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Heart and Soul: France and its faltering relationship with Islam

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France and its faltering relationship with Islam

30/04/2021 GMT

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, France and its faltering relationship with Islam

John Laurenson meets people on both sides of a fractious debate for Muslims in France

John Laurenson meets people on both sides of a fractious debate for Muslims in France and the controversial law The Bill Comforting the Respect of Republican Principles.

France is on its way to passing The Bill Comforting the Respect of Republican Principles, one of the most controversial laws of President Macron’s presidency. It aims to fight back against what Emmanuel Macron and his ministers are calling “Islamist separatism”, what he says is an assault by Islamist extremists on the values of the French Republic.

John Laurenson meets people on both sides of this fractious debate. He visits a closed-down Paris school that its head teacher says is an early victim of President Macron’s war against “Islamist separatism” and meets another teacher – also Muslim - who describes her struggle with what she says is religious extremism in the classroom. 

John meets an MP and the head of a militant secularist organisation both keen on the law. He also goes to Trappes, a suburb of Paris that many say is a breeding ground for Islamic extremism, and drinks mint tea with a scholar of Islam. He meets an Islamic bookseller called John, goes to the mosque and talks to the mayor, eats a “halal ham” sandwich, meets an inhabitant who says she lives “Islamist separatism” every day and another who says the new law stigmatises Muslims in general and will separate them still further from the non-Muslim people of France.

(Photo: A woman holds a placard reading "Freedom leads all the people" as protesters demonstrate against a bill dubbed as "anti-separatism", in Paris. Credit: Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP/Getty Images)

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