This chapter follows the revolutionary attempt to stabilize growing anxieties through a Declaration of Rights that would frame a new conception of the citizen. This category, however, was still riven by contradictions over religion, race, and gender. In a France where only a handful of Muslims could be identified as conceivably fulfilling any of the conditions to become citizens, the chapter considers why they were so prominent in the framing of the decree, and what significance, if any, it held for the future conception of the Muslim citizen. Here, the rights offered to Muslims through the Edict of Tolerance of 1787 became an integral piece of the new society revolutionaries were seeking to build. The debate over how Muslims, Jews, and other non-Christians could participate in the French state would become, as this chapter shows, a furious battleground in defining the break with the ancien régime, and the complexion of a new France.
