ARGUMENT: France & radical IslamismMacron Alone: Where Are France’s Allies in the Fight against Islamism?

Published 13 November 2020

Martin Luther King memorably said: “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.” Douglas Murray writes that that reflection may now be going through the head of the French president Emmanuel Macron. Last month, following another Islamist terrorist atrocity in France, Macron delivered remarks on what he called “Islamist separatism” in France. In a major speech he warned that a portion of France’s six million Muslims were forming a “counter-society.” Macron has turned out to be interested in actions as well as words. “Throughout this whole shocking episode there remains one great question. Where are France’s friends and allies?” Murray asks, adding: “Whether or not France’s allies are scared, Macron is not.”

Martin Luther King memorably said: “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.” Douglas Murray writes in The Spectatorthat that reflection may now be going through the head of the French president Emmanuel Macron. “In recent weeks he has been left alone on one of the most dangerous and delicate ledges of our time: that of Islamic extremism. And while he has already incurred the wrath of much of the so-called Muslim world — with French goods disappearing from many Arab supermarkets and Macron condemned from Ankara to Islamabad — it is the silence of everyone else that has been so striking,” Murray writes.

Last month Macron delivered remarks on what he called “Islamist separatism” in France. In a major speech he warned that a portion of France’s six million Muslims were forming a “counter-society.”

Murray writes that such speeches are now common after Islamist terrorist atrocities, but Macron seems to be serious. “In the best traditions of the Republic, he stressed the non-negotiability of French secularism. He then said things that any honest interlocutors in the Muslim world would have recognized, praising, for instance, the ‘Islam of the Enlightenment’.”

Repeating a theme he stressed in previous statements, Macron made it clear he does not regard Islam as the problem. His enemy — France’s enemy — is a radical form of the religion to which more Enlightenment forms are the answer.

Murray continues:

Macron has turned out to be interested in actions as well as words. In the weeks since his October speech he has ordered the recall of the French ambassador in Ankara and called for Turkey to be expelled from the EU customs union. Several radical organizations inside France have been dissolved and the numbers of government forces at the French borders doubled. Macron has also promised to bring his proposals for a rethink of EU border controls to the European Council in December. If he does, he will find some support from his eastern and central European counterparts, who may wonder what took him so long.

This brings us to the silence of France’s friends. “Throughout this whole shocking episode there remains one great question. Where are France’s friends and allies?” Murray asks, adding:

Whether or not France’s allies are scared, Macron is not. In an interview with Al Jazeera at the end of last month, he pointed out that the people he says are ‘distorting’ the religion of Islam ‘teach that women are not equal to men. They teach that girls should not have the same rights as boys.’ Well, Macron went on: ‘Not on our soil. We believe in the Enlightenment.’

Of course, hanging over that noble claim is the question all our countries have avoided for decades. Which is that while it is all very well to do a better job of asserting your values, what (if anything) can be done with people who are in your country, who know what your values are and still reject them? Like all his European counterparts, Macron has put that discussion off for another day. But the rest of this civilizational issue he has decided to have out. He has decided — whether sincerely or politically barely matters — to make a stand on the principles of the Republic he leads. He deserves the support of his friends. To date he has not even got our words. To our shame, not his.