The French president makes a lot of noise, both at home and abroad.
Some of it is active diplomacy, and many are the expression of a worried state.
The noisy debate hardly subsides until it is renewed about France's identity, political system, cultural identity, civilizational affiliation, and historical roots.
An anxiety that the Constitution of the Fifth Republic could not resolve, nor the strict vision in the construction of the French political society, which whenever tested seemed fragile, in electoral stations and major events, and saw it as a threat to itself, while itself itself is not defined by features or characteristics.
The features of this concern can be clearly monitored by stopping at some spaces, where this concern appears to be quite apparent.
On the societal level,
France does not seem aware of the extent of the historical, demographic, and dynamic transformations that French society is witnessing, growth and transformation.
France is not the beginning of the last century, France is the end of it.
profound shifts in the level of its social structure;
For example, the number of Muslims in it is about ten million, and some cities may become half of them within a decade or two.
It is enough to follow the national team for a famous game such as football to find that most of its stars are of non-French origin.
With these demographic transformations, France does not appear as a country capable of absorbing and interacting with it, including integration and integration into the social, economic and professional fabric, after those people of non-French origin have become an integral part of it. Does this happen in France today?
The answer does not seem to be so, but there is a clear prohibition on assimilating and integrating millions.
Many of them live in what looks like isolated "ghettos" (suburbs France), where "bastards" live, in the words of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The ghettos there transcend the place, as they are not only a geographical concept, but a comprehensive concept that extends in the spaces, even for those who live in the heart of the city from the different French citizens, on its fringes is a social fabric, a national culture, and an economic cycle.
And if there is indeed a residence in her heart, then it is on the margins of her urbanization.
On the cultural level
, for France to be proud of its culture, so it venerates, celebrates and popularizes it. This is one of the civilized national entitlements of every country that is proud of itself and respects its civilization and affiliation, which is a required and commendable matter.
However, this pride in oneself cannot be transformed into cultural arrogance. The self swells with it and wears it in a state of cultural blindness. It turns into a closed self, refusing to open up, denying the overpowering dynamics of history, of which one of the most staunch theorists and the monitoring of its laws were French thinkers under the title “Modernity.” as a historical inevitability.
France is the country of “lights” and a solid pillar of modernity. It lags behind in its renewal and interaction, confused, suspicious and shy about freeing itself from solid concepts and final definitions, and immersing itself in the dynamic of its renewal.
And when it boasts about its refusal to conform to globalism, it errs when it disavows universality, openness to the universal human experience.
France is trying desperately to cling to the dissemination of Francophone culture.
It is even sensitive to interaction with other cultures, so that it is betting on restoring the momentum of the French language, and spreading its use, especially in the African colonies.
This identity frenzy escalated, due to official rhetoric laden with incitement, to the extent that more than a thousand current and retired military leaders participated in publishing an open letter in May 2021, warning of the collapse of the republic, and the threat of secular principles by the growing “Islamist threat.”
It was remarkable that the prominent Lebanese writer, Amin Maalouf, author of the book "Killer Identities", residing in Paris, occupied the Claude Lévi-Strauss chair in 2012, after this chair had been vacant for more than a hundred years.
Maalouf himself had previously faced successive refusals to enter the French Academy, due to what was considered his involvement in participating in 2007 in drafting a "manifesto for world literature" that declared the death of Francophonie.
On the political level
, elections are not held, and a government is not formed unless its main title is the identity of France.
Yes, the identity of France, which is presented in every election campaign on the campaign platforms of the candidates. You find banners in the street, and in the market, where, for example, a loud controversy erupts about butcher shops, and they shout when they sell “haram meat”, which Muslims and Jews do not eat, because from their point of view it is halal meat. While France sees it as a forbidden meat that threatens the values of the Republic and the principles of secularism.
Rather, the issue turns into a tumultuous debate, as halal butcher shops are seen as dangerous expressions and forms of "isolationism" and "Islamic separatism."
What applies to “halal meat” as a manifestation of a threat to the principles of laïcité and the values of the republic, also applies to the headscarf of Muslim women, the “hijab.”
The veil that the French Muslim student wears in the institute and the university turns from time to time into the mother of issues.
This "concern" over the Muslims of France escalates into fear and isolation, so the concern of the "Republic" turns to the concern of its Muslims, and turns into a complex state of congestion, the scope of which is expanding.
The republic's identity anxiety has grown to a point where the state has reached the point of accusing its citizens of separatism and isolationism.
It expressed itself through a law proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron to combat Islamic separatism, known as the "Law to Promote the Values of the Republic".
For his part, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin went on to publish a "Manifesto" under the title "Islamic Separatism: A Manifesto for Laïcité."
This intransigence seemed as if the state had declared war on a part of its citizens by portraying them as separatists. Rather, the state had put itself face to face with its Muslims.
This identity frenzy escalated with official rhetoric laden with incitement, to the point where more than a thousand current and retired military leaders participated in publishing an open letter in May 2021, warning of the collapse of the republic and the threat of secular principles from the growing “Islamist threat.”
The most dangerous thing in the aforementioned "military statement" is that it threatened to intervene to save the republic if the state did not take qualitative measures.
This persistent identity anxiety in France came in quite the opposite way.
Instead of dismantling the elements of the crisis and trying to restore the political community, and scrutinize and update the social contract, this anxiety, which turned into charged official speeches, contributed to the deepening and complexity of the crisis, until the image of republican France and Paris of lights appeared anxious and tense.
She is worried about herself, herself, her children, and her neighborhood, near and far.
An enlightened republic that prides itself on secularism but narrows in freedom, enlightenment but narrows in renewal, democratic but narrows in difference, progressive but looks backwards.
Millions of its citizens are begging for a place of worship, and begging for a purely personal right to choose clothing, while it is besieging them with its laws and excluding them with its constitution, as if they are illegitimate children.
France, modernity and progress, today obliterates the values of citizenship, brotherhood and equality, the staunch pillars of the republic, with official speeches, and trample with policies and an arsenal of controversial laws the foundations of coexistence until the French society seemed to be societies, and the public space became spaces, and the suburbs became some of them for supervision and others for bastards.
France covers its official internal isolation, with an unbridled openness to the European space, an openness not in search of the different and the plural, but rather the similar counterpart, to compensate with the different interior, obliterating it and pushing it to the margins.
Secular and secular France, it is looking for its "pure, original" Western European counterpart, to hide in it and with it from the different emergency French, who descends from North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, all the way to the Middle East.
That is why France seems most enthusiastic about the European Union, and even presents itself as a locomotive for it, advancing it, and does not hide its desire to reform its institutions, enhance its role, and secure its space, national security, military strength, and strategic position.
The current president, Emmanuel Macron, recalls in this regard the glorious history of the republic, and of the founder of the Fifth Republic, Charles de Gaulle.
France, anxious and noisy, dares to teach everyone with the illusion of leadership.
She claims that "Islam is sick", Muslims are "separatists", Algeria "was nothing" and the youth of the suburbs are "bastards" and that the East must comply with the West with culture and values
Republican France, ostentatiously secular and irresistible with laïcité, is based on a strict vision, a solid conception of the relationship of religion to the state.
As the French state seems to be constantly striving to center around itself and fortify itself, it is the soul, it is the mind, it is the beginning and the end.
And if the task of the state in the United States is to protect freedom of religion and belief, and in Italy it is cooperation between the state and the church, then the French model is based mainly on the fact that everything is devoted to protecting the state.
Among the conditions for protecting the state is the protection of secularism, which means that when the state controls religion, it is the one who defines it and interprets it religiously, so it decides what is the correct religion, which guarantees the supremacy of the state over everything else.
On a strategic level
, the tense and anxious identity of republican France also expresses itself through Paris' vision of its surroundings.
It is a vision haunted by constant worry.
During the French Revolution, Napoleon led his military campaigns, relentlessly, to invade neighboring countries, believing that France would not be satisfied except with a neighborhood that resembled it and believed in what it believed in.
The French Republic tends to be the same, and every difference seems to be worrying and stressful.
During World War II, while the United States and the allies were liberating France from Nazi Germany, Charles de Gaulle, the refugee in Britain, was looking for ways to limit the influence of the Allies in his country.
This French concern from abroad took hold with the Fifth Republic. France, which was one of the founders of the Atlantic Alliance (NATO), decided to withdraw from it in 1966, by a decision made by de Gaulle, who was keen on the independence of his country, and not to fall under American hegemony.
A withdrawal that lasted until 2009, when the French National Assembly voted to return to the alliance, and this policy reflects the constant state of anxiety that grips France.
The anxious state of the French Republic sometimes expresses itself in stark contrasts;
France, always eager to be identical with Africa by extension, often acts in contradiction and undermining this desire.
France exaggerates in tightening laws and complicating the opportunities for people to immigrate to the southern bank, especially Africa, expressing a state of tension and concern about the diversity and cultural pluralism emerging from New France, due to waves of immigration.
France always realizes too late the extent of the damage caused by this persistent and sometimes fatal anxiety.
France has lost the absolute lead in recruiting African students to China.
For the first time in the past few years, China succeeded in receiving more African students than France, despite the historical relations between the African continent and France, as well as the geographical proximity, and this change has medium and long-term effects on the decline of French influence in favor of China coming from far with "
France, an anxious republic, seems more tense and more vocal today than any other European country.
Her vociferous concern is quickly reflected in her public policies and the management of her political meeting.
An anxious state that prevents her from realizing the emergency elements of transformation, and the benefits of interacting with these profound changes, for renewal.
Republic France, which was one of the pillars of the Enlightenment era and then modernity, will suffer from the exacerbation of this clamor if it does not tame itself, and if it has stubbornly resisted the reality of internal transformations, and has not updated the elements formed for itself, a multidimensional identity, and for its system, a multicultural republic.
France, anxious and noisy, dares to teach lessons to everyone with the illusion of leadership, claiming that “Islam is sick”, Muslims are “separatists”, Algeria “was nothing” and suburban youths are “bastards” and that the East must comply with the West with culture and values, and France in doing so exacerbates Her clamor and anxiety deepened her identity, deteriorating from a worried identity to a murderous one.