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PARIS – The French government, determined to combat an ideology that it considers “an enemy of the Republic”, presented a bill on Wednesday to combat radical Islamism, calling the measure “a law of freedom” essential for peaceful coexistence in the French society.
The law, which has been attacked by Turkey and other Muslim countries, and criticized by the US envoy for international religious freedom as “clumsy,” reflects President Emmanuel Macron’s determination to tackle a series of terror attacks that have left more than 260 people. dead in France since 2015. Three such attacks in recent months, including the beheading of a history teacher, Samuel Paty, who had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to his class, have hardened positions around the legislation.
“This bill is not a text directed against religions or against the Muslim religion in particular,” Prime Minister Jean Castex declared after the cabinet passed the bill. “It is the other way around: it is a law of freedom, it is a law of protection, it is a law of emancipation against religious fundamentalism.”
Earlier, Castex told the French daily Le Monde that “the enemy of the Republic is an ideology calling itself radical Islamism, whose aim is to divide the French from one another.”
The legislation would curb online hate speech of the kind that led to Paty’s murder; punishing doctors who provide so-called “virginity certificates” for traditional religious marriages; cracking down on homeschooling for children over the age of three; and stop community associations by forcing them to sign declarations of fidelity to the “values of the republic” while imposing strict controls on their funding.
The words “Islamic” or “Islamist” do not appear in the legislation, but the government’s intention is clear: to get to the root of the culture separated from extremist groups that uphold the laws of Islam as superior to the laws of the Republic.
For its opponents, the bill runs the risk of defeating itself. The danger of a fusion of Islam, religion and Islamism, a political movement, is evident. The bill could heighten the sense of alienation felt by some, but far from all, French Muslims, who make up about eight percent of the population. The ghettoization of Muslim immigrants of primarily North African origin in grim projects on the outskirts of big cities is a long-standing social problem that successive governments have promised to tackle, with limited success.
The bill has undergone three name changes, reflecting its sensitivity, beginning as an “anti-separatism” law and ending as a law “to reinforce republican principles.” It will be presented to the National Assembly, or lower house of Parliament, in January.
Its genesis can be found in a speech Macron made two months ago in which he vowed to defeat “Islamist separatism” and defend French secularism, with his strict view that religion is a matter of the individual that has no place in politics. The speech was denounced as a “provocation” by the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an opinion rejected by many French, who have suffered successive attacks.
Ambassador Sam Brownback, the US ambassador for international religious freedom, said this week that he was concerned about developments in France. Referring to the bill, he said: “When you get tough, the situation can get worse.”
France is unlikely to be very concerned by this opinion from a representative of the outgoing Trump administration. President Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban”, which bans foreign nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries, was widely condemned in France and around the world.
Macron, who faces an election in 18 months, has been veering to the political right, where, with the left in tatters, the center of gravity of French politics appears to be. His hard line on Islamism and the introduction of a highly controversial security law are part of this strategic evolution.
In his October speech, Macron admitted that the French state had suffered from “its own form of separatism” by failing to address the marginalization of some Muslims in France. He promised to correct this error, but there has been little follow-up.
Castex, the prime minister, told reporters that France “would build more social housing, better distributed throughout the territory to break with the logic of the ghettos.” That promises to be a long process with an outcome as uncertain as the attempt to legislate to eliminate the seeds of extremist Islamism.
