Pascal Delmas, 40, who runs an antiques shop with his 32-year-old Chinese wife, Shaoping, said he could vouch for the shopkeepers singled out in the film, calling them friends who were active members of his group to promote commerce in the street.

“I have seen no proof of radicalisation here,” he said. “But we do have many other problems.”

A few yards down the street, Dominique Houte, who runs the La 357 Roubaisienne gun club, took aim at a firing range target with a semi-automatic revolver. Many of his 400-odd members are local police officers.

“The real gangrene here is drug dealing, incivilities and poverty,” he said.

“This is not Afghanistan or Molenbeek. It’s more about incivilities from youths who perhaps don’t feel in their place, Muslim without being Muslim, French without being French and a visceral hatred of the police.”

But not all of his members agreed.

One off-duty local policeman who complained that his men had busted local youths with drugs only for them to be let off, made no bones about linking Islamism and delinquency, or where his political preferences lay.

“Everything in this report is true,” he said. “Islamism exists here but not just in Roubaix – in southern Lille, in Parisian suburbs and many big cities.”

He said he was supportive of the UK’s English Defence League and made it clear he was a supporter of far-Right Mr Zemmour, who is due to stage a mass rally in neighbouring Lille on Saturday.

Mr Delmas dismissed such talk as extremist rubbish.

“We live very well together in Roubaix. There is a huge amount of diversity – around 100 nationalities – many churches, temples and mosques, and it works.”

“But some people don’t like the fact that white French and those of North African and other descent live happily side by side. They prefer to wallow in the past than look to the future.”