Paris (AFP)
French Prime Minister Jean Castex denounced Sunday evening the "compromises for too many years" of political parties and intellectuals with radical Islamism, against which we must lead an "ideological fight".
"This fight, it is ideological: the enemy seeks first to divide us by spreading hatred and violence, to fracture the national community," warned the head of the French government on the TF1 channel.
"I want here to denounce all the compromises that there have been for too many years, the justifications for this radical Islamism: + We should self-flag, regret colonization, + I don't know what else", he added. .
"The first way to win a war is for the national community to be united, or united, or proud of our roots, of our identity, of our Republic, of our freedom. We must win the ideological fight," said the Prime Minister.
"It's over, no more complacency from intellectuals, from political parties, we must all be united on the basis of our values, on the basis of our history," he insisted.
The head of government announced new upcoming dissolutions of "front associations" and operations against "false mosques (...) underground schools".
"The underground schools, we are closing them, we will continue to close them. The false associations that are brainwashing, we are going to dissolve them (...) We have closed two of them and we will continue," he said. He specifies.
"We must imperatively strengthen our legislation, especially the means of action to face" hatred on social networks, he added.
France has seen several Islamist attacks recently, including the murders Thursday in Nice (south) of three people in a church and the beheading two weeks ago of a teacher, Samuel Paty, by a Chechen Russian Islamist for showing in class cartoons of Muhammad, in a course on freedom of expression.
French President Emmanuel Macron has since pledged that France would not give up the freedom to caricature.
His statements have provoked a crisis with the Muslim world, where demonstrations of protest and calls for a boycott of French products are increasing.
© 2020 AFP