This paper examines three examples, namely the 2004 law on the veil in France, the 2005 resolution in Quebec National Assembly against islamic tribunals, and the guidelines of the municipality of Hérouxville in 2007, in order to problematize the logics at work in the relationship between Islam and pluralistic democratic societies. While these events are far apart in time and space, they belong to the same discursive field, in which Islam is confronted to state secularism (laïcité) and to secularisation processes. Islam plays the role of a revealer of the problems of political and social identity in these societies, and its otherness, perceived and constructed as a danger, brings these societies to respond to it in a repressive and preventive manner. The leitmotiv that tends to securitize the Islamic presence by means of preventive laws by resolutions and codes of conduct expresses a deep-seated identity problem. To address the issue will help avoid projecting this problem on a minority and its religion, but it will also contribute to historicize the principle of secularism, which must be seen as a horizon rather than a rigidly fixed fact.