"The country also has the largest population of Muslims in Western Europe. Many complain the authorities use secularism to specifically target them, for instance in banning the hijab.
Speaking outside Paris on Friday, Mr Macron said radical Islam was a danger to France because it held its own laws above all others and "often results in the creation of a counter-society".
He said this form of sectarianism often translated into children being kept out of school, and the use of sporting, cultural and other community activities as a "pretext to teach principles that do not conform to the laws of the republic".
"Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country."
The measures announced by the president will form legislation that will go to parliament before the end of the year.
They include:
- stricter monitoring of sports organisations and other associations so that they do not become a front for Islamist teaching
- an end to the system of imams being sent to France from abroad
- improved oversight of the financing of mosques
- home-schooling restricted
Mr Macron also said France must do more to offer economic and social mobility to immigrant communities, adding that radicals had often filled the vacuum." BBC
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SWMBO and I watch A LOT of French TV on TV 5 Monde. The aspirational goals of French society are made clear there. The assimilation and integration of North Africans and Sub-Saharan immigrants from the former French Union, or empire if you prefer, are a high priority for the French. The depiction of assimilated Muslims is generally friendly so long as the persons depicted appear to consider themselves to be French before all else.
The French have a long history of this kind of behavior. There are many, many French people of Polish or Portuguese descent distributed throughout French society who are the evidence of a long term immigration from those countries to France.
In addition to these people, the descendants of those Algerians who more or else voluntarily left what had formerly been an integral part of France to re-locate to mainland France appear to be completely integrated into French society. Their names are conspicuous in the "crawl" that accompanies just about every French film or TeeVee production.
These people are not the targets of Macron's virtual declaration of war against Islamism. What he is concerned about is the mentality evident in many of the newly arrived people of Muslim identity who seek and wish to replace traditional French culture and hard won ideals of governance with a Sharia State ruled by the whims of people like Turkey's neo-Ottoman Sultan, Erdogan.
All Europeans should fear such a possibility and should decide whether or not they have the will and determination needed to preserve their own ancients ways of life.
I applaud Macron's promise of action. pl
Babak
I had no idea that Qutb was known in Iran, been reading about this all evening, apparently Khamenei even translated his works from Arabic. Puts my whole recollection of the Iranian pro-Arab Spring stance in 2011-2012(before syria AND iraq really heated up(the latter is often forgotten as being part of the same conflict)) into perspective, I now see what they were trying to do there.
Posted by: Serge | 05 October 2020 at 09:57 PM
" ... the will and determination needed to preserve their own ancients ways of life."
I'm afraid our progs make short work of that, Colonel, or indeed of anything that indicates respect or liking for conserving what is valuable.
In the crude terms we are accustomed to in Europe that's straight "populism" at best and "Fascism" at worst. Though the two terms are more or less interchangeable in prog polemic.
Posted by: English Outsider | 06 October 2020 at 07:50 AM
English Outsider
The ancient ways were garbage.
Posted by: BABAK MAKKINEJAD | 06 October 2020 at 09:36 AM