Demonstration against France, in Dhaka, Bangladesh on November 2, 2020. -
Suvra Kanti Das // SIPA
Emmanuel Macron continues to defend French secularism internationally.
The head of state published
a column
in the
Financial Times
on Wednesday evening
to explain that "France is fighting against Islamist separatism, never against Islam".
This letter to the British daily is in fact a response to an article published on Monday but since withdrawn from the site, in which he says he is “accused of stigmatizing French Muslims for electoral purposes;
worse, to maintain a climate of fear and suspicion towards them ”.
Let us not cultivate ignorance by distorting the words of a head of state.
We are only too sure where this can take us. Https://t.co/CkW8DbjHkq
- Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) November 4, 2020
"I will not let anyone say that France, its state, cultivates racism vis-à-vis Muslims," insists the president, believing that his words have been distorted.
As on the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera a week earlier, Emmanuel Macron tries to explain beyond the borders of France that his fight against "Islamist separatism" is not a fight against Islam, while Muslims several countries reacted angrily to his words, calling for a boycott of French products.
France "will not give up"
After recalling the series of attacks that have struck France since the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015 and left 300 dead, Emmanuel Macron explains that France is under attack for its values, secularism, freedom of expression and that it "will not give up".
But he also exposes in detail the cases of Islamist “separatism”, according to him “breeding ground for terrorist vocations”.
He thus evokes "hundreds of radicalized individuals who are feared, at any time, that they will take a knife and go and kill the French".
"In certain neighborhoods as well as on the Internet, groups linked to radical Islam are teaching the children of France to hate the Republic, calling for disrespecting the laws".
" You do not believe me ?
Reread the exchanges, the calls to hatred broadcast in the name of a misguided Islam, on social networks which finally led to the death of Professor Samuel Paty a few days ago.
Go visit the neighborhoods where little girls of three or four years wear the full veil "and" raised in a project of hatred of the values of France, "he says.
Refusal of division
"This is what France intends to fight today" but "never against Islam".
“Against obscurantism, fanaticism, violent extremism.
Never against a religion.
We say: "not with us!"
», He adds.
"It is our strictest right as a sovereign nation", "we do not need newspaper articles seeking to divide us," he concludes.
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