Macron declares war on “Islamist separatism”

This is no longer a police fight against Jihadist terrorism. This time France will attack the very roots of the doctrine that has taken over the spirit of thousands of French Muslims, and which has colonised entire neighbourhoods in many of the country's cities. President Emmanuel Macron understands that the phenomenon is the result of tolerance towards multiculturalism and consequently decrees a war of “reconquest” of the territories of the country threatened by “Islamist separatism”. 

During his visit to Mulhouse, an industrial city on the Upper Rhine with one of the highest rates of Muslim population in the country, Macron announced the end of ELCO, an acronym for Education of Language and Culture of Origin. It was set up in the early 1970s, in the midst of an explosion of foreign immigration to a France that at the time required huge amounts of foreign labour. Thanks to this administrative system, nine countries that supplied migrants - Algeria, Croatia, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey - were empowered to send teachers, priests and imams to train the children of migrant families in their language and culture of origin. The aim was to avoid the logical problems involved in any move to a new country, culture and customs, while allowing the pupils to return to their parents' country one day, with or without them, without having lost their cultural roots. 

The experience of almost half a century shows that generations of immigrants from southern Europe have become fully integrated into France and have naturally assimilated its republican values. The same is not true of Muslim emigration. While a large majority of them have also integrated and accepted French culture and customs, a fractious and often violent minority have created real ghettos in many cities, where it is advocated to live outside the laws of the French Republic. 

The imams that Turkey (150), Algeria (120) and Morocco (30) sent, maintain and pay to exercise their duties in France are blamed for the phenomenon, all of them affiliated to mosques and Muslim federations supported and financed by their countries of origin. 

Police monitoring and French spying on these clerics provide numerous and unquestionable indications of their influence, not always beneficial, on the training of Arab children and adolescents. Macron holds them responsible for the fact that these young people have set up de facto territories independent of the laws that apply to all citizens of France, or worse, when they have not incited them to commit terrorist acts or join the ranks of jihadism. It is therefore what he calls “Islamist separatism”, against which this war of re-conquest of those parts of France that are supposedly lost, has begun. 

By virtue of secularism, the French State cannot interfere in the religion practised by each of its citizens, but it does have every right to control the teaching of culture. Once again, the clash occurs because Muslim imams do not separate the two and even preach that the mandates of religion are superior and above the laws of the host country. Macron therefore bases his offensive on the fact that “in addition to not speaking the French language in many cases, one cannot teach things that are manifestly incompatible with the laws of the Republic or with history as we see it”. 

The replacement of the imported imams will in principle be done by others trained in France. In this regard, and bearing in mind the principle of separation of State and religion, it will be the French Muslim organizations that will be responsible for training and appointing them. Obviously, these organizations, like all French organizations, will have to be absolutely transparent, particularly with regard to their means of financing, especially if a large part of it comes from abroad.

In this regard, Qatar finances the An Nour Centre and its Great Mosque in Mulhouse, which is conceived as one of the largest Muslim centres in Europe, controlled by the Association of Muslims of Alsace, doctrinally linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, considered to be a radical Islamist group, which as such advocates violence in order to achieve the goal of a universal caliphate. For Macron, it is the very emblem of that “Islamist separatism” which he is going to fight relentlessly.