Europe specifically France’s biggest issues regarding racism against Muslims is two fold.
The first being the most obvious, that Europe in general has dealt with more on soil Islamic terrorist attacks. We saw how America reacted in the wake of 9/11. People are generally ignorant and don’t separate the followers of religion from the fundamental ideology (it’s the same reason America had a big problem with Sikhs being attacked and harassed)
The second problem is more unique. France doesn’t really integrate its Muslim population as well as other nations. So you often have little subsets of cities that are worn down that have an entirely separate culture. That in itself causes tension because a lot of French Muslims grow up not feeling accepted by the rest of the population