Macron’s Islamic charter is an unprecedented attack on French secularism
2021/02/05 Leave a comment
The best analysis I have seen to date:
Adopted last month by the French Council of the Muslim Faith at the behest of President Emmanuel Macron, a new 10-point “Charter of Principles” of French Islam will please all those who have been calling for a “progressive,” “reformed” or “enlightened”Islam – one consistent with democratic, egalitarian and liberal western values.
It also represents a significant personal victory for Macron, who for months had pressured the council to craft a document committing to a “French Republican Islam”. Non-Muslim authorities, governments, media and public intellectuals have been demanding this for years as a way to combat “Islamism” and “extremism”.
It very clearly aims to turn Islam into a quietist, ‘pacified’ religion whose practitioners remain docile and obedient to the political powers-that-be
The unprecedented charter can thus be seen as a clear assertion that Islam is indeed compatible with secular democracies in general, and with the French republic in particular. In a nutshell, the charter aligns Islam with France’s republican principles, including gender equality; non-discrimination, including sexual orientation; and freedom of conscience, including the freedom to leave Islam.
It condemns “excessive proselytism” and attests to the superiority of and obligation for all Muslims to recognise France’s laws, constitution, republican principles and “public order”.
Article two proclaims an obligation for Muslims to “conform to the common rules” of France, which “must prevail over any other rules and convictions, including those of our own faith”. Article eight recognises the French principle of laicite, or secularism.
But article six, the longest, is also the most loaded. It proclaims that no mosques or other Islamic places can have “political agendas” or engage in political and ideological discourse or activity; these are described as “an instrumentalisation” and “perversion of Islam”, whose sole and “true purpose is prayers and the transmission of values”.
It condemns “the propagation of nationalist discourses defending foreign regimes and supporting foreign policies that are hostile to France, our country”. It dissociates Islam from “political Islam” and prohibits signatories from engaging in the latter, including “Salafism (Wahhabism), the Tabligh and the Muslim Brotherhood”. This amounts to an excommunication of those Islamic trends and movements from legitimate or “true” Islam.
Crafted by the executive
There is no doubt that this charter was essentially crafted by the French executive itself – especially Macron and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, who for years had been calling for the assimilation of Islam strictly within the limits, laws, principles and frameworks of France’s Fifth Republic. Darmanin even wrote a book about it.
The charter is not coming from Muslims. It is the brainchild of Macron’s campaign to force the French Muslim council to craft such a text, deploying against one religion a type of pressure, intimidation, threats, ultimatums and blackmail never before seen in French post-war history.
At the end of the signing ceremony, a close adviser to Macron explicitly threatened anyone who refuses to sign and live by the charter, saying: “Those who disagree will hear from us very quickly and see their operations inspected very, very closely by our services.” This, in a context where the interior ministry is banning Islamic NGOs, closing schools and shutting down mosques by the dozen.
This operation is an integral part of Macron’s crusade against “Islamist separatism”, for which he is using the French Council of the Muslim Faith as a facade, an alibi, a cover to circumvent a constitution that forbids state interference in religious doctrines. The charter is a word-for-word synthesis of all the injunctions and demands that Macron has addressed to Muslims over the past year.
Amazingly, article nine not only declares that state racism does not exist, but also that such an expression would constitute “defamation, and as such, a crime”. Its timing coincides with the introduction of Macron’s anti-separatism bill, and the Elysee Palace has stated that the charter was drafted within the framework of “technical workshops” presided over by the interior minister.
Source: Macron’s Islamic charter is an unprecedented attack on French secularism