French Regional Leader Calls for Urban Reform to Combat Islamist Influence

"We will not eradicate Islamism if we do not break up the urban ghettos," she said in an interview with Journal du Dimanche. The elected official explains that these "ghettos [...] promote self-isolation, community withdrawal and indoctrination." "Faced with this urban separatism, the government is looking the other way," she denounces, regretting that "the start of a reflection on the suburbs two years ago, with the Borloo plan, was nipped in the bud." Ms. Pécresse indicates the way forward to solve this problem. According to her, we need "a population strategy [...]. " Also, we must "rebuild these neighborhoods by allowing real social diversity".

During this interview, she addressed the link between "terrorism and immigration". "It would take a blind person not to (see) it," she says, noting that the killer of Samuel Paty was Chechen and that the author of the Nice attack is a Tunisian in an irregular situation. "But young French people are also growing up in hatred of their country," adds the elected official. She calls for stopping imposed immigration and sending illegal immigrants back home. "The enemy is Islamism, linked to political Islam, this ideology that brainwashes French people and migrants and pushes them to take up arms against France," she assures.