After the terrorist attacks last month on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, the airwaves and the web were filled with vitriol toward French Muslims. Many demanded that they condemn the violence, which most Muslim organizations and public figures did. But far right-wing commentators in France and beyond attacked Islam itself, insisting that the religion was inherently violent.

These debates disturbed Bharat Choudhary, who has spent the last several years documenting the lives of Muslims in the United States, Britain and, most recently, France. His earlier project, “The Silence of Others,” looked at American Muslims struggling to balance their identities. Now working in France, he has photographed in Arab Muslim areas of Marseille, where segregation, discrimination, high unemployment and alienation are rampant. He found a widespread sense that despite being born there, Arab and African Muslims would never be accepted as truly French. And after the attacks, Mr. Choudhary realized that the lives of French Muslims he knew were not being portrayed in the media.

“In this moment of mourning and outpouring of emotions an important narrative is being sidelined; the narrative that reveals the innumerable challenges that the Muslim community itself faces in its attempts to settle, integrate and progress in the French society,” said Mr. Choudhary, who is Hindu. “I believe without knowing who the French Muslim community is and what are the issues that they face every day, the whole discussion or debate about rights and wrongs is incomplete.”

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Mr. Choudhary documented a cross section of Muslims in Marseille — the devout and the secular, the educated and the illiterate, the rich and the poor, men and women. Though most were born in France, they did not feel accepted.

Although many Muslims were living in poverty, most of his subjects had dreams and aspirations for a better life and were trying to succeed in what they perceived as a society that was against them. For the religiously observant, the enforced secularism of French society left little room to live, dress and worship as they pleased. Wearing a hijab or a head scarf is not allowed in public schools, and wearing the face covering niqab is also banned in public.

Marseille is one of France’s poorest cities, and most of its sizable Muslim population lives in large public housing projects. Squalid building conditions, rampant poverty and high unemployment have made drug dealing and violence commonplace, Mr. Choudhary said.

He blames flawed urban planning, institutional discrimination and government apathy for turning the buildings into “poverty traps,” while racial and religious discrimination makes it difficult for residents to move to better neighborhoods.

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Alarmingly, hundreds of young people have left the housing projects and traveled to Syria to volunteer for jihadist groups like ISIS. One of the brothers involved in the Charlie Hebdo attack apparently received training in Yemen from Al Qaeda’s local affiliate in 2011. There is now deep concern among Western security agencies that young men returning from battle in Syria will stage terrorist attacks.

Through hundreds of conversations with French Muslims, Mr. Choudhary concluded that part of the allure of radical Islam among alienated French youths was finding a sense of brotherhood.

“They have not been accepted by the rest of French society, they don’t have a job or money, and then they see a world where people are actually welcoming them, providing all kinds of comfort — not just in this life but after this life,” he said.

Mr. Choudhary was born and raised in Nigeria, where his father worked as a textile engineer. He attended high school and college in India and went to work for the charity CARE. After the 2002 sectarian riots in Gujarat State in India, he counseled Muslim victims who had been paralyzed or raped during violence by Hindu mobs. The helplessness that he felt in this work changed the course of his life.

He became a photographer and studied at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism where, in 2009, he started photographing Muslims for his thesis. The idea was sparked when two white men in a pickup truck tailed him as he walked home from school. They hurled insults, shouting “Osama! Osama!” because of his skin color and beard.

“I am not a Muslim, but the ceaselessly deepening chasm between Muslims and non-Muslims concerns me immensely,” he recently wrote. “As a teenager, I have spent countless afternoons playing cricket in the courtyard of a large Mosque in India. Even today, some of my closest friends are Muslims. And with Muslims in Europe, I share a common socio-political history and the broader experience of being an immigrant. Their struggles with identity or belongingness are very much like my own.”

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