France to crack down on Islam
PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron of France on Friday outlined a series of measures designed to rein in the influence of radical Islam in the country and help develop what he called an “Islam of France” compatible with the nation’s republican values.
Macron said that the influence of Islamism must be eradicated from public institutions.
The measures include placing stringent limits on home schooling and increasing scrutiny of religious schools, making associations that solicit public funds sign a “charter” on secularism.
The question of the effects of Islamism has been persistent in France, amid fears of the kinds of terrorist attacks the country has faced in recent years.
“What we must attack is Islamist separatism,” Macron said. “Secularism is the cement of a united France,” he said, calling radical Islam both an “ideology” and a “project” that sought to indoctrinate children, undermine France’s values — especially gender equality — and create a “countersociety” that sometimes laid the groundwork for Islamist terrorism.
But Macron also recognized that France bore responsibility for letting that ideology spread uncontested.
“We built our own separatism ourselves,” he said. For too long, authorities had amassed largely immigrant populations in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, leading to a “ghettoization of our republic,” he said.
Macron said that to avoid “illegal schools” run by “religious extremists,” home schooling would be strictly limited to children with valid medical reasons. Macron also outlined a series of measures aimed at making the financing and management of mosques more transparent. Most notably, he said that within the next four years a widespread practice that has foreign-trained imams come to preach in French mosques would be phased out in favor of a France-based training and certification system.
The failure to integrate immigrant populations and their descendants, at its extreme, has radicalized some young French, who went to fight for the Islamic State group in Syria or carried out terrorist attacks at home.