“What we should attack is Islamist separatism,” said French President Emmanuel Macron in a speech aimed at tacking all forms of separatism in the country.
He announced that a draft law will be introduced before the end of the year to empower authorities to shut down associations and schools that he said indoctrinate children, and monitor foreign investment in religious organizations in France.
‘’This conscious, theorized, politico-religious project, which materializes by repeated deviations from the values of the Republic, which often results in the constitution of a counter-society and whose manifestations are the dropout of children from schools, the development of sport and communalized cultural practices which are the pretext for teaching principles which do not comply with the laws of the Republic,’’ Macron said.
The new measures announced by the president include plans to train imams in France, curtail homeschooling and the influence of foreign countries on the country’s Muslim population, stressing the need to build “an Islam of Enlightenment” in France.
Political analysts said Macron is under pressure to harden his stance on radical Islam in France ahead of the 2022 presidential election. His advisers see the bill as a way for the president to outflank Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant party National Rally whom he is likely to face in the election.
The president explicitly recognized the weight of France’s colonial past on its relationship with its Muslim citizens and the need for the state to reinvest in the suburbs where most of its immigrant population live, saying the Republic failed them over recent decades.
“We built a concentration of misery and difficulties, we concentrated populations according to origin and social milieu,” Macron said. “We created neighborhoods where the promise of the Republic was never kept and where these most radical forms of islamism became sources of hope.”
“Islam is a religion that is experiencing a crisis across the world. We don’t believe in political Islam that is not compatible with stability and peace in the world,” he added.
But he avoided accusing all French Muslims of ascribing to radical Islamism and said the measures that are prepared would be taken in conjunction with the Muslim community, including with the French Council of the Muslim Faith being responsible for training up new imams, since secularism laws in France prohibit the state from being involved in religion.