Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Resisting Islamism in France

The French president Emmanuel Macron recently spoke out explicitly against Islamism, vowing to confront it head-on and ensure that it accept secularism or stay out of France. Ayaan Hirsi Ali observes:

That Macron even gave an anti-Islamism speech was itself a sign of how fast the debate is moving in France. Five years ago, when Fox News referred to ‘no-go zones’ in Paris, the city’s mayor threatened to sue. Now we have an avowed centrist like Macron warning that the ‘final goal’ of the ‘ideology’ of Islamism is to ‘take complete control’ of society. Anyone making such arguments just a few years ago would have been condemned by the left as an extremist. Macron is promising a law on ‘Islamist separatism’, restricting home-schooling of Muslims and demanding that Islamic groups in receipt of French state funding will have to sign a ‘secular charter’. (Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "The significance of Macron’s war on Islamism," The Spectator)

Hirsi Ali goes on to suggest several practical steps that could be taken, such as cutting off money from foreign powers to Islamist groups within France, strengthening immigration laws, repatriating asylum-seekers who incite violence, particularly violence against women, dissolving Islamic organizations whose principles clash with the French Republic, disbanding subversive Islamist groups, and generally making France an unpleasant place for Islamists.

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