The prime minister of France, Manuel Valls, has emerged over the past tumultuous week as one of the West’s most vocal foes of Islamism, though he’s actually been talking about the threat it poses for a long while. During the course of an interview conducted before the Charlie Hebdo attacks, he told me—he went out of his way to tell me, in fact—that he refuses to use the term 'Islamophobia' to describe the phenomenon of anti-Muslim prejudice, because, he says, the accusation of Islamophobia is often used as a weapon by Islamism's apologists to silence their critics.

Most of my conversation with Valls was focused on the fragile state of French Jewry—here is my post on his comments, which included the now-widely circulated statement that, “if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France”—and I didn’t realize the importance of his comment about Islamophobia until I re-read the transcript of our interview.

“It is very important to make clear to people that Islam has nothing to do with ISIS,” Valls told me. “There is a prejudice in society about this, but on the other hand, I refuse to use this term 'Islamophobia,' because those who use this word are trying to invalidate any criticism at all of Islamist ideology. The charge of 'Islamophobia' is used to silence people.”

Valls was not denying the existence of anti-Muslim sentiment, which is strong across much of France. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, miscreants have shot at Muslim community buildings, and various repulsive threats against individual Muslims have been cataloged. President Francois Hollande, who said Thursday that Muslims are the “first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism, intolerance,” might be overstating the primacy of anti-Muslim prejudice in the current hierarchy of French bigotries—after all, Hollande just found it necessary to deploy his army to defend Jewish schools from Muslim terrorists, not Muslim schools from Jewish terrorists—but anti-Muslim bigotry is a salient and seemingly permanent feature of life in France.

Or to contextualize it differently: Anti-Muslim feeling appears to be more widespread than anti-Jewish feeling across much of France, but anti-Jewish feeling has been expressed recently (and not-so-recently) with far more lethality, and mainly by Muslims.

It appears as if Valls came to his view on the illegitimacy of 'Islamophobia' after being influenced by a number of people, including and especially the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner and the writer (and fatwa target) Salman Rushdie. Rushdie, along with a group of mainly Muslim writers, attacked the use of the term 'Islamophobia' several years ago in an open letter: “We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of ‘Islamophobia’, a wretched concept that confuses criticism of Islam as a religion and stigmatization of those who believe in it.”

Since women have traditionally been valued as moral exemplars and innocent creatures that should be protected by men, disagreement with this notion could be interpreted differently depending on the target’s gender. For example, if a woman disagrees with benevolent sexist ideas, then people may think that she views women and men on equal terms, as they may think it unlikely that she has negative feelings about her own gender. However, if a man disagrees with benevolent sexist ideas, then people may misattribute his beliefs to misogyny, since he is not valuing women in the traditional manner that people have been taught to. Based on this line of reasoning, I predicted that both male and female perceivers will assume that men, but not women, have univalent attitudes toward women. If people do assume univalent attitudes in men, then the male target’s level of BS will influence his perceived level of HS, such that low (high) BS men will be rated as more (less) hostile towards women. A female target’s level of BS, however, will have less impact on perceptions of her levels of hostility toward women.

This thesis reports two studies that examine lay people’s perception of the relationship between men’s HS and BS. Similar to previous work (Bohner et al., 2010; Kilianski & Rudman, 1998), participants were presented with target profiles and completed dependent measures about the target. In Study 1, I tested if laypeople misperceive the relationship between men’s HS and BS attitudes by manipulating target information on one component of sexism and directly measuring the target’s predicted score on the other component of sexism. In Study 2, I tested the role of attributional ambiguity in laypeople’s misconceptions of BS in men by manipulating the attribution for the target’s rejection of BS and directly measuring the target’s predicted level of HS.

In both studies, I also measured participants’ inferences about the target’s attitudes and behaviours (e.g., support for female professionals, quality as a spouse and parent, and propensity for abusiveness). If people indeed have misconceptions about the relationship between men’s HS and BS, then they would make more negative inferences about the low BS male target than the high BS male target. Thus, in Study 1, I expected that the low BS male target would be rated as more hostile towards women than the low BS female target and the high BS male target, but level of BS would have less impact on evaluations of the female target. In Study 2, I expected that the low BS male target who endorses egalitarian beliefs would be rated as less hostile toward women than the low BS male target who did not explicitly endorse egalitarian beliefs, but ratings of the low BS female target would be less affected by endorsement of egalitarianism.

A nationwide minute of silence for the victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices was not honored by some Muslim students in French schools, a BBC reporter claimed.

Following last Wednesday’s slaughter of 12 people at the satirical newspaper by Islamic terrorists, President Francois Hollande asked the French people to observe a moment of silence the following day.

But while most of the nation responded with an outpouring of grief and solidarity, one subset of the French nation was less-than-reverential.

“I’m already getting reports from people in France that some schools in those strongly Muslim neighborhoods, the kids didn’t stand for the minute’s silence,” BBC reporter Katty Kay said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday. “They see those attackers as heroes. How do we change that? Because that’s where the problem for Europe lies.”

Kay said the Muslim-dominated Parisian suburbs must be “detoxified,” explaining that radicalization is spreading rapidly within the French Muslim community.

Muslims worldwide were incensed by Charlie Hebdo’s publication of cartoons mocking their prophet Mohammed, with many calling for revenge attacks like the one finally carried out last week.

It was the day Paris united. And with dozens of world leaders joining the millions of people marching to commemorate and celebrate the victims of last week’s terror attacks, it was also the day the world united behind the city.

“Today, Paris is the capital of the world. The entire country will rise up,” the French president, François Hollande, said.

It was the first time since the liberation of Paris in August 1944 that so many people – the interior ministry said there were too many to count but most estimates put it at somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million – took to the streets of the city. An estimated 3.7 million took to the streets across the whole country.

As investigations continue into the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine by Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, which left 12 dead on Wednesday, the killing of a female police officer the following day, and the attack on a Kosher supermarket by Amédy Coulibaly on Friday in which four died, the mood among the crowds in Paris was one of unity.

This was a nationwide outpouring of grief, solidarity and defiance. Parisiens of all ages, religions and nationalities turned out en masse not only to show their respect for the victims but their support for the values of the Republic: “liberté, égalité, fraternité” – freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

“On est tous Charlie” (We are all Charlie), they chanted, waving French flags, singing La Marseillaise, brandishing pens, pencils, placards and banners in French, English and Arabic.

Some read “Nous sommes la République” (We are the Republic) and “Je suis Muslim”. One child held a banner reading: “I am Charlie, I am the police, and no Chérif will take away my liberty.” Another young boy carried a placard reading: “Later I will be a journalist. I’m not afraid!”

“We are united – Muslims, Catholics, Jews, we want to live peacefully together,” one woman told reporters.

A group of marchers carried a large model of a pencil with “NOT AFRAID” written on the side.

The noise along the route, where around 2,200 heavily armed police and gendarmes, including crack snipers on roofs, were deployed, rose and fell in waves, with songs and chants of “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie” punctuating the solemnity of the atmosphere and drowning out the helicopters overhead.

At regular intervals, the crowd stopped to applaud police and gendarmes shouting “merci police”; three police officers died in the attacks.

On a political and diplomatic level, it was unparalleled. Protocol rules were ignored as around 50 world leaders congregated in the French capital. Presidents, prime ministers, statesmen and women took buses from the Elysée palace to join the march from Place de la République to Place de la Nation, two of Paris’s best-known squares.

The occasion was sombre and heavy with symbolism. As the dignitaries left the Elysée, it rained. By the time they arrived, the grey clouds had parted, allowing a rare ray of winter sunshine.

Here were some of the most powerful people on earth jostling for space in the Paris boulevard named after Voltaire, the French Enlightenment writer, historian and advocate of freedom of religion and speech.

The leaders then set off, arm in arm, Hollande in the centre, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to his left. To his right, Ibrahim Boubacar Këita, the president of Mali – where French troops intervened to push back Islamist forces in 2013 – the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the British prime minister, David Cameron. As they marched, the crowds that lined the route broke into cheers and applause.

As a powerful mark of respect for those who died, the world leaders took second place, walking behind the families and friends of the victims of last week’s attacks.

Charlie Hebdo staff, including those who survived Wednesday’s attack, wore white headbands bearing the name Charlie.

In the leading cortege, tears streamed down faces etched with pain, grief and shock. Several mourners had to be gently supported as they made their way towards Place de la Nation.

In one poignant and profoundly emotional scene, Hollande hugged Patrick Pelloux, an A&E doctor who is also a journalist at Charlie Hebdo. Pelloux arrived late at the magazine office on Wednesday to find many of his colleagues had been slaughtered. He and other survivors have vowed to publish Charlie Hebdo next Wednesday despite the attack with a record print run of 1 million copies.

Leaders of all the religions marched behind a banner bearing the slogan “We are Charlie”.

Earlier in the day hundreds gathered to honour Ahmed Merabet, 42, the police officer gunned down in the Charlie Hebdo attack. The hashtag #JesuisAhmed has become widely used on Twitter along with #JesuisCharlie.

Pierre-Yves Martin, mayor of Livry Gargan in the north-east of Paris, paid homage to a “calm and talented” man. The Muslim officer was killed at close range by the fleeing gunmen Saïd and Chérif Kouachi.

“Ahmed Merabet, your life was stolen and no one can give it back, and so it was not taken in vain we are here, united against barbarism and to uphold the values of the Republic,” Martin said.

The mayor asked those gathered to hold hands for a minute’s silence. Flowers were laid in front of a portrait of the assassinated man, and the crowd sang La Marseillaise.

On Sunday evening, after the march, Hollande was due at the Grande Synagogue in Paris to meet Jewish leaders. The Jewish community has been traumatised by Friday’s hostage-taking at the kosher supermarket at the Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris.

Speaking to reporters before meeting Hollande and the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, Roger Cukierman, president of the Jewish umbrella group CRIF, condemned those who were using social media to express support for the Kouachi brothers killed in a shootout by police on Friday, around the same time a separate police assault killed gunman Amédy Coulibaly at the supermarket.

“It is intolerable that there is a hashtag on social media saying #IamKouachi,” Cukierman said. He branded the tweets as “an apology for murder” which should be pursued through the courts.

Government ministers, led by prime minister Manuel Valls, and representatives from France’s political parties, including the former president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, were part of another delegation at the march. The far right Front National, which has linked immigration with terrorism, was not invited to take part in the official cortege.

France’s Socialist government had called for a Republican march, but so many citizens responded to the call it became more of a crowded shuffle along the 3km route.

The events of last week have deeply shocked and scarred the French people who found a sense of collective comfort in coming together on Sunday to say “We are not afraid”. As night fell, they continued to march and gather, reluctant to leave the comfort of the crowd and the momentous occasion.