Polls show most French citizens want Macron to crack down on radical Islam

PARIS (Reuters) – Most French people want Muslims suspected of harboring extremist views detained if they appear on spy agency watch lists and would back a ban on Salafist Islam, two polls showed after the latest deadly attack in France.

Right-wing opponents of Emmanuel Macron have demanded the president get tough on security and suggest there would be widespread public support for steps targeting mosques and imams preaching hate, as well as foreigners deemed a threat.

An Odoxa poll published on Friday showed 87% wanted people suspected of religious radicalization to be put in detention, and 88% favored banning Salafist Islam.

An Elabe survey showed 80% backed the expulsion of radicalized foreigners, while more than half of its respondents said Macron was not doing enough to counter terrorism.

The president wants to redraw the relationship between France’s Muslims and the secular French state. He is not the first.

Since the late 1980s, successive governments have tried but failed to nurture a liberal “Islam of France” that would help integrate the faith into a mostly secular society.

The issue is back in focus after a Moroccan-born French national killed four people in southwestern France on March 23, proclaiming allegiance to Islamic State. About 240 people have now been killed in France since early 2015 by terrorists or inspired by Islamic State.

Salafist Islam, the puritan literalist interpretation of the faith that is the basis for Islamic State’s violent ideology, says Muslims must return to the practices of early Islam in the seventh century and shun many aspects of modern Western life.

Opposition politicians including center-right leader Laurent Wauquiez and farright chief Marine Le Pen have demanded the expulsion of all foreigners on the Fiche S watch lists of the intelligence services. They contain about 20,000 people, including about 10,000 for reasons of religious radicalization or connections.

Former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls urged the government to consider internment in cases where a real risk of terrorist activity is perceived.

Valls has also pressed for a ban on Salafism, a step current Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has so far dismissed.

“You cannot ban an idea but you can punish its consequences if they undermine public order, the laws or the republic or the basic rules of society,” Philippe told lawmakers last week.

France, a traditionally Catholic nation, formally separated church and state a century ago and strict secularism is the official rule. The country has Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities. The latter is estimated to number upwards of five million.