Emmanuel Macron has unveiled his plan to combat the rise of Islamic extremism in France. Stressing that his fight was not against the religion but political Islam, ‘which has no place’ in the Republic, the president outlined a series of measures in a speech last week. Notably, his plans involve an end to the hosting of imams from countries such as Turkey and Algeria, and more rigorous control on foreign financing of mosques from the likes of Qatar.
Macron stopped short of introducing an ‘Islam of France’, which had been mooted two years ago, but his intention is to eliminate the malevolent influence of outsiders.
But is it too late to stop what Macron described as the ‘Islamist separatism’ of France, a process that began in the 1980s when François Mitterrand’s Socialist government turned a blind eye to the ‘re-islamisation’ of the suburbs by men who took their inspiration from the Iranian revolution?
The alarm was first raised in 2002 with the publication of Les Territoires perdus de la République (The Lost Territories of the Republic) by Georges Bensoussan, in which he exposed the extent of this re-islamisation.
The response of the chattering classes was to stigmatise Bensoussan as a bigot, but a decade later France was subjected to a wave of Islamist terror attacks.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in