Emmanuel Macron will meet Monday with representatives of the French Council of the Muslim cult (CFCM), announced the president in an interview broadcast Sunday, stating that he did not want to "give way to precipitation" to speak about secularism. "I'm about to see the representatives of the French Council of Muslim worship," he said in an excerpt broadcast by RTL of a recorded interview on his return flight from Reunion Friday. The meeting is scheduled for the morning, told AFP Abdallah Zekri, general delegate of the CFCM and president of the National Observatory against Islamophobia, confirming information from the radio.
"This debate on the veil lasts since 1989, we must stop"
The theme will be "to see how our fellow citizens whose religion is Islam can quietly live their religion by respecting absolutely all the laws of the Republic," says the head of state, while the theme of relations between Islam and secularism has been debated for several weeks. "We will first tell him about the concern of Muslims and especially Muslim women about the veil that has become a hysterical affair led by some right-wing and left-wing politicians," said Abdallah Zekri. For him, "this debate on the veil lasts since 1989, it is necessary that one stops, that the president take a firm position on it".
The Senate will consider Tuesday a Republican law proposal to ban the wearing of religious symbols to parents accompanying school trips. According to an Ifop-JDD survey, three out of four French people are in favor of such a ban. In the excerpt of the interview to RTL (which will be broadcast in full Monday in the morning editions), Emmanuel Macron says it will announce "in the coming weeks" a battery of measures "to fight against this communitarianism" in "the education, health, work, different services to the public ".
"I'm not asked to speak secularism, I want to talk about Islam"
"Which means," he explains, "to have prohibition measures, which means sometimes to dissolve some associations even more, which means banning certain practices that have taken place and that do not conform to the rules. laws of the Republic ", and in summary" be intractable with the laws of the Republic ". "We are French citizens, we respect the values of the Republic," said Abdallah Zekri.
The head of state had called on October 8, a few days after the attack killed four officials at the police headquarters in Paris, to build "a society of vigilance" in the face of the risk of Islamist terrorism. Asked by RTL whether he will speak about secularism in the near future, the president says that people are "confused." I'm not asked to speak secularism, I want to talk about Islam. I do not want to give way to the haste or the injunctions of speech in those moments, because I myself would be accomplice of a kind of collective confusion.