba Mohammad, 18, a French-born, final-year high school student of Pakistani origin, says she had no idea “why the Government is telling me what to do”.

“The French people have only looked at the negative side of the veil,” she says. “They associate the veil with Islam, with radicalism. The hostage crisis has given a negative image of Islam [but] there should be no link to what’s happening in France.”

And French non-Muslims are just whining.

Across the country, there was a palpable sense of injustice that having so forcefully opposed the war in Iraq its citizens should become the targets. As an editorial in Le Figaro said: “Because of its position on the Iraq war, France might have hoped to be shielded. That was not the case.”

You mean appeasement of people who butcher helpless hostages doesn’t work? Quelle surprise!