ARGENTEUIL, France (Reuters) - Naouelle Garnoussi is a devout Muslim who was brought up in France, prays five times a day, enjoys her job working with local communities and covets her designer handbag.Raised by her grandparents - one Muslim, the other Catholic - the 36-year-old identifies as French, and defends France’s secular values that separate religion from the state in public life. Yet in the aftermath of a spate of Islamist attacks she has begun to feel increasingly alienated in her own country. Compatriots tend to see her as a Muslim first, she said, and the government’s response to the violence left her wondering: are Muslims really equal in the eyes of the Republic? “My grandmother was French. My great-grandmother was French, she was called Antoinette. You don’t get more French than that, but sometimes I’m made to feel I am no longer French, just a Muslim,” Garnoussi told Reuters in her flat in Argenteuil, a working-class Paris suburb. Attitudes among members of the public towards Muslims appeared to be hardening, she continued. “Sometimes I forget to put my phone on silent and the call to prayer rings out. The other day I was spat on (when that happened), so it’s starting to get really bad.” Some prominent Muslim figures fear the wider public is tarring them with the same brush as militants. This week, a statement from a group of Muslim leaders pressed the government to act so that the “majority of Muslims who overwhelmingly condemn the recent terrorist attacks are not lumped together with the fomenters of hate.”