President Macron and the scourge of Islamist terror
Islamist terror has struck in France again, said Alexandra Schwartzbrod in Libération (Paris). In the latest attack last week, three people were stabbed to death in a church in Nice by a Tunisian man who had arrived in France weeks earlier. The 21-year-old, named as Brahim Aouissaoui, was shot and critically injured by police after bursting into the Notre Dame basilica and killing two women and a man. He had tried to behead one of his victims while shouting “It was the third terror attack on French soil since 14 suspects went on trial over the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in 2015. In September, two people were stabbed by a terrorist near the magazine’s former offices. In October, Samuel Paty, a teacher, was decapitated in a town near Paris by a young Chechen for having shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a lesson. The killings have reignited the contentious debate on the balance between freedom of expression and respect for religious sensitivities.
Allahu Akbar”.
President Macron has been trying to get to grips with this issue for some while, said John Lichfield on Politico (Brussels). A few weeks ago, he unveiled a bill to combat “Islamist separatism”, and since then police have raided the homes of 90 suspected radical Islamists, shut down a mosque, and warned 51 Muslim associations that they’ll be closed if they’re found to be promoting hatred. These are hardly extreme steps. To imply otherwise is “dishonest and dangerous”: hundreds of French people have been killed in Islamist terror attacks in recent years. Macron’s efforts to realign France’s relationship with its sixmillion-strong Muslim population are entirely understandable.
On the contrary, Macron is “fanning the flames of Islamophobia” for his own political ends, said Ali Saad on Al Jazeera (Doha). He’s terrified that Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party is draining his support so, in a desperate bid to win back voters, he’s prepared to ostracise France’s Muslims. He has accused Islam of being “in crisis”. And his interior minister has been even more incendiary, claiming that France is fighting a “civil war” and demanding the closure of ethnic food aisles in supermarkets.
The debate over French attitudes to Islam isn’t confined to France, said Isabelle Lasserre in Le Figaro (Paris). A tidal wave of “antiFrench fury” has “spread like wildfire” across the Islamic world since Macron made his comments on Islamic extremism. In Bangladesh, 40,000 people joined an anti-France rally in which an effigy of Macron was burned. In Baghdad, the French flag was set alight outside the French embassy. There have also been protests in Palestine, Jordan and Afghanistan. In Malaysia, the former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, has declared that “Muslims have a right to kill millions of French people”. In Saudi Arabia, a guard was injured in an attack at a French consulate. France has long been the target of Islamist terror owing to its colonial past, commitment to secularism and military ventures in the Middle East and Africa – but Macron’s perceived attack on Islam has rekindled anti-French sentiment on a massive scale.
Not least in the mind of Turkey’s President Erdogan, said Le Monde (Paris). Still seething over a cartoon published in Charlie Hebdo that made him look ridiculous, he has urged his countrymen to boycott all French goods. Muslims, he said, are now “subjected to a lynch campaign similar to that against Jews in Europe before World War II”, and Macron needed “a mental health check” for speaking as he did about Islam – comments that led France to recall its ambassador to Turkey. Erdogan presents himself as champion of the Muslim world, said Shamil Shams in Deutsche Welle (Bonn). Yet attacking those who use their right to free speech – even when that involves caricaturing religious figures – just entrenches the false view that “all Muslims are intolerant”. Tackling terrorism without resorting to racism is a hard enough challenge: it’s one that won’t be helped by the likes of Erdogan fanning the flames from afar.