France - Macron vows crackdown on "Islamist Separatism" in France

President Emmanuel Macron’s speech addressed a deep-rooted problem in French society: its enduring difficulty to integrate significant parts of its large, nonwhite, Muslim population of immigrants and their descendants.

Published on October 2nd, in The New York Times

President Emmanuel Macron of France on Friday outlined measures designed to rein in the influence of radical Islam in the country and help develop what he called an “Islam of France” compatible with the nation’s republican values.

In a long-awaited speech on the subject, Mr. Macron said that the influence of Islamism must be eradicated from public institutions even as he acknowledged government failures in allowing it to spread.

The measures include placing stringent limits on home-schooling and increasing scrutiny of religious schools, making associations that solicit public funds sign a “charter” on secularism. While these measures would apply to any group, they are intended to counter extremists in the Muslim community.

Under the measures, the widespread practice of bringing over foreign imams to work in France, where they are often accused of preaching an outdated or extreme version of Islam, would be ended.

The issue of the effects of Islamism has been a persistent one in France, amid fears of the kinds of terrorist attacks the country has faced in recent years, putting pressure on Mr. Macron as he faces re-election.

Many of the proposals from Mr. Macron were ideas that had been floated in the past or ones he had already approved. His speech on Friday assembled it all into a comprehensive package that the government is expected to present as a bill in December.

“What we must attack is Islamist separatism,” Mr. Macron said in front of six of his ministers in Les Mureaux, a town northwest of Paris.

“Secularism is the cement of a united France,” he said, calling radical Islam both an “ideology” and a “project” that sought to indoctrinate children, undermine France’s values — especially gender equality — and create a “counter-society” that sometimes laid the groundwork for Islamist terrorism.

But Mr. Macron also recognized that France bore responsibility for letting that ideology spread uncontested.

“We built our own separatism ourselves,” he said. For too long, the authorities had amassed largely immigrant populations in poverty-stricken neighborhoods with little access to jobs or public transportation, leading to a “ghettoization of our republic,” he said.

The speech was postponed several times this year as the president searched, sometimes publicly, for the best approach and language. The stakes were high, as the setting indicated: Mr. Macron’s speech and answers to journalists, which lasted nearly two hours, were broadcast live on television and the internet.

In a sign of how delicate the issue is for Mr. Macron, a member of his party walked out of a parliamentary hearing last month because she objected to the veil worn by a student union leader who was testifying, setting off days of heated debate.

Crucially, Mr. Macron’s announcement came as France’s political establishment gears up for the next presidential election in 18 months.

Accused by both the far right and traditional conservatives of being lax against radical Islam, Mr. Macron has recently used words and adopted positions on social issues that have signaled a clear departure from his more liberal stances at the start of his presidency.

Even though official data show steady or declining crime rates over all in France, Mr. Darmanin denounce what claims to be "the country’s growing insecurity".

Driss Ettazaoui, a deputy mayor in Évreux, a town in Normandy, praised Mr. Macron for his call to avoid the “trap” of “stigmatizing all Muslims,” and said he approved of several of the measures — including a push to teach more Arabic in French public schools to draw children away from unregulated classes in mosques or other settings.

“A wide majority of Muslims are only asking one thing: We want a right to normality, to practice our faith without pressure,” Mr. Ettazaoui said.

In his speech, Mr. Macron said that to avoid “illegal schools” run by “religious extremists,” home-schooling would be strictly limited to children with valid medical reasons. Only about 50,000 of France’s more than 12 million school students are currently home-schooled.

Mr. Macron also outlined a series of measures aimed at making the financing and management of mosques more transparent. Most notably, he said that within the next four years a widespread practice that has foreign-trained imams come to preach in French mosques would be phased out in favor of a France-based training and certification system.

He also said the bill would authorize prefects — representatives of the French state at the local level — to overrule mayors who are deemed too accommodating with religious minorities, for instance by allowing women- or men-only hours at public swimming pools.

Yet his speech also addressed a deep-rooted problem in French society: its enduring difficulty to integrate significant parts of its large, nonwhite, Muslim population of immigrants and their descendants.

The political establishment adheres to France’s founding universalist values, which reject public expressions of race, religion and ethnicity. But those ideals have come under increasing strain in a rapidly changing society, and were manifest in recent debates and protests over issues like police violence, race, colonialism and feminism, as nonwhite or younger French looked for ideas outside France, often to the United States.

Even Mr. Macron — who vowed in the aftermath of protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May that France would never unbolt statues — acknowledged on Friday that France “is a country that has a colonial past and that has traumas that have not been settled yet.”

“Certain things were not as caricatural as one might have thought,” Sarah Mazouz, a sociologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, said, referring to Mr. Macron’s comments on France’s colonial legacy. “But then, in the announcements, we come back to the usual practices and speeches that are essentially a security response.”

Ms. Mazouz added that by framing individual practices, like dietary preferences or participating in swimming lessons, as a threat to the republic, Mr. Macron risked conflating Islam and terrorism.

The failure to integrate immigrant populations and their descendants has contributed to a growing inequality in France. At its extreme, it has radicalized some young French, especially of North African origin, who went to fight for the Islamic State in Syria, or carried out terrorist attacks at home. They have included the two brothers who in 2015 attacked the office of Charlie Hebdo, the newspaper that published satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and whose alleged accomplices are now on trial.

In some French communities, that failure has led to sociological, economic and ideological ghettos where Islamism has flourished, Chems-Eddine Hafiz, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, wrote in a column in Le Monde on Friday.

Mr. Hafiz agreed on the need to combat such extremism and said he would support Mr. Macron’s efforts if they were sincere. But he also warned about the dangers of politicians exploiting the theme for gains “on the eve of electoral deadlines” and pushing through “gimmicky measures.”

Source : The New York Times