Fighting in France over racial and religious freedoms and cultural identity has lasted more than a month.

France is home to 5 million Muslims. French Muslims have been praying in cramped quarters and basements, and they want change.

“We wanted a respectable place of worship,” Khadija Aram told the AP about a mosque that has been built in her city.

“Christians have their church, Jews have their synagogue, and Muslims pray in the basement,” she said. “French Muslims are not yet at home in France.”

People for centuries have been fighting for rights using civil disobedience and violence.

According to the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, “Civil disobedience is a tactic used in the pursuit of social change … Participants allow themselves to be arrested, further reinforcing the message that the laws, not their actions are immoral.”

David Pulsipher, BYU-Idaho history professor, said that civil disobedience is not just breaking laws people don’t agree with. One must be mostly obedient and disobey one law, being willing to face the consequences. Civilly disobedient people break laws openly, face the consequences and rely on people to think the law is unjust and push for change.

Civil disobedience is usually nonviolent, but sometimes tension creates violence. According to the AP, French Muslims were protesting treatment with sit-ins and non-violent protests. But violence erupted when a teenager was killed trying to evade police.

In such conditions, Muslims “have no means to weigh in on decisions that could change their own situation,” Angelina Peralva, a sociologist who specializes in urban violence, told the AP. “They are so consigned to their world that, collectively, they can’t get out.”