INTERVIEW
The killings of Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher, the Bataclan attack, but also those of Thalys and Saint-Quentin-Fallavier: during his stay at the Ministry of the Interior, Bernard Cazeneuve was for two years in premiere line against the growing terrorist threat. The Socialist, who recounts his experience in the Test of Violence , talks about the government's struggle against radical Islam. A necessary but difficult struggle, while the issue of Islam continues to divide left. "I have never made the slightest concession" to Islamism, he recalls Saturday at the microphone of Europe 1.
"I am aware that this fracture exists" on the left, he admits, questioned by Patrick Cohen. "There was a part of the left that, when the state acquired the means provided by the rule of law itself to respond to this violence, spoke of Islamophobia or stigmatized the state of emergency as a out of the rule of law when it was nothing more than an instrument to protect the Republic from extreme violence ".
"This fracture there", explains Bernard Cazeneuve, "it is necessary to overcome it and also to affirm the will of the Republic to take all its children in its arms, and in particular the Moslems of France". And the former mayor of Cherbourg remember that many Muslims have themselves died in the various attacks that have hit France since 2015.
"I have maintained a respectful and demanding dialogue with the Muslims of France"
The vast majority of Muslims, he recalls, "are in a conception of their religion very respectful of the principles of the Republic and are in the shame of the behavior of those who are in the deviation of their religion, seek to sow everywhere the violence, division and terror ". These Muslims, adds the ex-"first cop of France", "I have always called them to make their voices heard more, to express themselves more because they are also the pride of the Republic in France. their attachment to the value of living together and to the republican values that constitute our common heritage ".
"Muslims need to take the floor," said the former prime minister. "In the particular context in which we find ourselves, we need to hear the Muslims say their attachment to the Republic". But, he says, "for this expression to take place, the dialogue with the Muslims must be constant, there must be no ambiguity on the part of those who are head of state ". Evoking without naming it the current controversy over the veil, which divides itself within the executive, Bernard Cazeneuve considers that "there must not be any debate on the question of secularism within the government that gives the feeling of confusion ". And to conclude: "The French can only do block when there is a clarity on the values".