This paper examines the hypothesis of the continuity of the French policies towards Islam (colonial imaginaries, discourses and practices) from the standpoint of the historicity of such policies. It suggests that the assignment of ethnicised and gendered categories based on religious differentiations have become sources of inequality of treatment in the French public space and explain why some types of individuals have been considered as 'deviant' from the republican norms of behaviour of citizens. Such categories have survived in the French republican context, because they have been naturalized by narratives that link the (colonial) Empire to the Republic. We will examine the treatment of Islam as a religious denomination by public authorities, by going back to the colonial experience and to the successive modalities of the regulation of the Islamic religion by French authorities. We will examine the hostility of the Republic towards certain emblematic figures that constitute a daily problem in the interaction of society with the Muslim other.