Macron Shifts Stance on Islam Policy in France, Merging Anti-Separatism Plan

According to Le Monde, the plan to fight against communitarianism should ultimately include a component on the structuring of Islam in France, even though the President of the Republic had always refused to mix the two subjects. The Head of State believes that this could lead to dangerous amalgams, the same media specifies.

For this plan, it is also planned to strengthen the relations between the State and the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), an institution created in 2003 by Nicolas Sarkozy to - already - settle the issues of religious practice of Muslims in France. According to the same source, it is "an institutionalization of the CFCM and its departmental chapters in a plan to fight against political Islam".

On the subject, the Head of State had invited not to make any amalgam. No question of drawing a parallel between communitarianism, now in full expansion in certain neighborhoods, and the practice of their religion by Muslims, had wished the Head of State. The President of the French Republic had made the same speech last October, after the knife attack at the Prefecture. In his speech, Emmanuel Macron had specified, in a spirit of appeasement, that it should "in no way" be seen as "a fight against a religion but against its perversion and what leads to terrorism".

Those close to the president attribute the change in discourse to the fact that he would have been convinced of the non-dissociation of the three terms, namely radicalization, communitarianism and Islam. According to a close associate of the French president, Emmanuel Macron realized that the notions are intertwined. "If we want to fight against political Islam, we have to aggregate the Muslims, who ask to be protected from it. The plan has therefore been rearranged," it is argued.

Even if this turnaround was expected by some deputies of the majority, very upset on the subject, the Élysée has decided to no longer talk about "communitarianism", but rather of "separatism" to justify its plan. "The goal is not to put society under tension, but on the contrary, to appease," it is explained at the Élysée.