In the national imagination, Marseille is often associated with the representation of an “Arab-Muslim” city. This can take on various registers (humor, literature, cinema, media, etc.) and refers to contradictory, often stigmatizing, connotations, such as in the xenophobic rhetoric of the extreme right denouncing a supposed “Islamic graft” in the soil of Provence. Positive representations can also occasionally be found, primarily among defenders of cosmopolitanism. This identity-centered vision of local social realities can no doubt be explained by the history of the city, long considered the “Gateway to the East” (Porte de l’Orient), but also by its urban geography and sociology that are marked by a strong visibility of so-called “Muslim” populations in the heart of the city. These neo-orientalist images, supporting the cliché of a “Muslim city,” have also been reinforced over the past twenty years by the public controversies around the rise of a proselytizing Islam (fundamentalist and salafist), of which Marseille is seen as one of the preaching grounds. The issue is not so much to deny the particularities of the history and sociology of the local Muslim field, but to highlight connection of these particularities with economic, political and social dynamics within urban space that largely refutes the belief in a “Marseillais Muslim exception.” From this viewpoint, Marseille would instead be a magnifying mirror and echo chamber of public debates and national challenges, in which Islam is not so much treated as an ordinary religion like Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism, but rather as a social problem.