Well one thing for sure about the French, they like France.
The French tend to take holidays at home in France.
They prefer France to other places.
People from other countries, on the other hand, tend to differ and leave their home countries to visit France.
That says something about France right there.
The French feel that they have very good wine, food, fashion, arts, architecture, entertainment ,climate and so forth and so on right at home.
Their medical system is reckoned to be one of the best and the French are famous for "working to live as versus living to work"
In other words they like short workdays and lots and lots of holidays and time off.
Now I am not French so its not really for me to say but all in all the French seem to have worked out a fairly good arrangement for themselves.
Others in this thread have pointed out how a very large cohort of Muslims came to residing in France.
Cities like Marseilles for example have huge Muslim populations.
By far the vast majority of these Muslim residents have adapted extremely well and are happy residents of France.
The religious extremists however are not happy and are not adapting well.
They of course feel that France should change and adopt fundamental Muslim religious and cultural norms.
The Burka is not historically associated with the Muslim religion, it is however a reasonably new piece of clothing designed and insisted upon by the Muslim far religious right.
The French feel it is disruptive in school and university as it prevents the teachers from really seeing who they are talking to.
By hiding facial expressions you hide one of humankind's most effective non verbal forms of communication.
The police and security forces hate it as they have no idea who they are dealing with.
Customs and immigration hate it as they have no idea who they are dealing with.
It totally invalidates the French CCV security systems as nobody has any clue who they are looking at and so on.
On top of that the average Frenchman has no interest whatsoever in changing how France operates.
The French feel the Burka is a symbol of an unbending religious extremism.
And the French have no plans at all of changing their secular society.
Thus the Burka is not that popular with Joe sixpack in France.
Trex