Muslims in FranceMacron to Outline France's Controversial Anti-Separatism Bill
Five years after the Paris terrorist strikes and a week after a brutal knife attack in the French capital, French President Emmanuel Macron sketches the broad outlines Friday of upcoming legislation targeting groups considered hostile to the French Republic and its values — with radical Islam, including its political dimension, at the forefront.
Five years after the Paris terrorist strikes and a week after a brutal knife attack in the French capital, French President Emmanuel Macron sketches the broad outlines Friday of upcoming legislation targeting groups considered hostile to the French Republic and its values — with radical Islam, including its political dimension, at the forefront.
The anti-separatism bill has been long awaited, but was pushed back by the coronavirus pandemic. A recent poll shows the majority of French approve the initiative.
But critics, particularly members of France’s roughly six-million-strong Muslim community — Western Europe’s largest—worry it will deepen anti-Muslim sentiment they say has been on the rise in recent years.
Some also suggest it is politically motivated ahead of France’s 2022 elections, while still others—notably the leading opposition far-right National Rally party—predict the bill will not go far enough in countering threats it also links to immigration.
“What we want is a fight without mercy against communitarianism and separatism,” said National Rally spokesman Sebastien Chenu, using a French term referring to ethnic communities that are seen as unassimilated. “But that means treating the politics at the roots, including rethinking migration policy. There are a number of tools — but so far none has been used.”
“In a context where inter-community tensions are rising, Macron knows he is walking on eggshells,” wrote the regional newspaper Le Republicain Lorrain, summing up the president’s challenge in a recent editorial.
Still, the newspaper backed new initiatives to “isolate political Islam” and “integrate everyone within the Republic.”
Longstanding Friction
Macron’s centrist government has taken pains to assure mainstream Muslims the upcoming separatism legislation does not intend to stigmatize them, but rather targets an extremist minority. Groups like white supremacists, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin says, are also in its crosshairs.
Islam “is the religion that will have the least difficulty in working with the Republic,” said Darmanin, whose grandfather was a Muslim immigrant from Algeria.
During a recent visit to Paris’ Grand Mosque, he vowed to work with Muslim representatives in writing the bill.
Bare-bone details reported by French media however, suggest a strong focus on Islam. Among other things, the legislation ostensibly would require mosques and private religious schools to disclose their sources of foreign financing, put a stop on importing foreign imams, and crack down on areas undermining gender equality, including possible criminal sanctions for doctors issuing so-called virginity certificates for women ahead of marriage.
