<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>After being knocked back at some 50 interviews for consulting jobs in France despite his ample qualifications, Muslim business school graduate Adam packed his bags and moved to a new life in Dubai.</b></span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I feel much better here than in France,” the 32-year-old of North African descent told AFP.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“We’re all equal. You can have a boss who’s Indian, Arab or a French person,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“My religion is more accepted.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Highly-qualified French citizens from Muslim backgrounds, often the children of immigrants, are leaving France in a quiet brain drain, seeking a new start abroad in cities like London, New York, Montreal or Dubai, according to a new study.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The authors of “France, you love it but you leave it”, published last month, said it was difficult to estimate exactly how many.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But they found that 71 percent of more than 1,000 people who responded to their survey circulated online had left in part because of racism and discrimination.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Adam, who asked that his surname not be used, told AFP his new job in the United Arab Emirates has given him fresh perspective.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In France “you need to work twice as hard when you come from certain minorities”, he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He said he was “extremely grateful” for his French education and missed his friends, family and the rich cultural life of the country where he grew up.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But he said he was glad to have quit its “Islamophobia” and “systemic racism” that meant he was stopped by police for no reason.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">France has long been a country of immigration, including from its former colonies in North and West Africa.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But today the descendants of Muslim immigrants who came to France seeking a better future say they have been living in an increasingly hostile environment, especially after the attacks in Paris in 2015 that killed 130 people.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">They say France’s particular form of secularism, which bans all religious symbols in public schools including headscarves and long robes, seems to disproportionately focus on the attire of Muslim women.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another French Muslim, a 33-year-old tech employee of Moroccan descent, told AFP he and his pregnant wife were planning to emigrate to “a more peaceful society” in southeast Asia.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He said he would miss France’s “sublime” cuisine and the queues outside the bakeries.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But “we’re suffocating in France”, said the business school graduate with a five-figure monthly salary.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He described wanting to leave “this ambient gloom”, in which television news channels seem to target all Muslims as scapegoats, reports AFP&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The tech employee, who moved to Paris after growing up in its lower-income suburbs, said he has been living in the same block of flats for two years.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“But still they ask me what I’m doing inside my building,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div>