Macron pays his respects by the coffin of Samuel Paty Photograph:( AFP )
When Emmanuel Macron says that Islam is a religion in crisis. He has a point, Muslim dominated areas in France have become increasingly polarised.
France has become an easy target for upholding freedom of expression, Emmanuel Macron is paying the price for not believing in the politics of appeasement.
There are 6 million Muslims living in France, they make up more than 8 per cent of the French population which is the highest tally in the whole of Europe. France will hold its next general election in 2022.
Macron faces a vote in two years and he is a centrist liberal, if had he wanted, he could've used secularism as an excuse to appease French Muslims, use them as a votebank, secure his path to re-election but he has chosen not to because the threat of Islamic terrorism is real in France and it has been for a while. French Muslims know it including European governments as well as Islamic leaders.
However, most of them pretend not to because it suits their own one-sided narrative. They have reduced Macron's war with extremism into a narrow calculation of prejudice & íslamophobia. Just look at what's happened in France in recent years. A total of 1,700 French nationals have joined the ISIS since 2013. Mosques & Islamic institutes have been found receiving funds from Arab countries.
There have been attacks orchestrated by France's own Muslim citizens. In January 2015, Paris was rocked by a series of terror attacks as 17 people were killed. In November 2015, another series of coordinated terror attacks took place in Paris and the death toll was higher as 130 people lost their lives.
In January 2016, a man wearing an explosive belt attacked police officers in Paris and he was shot dead. In July 2016, two terrorists attacked a church in Normandy, an 86-year-old priest got killed.
In the same month, in July 2016, a Tunisian resident of France drove a 19-tonne cargo truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day killing 86 innocent people.
There is more, the 2017 airport attack, the 2017 Champs-Elysees attack, the 2018 Paris knife attack, the 2018 Strasbourg shooting and then in 2020 in the last 10 months - a total of seven major terror attacks have taken place in France. They range from the ramming of cars to the stabbing of policemen to the beheading of a middle-school teacher.
When Emmanuel Macron says that Islam is a religion in crisis. He has a point, Muslim dominated areas in France have become increasingly polarised. Some experts consider these specific areas to be "the lost territories of the republic". Territories where government control is weak, territories where Islamic laws & customs prevail and extremism thrives.
What Emmanuel Macron is doing is to bring back these territories in control, curb Islamic extremism and put an end to acts of terror once and for all. He has proposed new laws, he wants to push religion out of education. He wants to push religion out of the public sector and wants to rein in the radicals, make Islam more compatible with the French constitution and at the same time he wants French citizens to have the freedom to blaspheme.
He wants to ensure freedom of press & freedom of expression. Macron's message is simple - constitution above religion and all citizens equal by law.
"I am asking each citizen, whether they follow a religion or not, to absolutely respect all of the laws of the republic. and there is in this radical Islam, since this is what the issue is, let's take it on board and let's name it, there is a will, a demand, an organized method to go against the laws of the republic and create a parallel order based on other values, developing a separatist society first off with the goal of ultimately taking total control and that's what they are doing, gradually, by rejecting the freedom of expression, freedom of thought, the right to blasphemy, which can insidiously move towards radicalisation," the French president said.
Radical Islam poses a major challenge to French society and to all societies. Macron is only pushing for laws to craft a French version of Islam - a version that is compatible with his country’s laws and values instead of trolling him, the world must support him because who knows which country, which government and which leader will have to take similar steps tomorrow.