Can France integrate its Islamic population?
Emmanuel Macron recently announced that he wanted to end ‘Islamic separatism’ in France. A minority of the country’s estimated six million Muslims risk forming a ‘counter-society’, he said. It is tough talk from the President, but Macron is keen to position himself as the defender of French values, and he has form: when statues were being pulled down across the western world, Macron proclaimed that ‘the Republic won’t erase any name from its history. It will forget none of its artworks. It won’t take down statues.’
That Macron even gave an anti-Islamism speech was itself a sign of how fast the debate is moving in France. Five years ago, when Fox News referred to ‘no-go zones’ in Paris, the city’s mayor threatened to sue. Now we have an avowed centrist like Macron warning that the ‘final goal’ of the ‘ideology’ of Islamism is to ‘take complete control’ of society. Anyone making such arguments just a few years ago would have been condemned by the left as an extremist. Macron is promising a law on ‘Islamist separatism’, restricting home-schooling of Muslims and demanding that Islamic groups in receipt of French state funding will have to sign a ‘secular charter’.
Wow. It wasn't long ago that I wondered if the whole "Charlie" moment of resolve in the face of Islamist fanaticism and murder had collapsed. Earlier this year the separatism seemed way worse.
And now the president of France recognizes what I warned about 15 years ago because of the Clichy-sous-Bois car-burning riots:
My fear is that the jihadis in France will increasingly lead the alien and alienated Moslems of France. Remember our own Revolution. When colonists first confronted British soldiers with arms in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, and then lay siege to the British in Boston, we did not seek political separation. Our forebears only wanted their rights as Englishmen recognized. It was not until July 1776, more than a year later, that we made independence from the British our official goal.
This is not jihad and it never has been, says Strategypage. But this says nothing of the future. Will it become jihad? A cry for rights can become a cry for separation in remarkably short time. Will we look back at the events at Clichy-sous-Bois as the first clash leading to a declaration of independence by France's Moslems?
Is it too late to start in 2020? Does France have the political will to actually end Islamic separatism, which will take generations of sustained effort?
And it will take a lot of effort to overcome what is actually a glaring lacuna in Islamic law:
Islam has rules on how Moslems are to behave in Moslem societies and even in Moslem societies conquered by non-Moslems. But given the long stretch of early Islamic conquests, nobody setting down doctrine thought about the duties of Moslems who choose to live in a non-Western society, as so many have chosen in the modern era. It is a lacuna in Islamic thinking that damages the idea of Islam as an organizing template for every facet of life.
Or will France simply crack down on Islamists with too much collateral damage among Moslems who aren't jihadi-sympathetic and so spark more extreme separatism among too many of France's Moslems?
One thing for sure is that the problem won't get easier to solve if the effort is delayed--or screwed up.
Another thing for sure is that Macron won't get any help from media coverage.
Let's hope the French have a lot of the nuance they are credited with having. It will take more than slapping COEXIST bumper stickers on their non-burning cars.
