The Council of State, the highest administrative court in France, decided that, to allow freedom of religion, the burkini must not be banned. At first the ruling looked sound: why should people not be able to wear what they wish when they wish? What is not visible, however, is that the harm comes later.

If someone still does not realize that the Islamic dress code is the Trojan horse of Islamist jihad, he will learn it fast.

A few recent incidents include:

September 7. In Guingamp, Brittany, a 17-year-old girl in shorts was beaten by a man who considered her outfit “too provocative”. Although the attacker escaped, so that the police have no idea who he is or what his background might be, it is a taste of things to come.

September 7. In Toulon, southern France, two families were on a bicycle path when they were insulted by a gang of 10 “youths” (the French press uses “jeunes” [youths] in order not to say Arabs or Muslims). According to the local prosecutor, the “youths” shouted at the women, “whores!” and “strip naked!” When the women’s husbands protested, the “youths” approached and a fight began. One of the husbands was found unconscious with multiple facial fractures.

At first, the motive of the attack was reported to be linked to the women wearing shorts, but in fact the women were not wearing shorts; they were wearing leggings.

July 19. In a resort in Garde-Colombe (Alps), a Moroccan man stabbed a woman and her three daughters, apparently because they were scantily dressed. One of the girls was seriously injured. The attacker, Mohamed, says that he was the “victim,” because he claims the husband of the woman he stabbed scratched his own crotch in front of Mohamed’s wife. According to the prosecutor, “the husband of the victim does not remember having made such a gesture.”

July 7. A day-camp center in Reims, eastern France, circulated a note asking parents to avoid dressing their daughters in skirts because of the improper conduct of boys aged 10 to 12. A mother published the document on Twitter and commented on Facebook: “Obviously the idea did not occur to them that it is not for little girls to adapt their dress to big creeps, but for big creeps to get educated? ”

In early June, 18-year-old Maude Vallet was threatened and spat on by a group of girls on a bus in Toulon because she was wearing shorts. She posted a photo of herself on Facebook with the caption, “Hello, I’m a slut.” The posting was shared by more than 80,000 people. The attackers were Muslim girls, but Maude, according the “politically correct” who believe “thntdwi” (this has nothing to do with Islam), did not want to reveal their ethnic origin.

April 22. Nadia, a 16-year-old girl wearing a skirt, was severely beaten in Gennevilliers, a suburb of Paris, by three girls who were apparently Muslims.

Snapshots of France’s new sharia police. Left: In Toulon, 18-year-old Maude Vallet was threatened and spat on by a group of Muslim girls on a bus, because she was wearing shorts. She posted a photo of herself on Facebook with the caption, “Hello, I’m a slut.” Right: In a resort in Garde-Colombe, a Moroccan man stabbed a woman and her three daughters on July 19, apparently because they were scantily dressed.

These cases were dramatically publicized in all media, both official and social. Ironically, however, none of these incidents triggered the international attention and outrage that greeted a Burkini incident in Nice: A woman, apparently Muslim, was lying alone on a beach with no towel, no book, no parasol, no sunglasses, no husband (or brother, or father) to “protect” her, in the full glare of the midday sun near a police post — with a photographer nearby ready and waiting to take pictures of her surrounded by four policemen. Who alerted them? The woman was issued a fine and possibly ordered to remove some of her clothes on the beach. Pictures of the incident were first published on August 23 by the Daily Mail and within minutes went viral, provoking international indignation against these seemingly racist French people discriminating against innocent Arab women. A week later, however, the Daily Mail suggested that this incident may well have been “staged” and the “pictures may be SET UP.”

So the real question is: Are Islamists in France now using photos and videos, the way the Palestinians are doing against Israel: to film and disseminate fake and staged situations in order to provoke global indignation about supposedly poor Muslim “victims” — especially women who are allegedly “discriminated against” in France?

If fabricated propaganda is allowed to persist, the defrauders will win a big war.

“In the war that Islamism is leading with determination against civilization, women are becoming a real issue,” said Berenice Levet, author and professor of philosophy at the École Polytechnique to the daily Le Figaro.

She added:

“Rather than produce figures that say everything and nothing, I want it recognized once and for all that if today the roles of the genders are forced to regress in France, if domination and patriarchy are spreading in our country, this fact is related exclusively to our having imported Muslim values.”

Ironically, at the same moment, France’s Minister for Family, Children and Women’s Rights, Laurence Rossignol, decided to spend public money on an ad campaign against “ordinary sexism” — the supposed sexism by all French men against supposedly eternally victimized women. But there was not a word in this campaign about the possible victimization or potential outcome from the increasing proliferation of the burqa, veil or burkinis on Muslim women.

Commenting the ad campaign, Berenice Levet added:

“Laurence Rossignol should read Géraldine Smith’s book, Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud. Une vie de famille entre barbus et bobos (“Jean-Pierre Timbaud Street: The life of a family among bearded men [Islamists] and Bohemians”). She would learn — among other things — that in some stores or bakeries, men are served first, before women.”

In this book, we can learn also that in the heart of Paris, a Muslim can insult a woman for drinking a cola in the street. But for many, including Rossignol, it seems the only enemy is the white Frenchman.

Two serious questions are at stake:

• Are sharia police emerging in France?
• Are French institutions sacrificing one freedom for another? Is the principle of equality between men and women being sacrificed to freedom of religion (Islam) to impose its diktats on French society?

Sharia Police

In France, no organized Islamist brigades patrol the streets (as in Germany or Britain) to fight alcohol consumption or to beat women for the way they are dressed. Yet gangs of “youths”, again, both men and women, are increasingly doing just that in practice. For years now, “big brothers” have been obliging their mothers and sisters to wear a veil when they go out. And now that this job is done, they have begun to fight non-Muslim women who wear shorts and skirts — no longer just in the sensitive Muslim enclaves, the “no-go zones” of the suburbs, where women no longer dare to wear skirts — but now also in the heart of big cities.

More and more, the equivalent of “Islamist Virtue Police” try to impose those standards by violence. As Celine Pina, former regional councilor of Île-de-France, said in Le Figaro:

“In the last recorded attack [on the families in Toulon], with cries of “whores” and “strip naked”, the young men were behaving as a “virtue police” that we had thought impossible here in our parts…

“It cannot be expressed more clearly: it is a command to modesty as a social norm and self-censorship as a behavioral norm… [it]… illustrates the rejection of the female body, seen as inherently impure and dirty…

“The question of the burkini, the proliferation of full veils, assaults against women in shorts and the beating of their companions, share the same logic. Making body of the woman a social and political issue, a marker of the progress of an ideology within society.”

Laurent Bouvet, a professor of political science, noticed on his Facebook page that after the men were beaten in Toulon, so-called human rights organizations — supposedly “professionals” of “anti-racism” — remained silent in the debate.

The prosecutor of #Toulon said: “the fight was trigger by a women’s dress code. These women were not wearing shorts… Sexism is undeniable. Where are the professionals of public indignation?”

Laurence Rossignol, Minister for Women’s Rights, remained silent too. So a new rule has emerged in France: the more politicians and institutions do not want to criticize Islamists norms, the more violent the debate on social networks.

Equality between Men and Women or Freedom of (Islamic) Religion?

The silence of politicians and human rights organizations, when non-Muslim women are violently assaulted because they wear shorts that are not compatible with sharia — as opposed to their thundering indignation against police for issuing a fine to a Muslim woman in a burkini — signals an immensely important political and institutional move: A fundamental and constitutional principle, equality between men and women, is being sacrificed in the name of freedom of religion, thereby enabling one religion (Islam) to impose its diktats on the rest of society.

Studying the burkini case in Nice, Blandine Kriegel, philosopher and former president of Haut Conseil à l’intégration (High Council of Integration) published an analysis in which she establishes that in the burkini case, secularism or individual freedom were not even in danger in the first place. But “fundamentally an openly, the principle of equality between men and women” was surrendered:

In its remarkable ordinance, the Council of State refers to the jurisprudence of 1909 concerning the wearing of a cassock and does not pay attention to more recent laws voted on by sovereign people, prohibiting the veil at school (2004) and burqa in public places (2010).

The Council of state did not feel inspired either by the constitutional commitment towards women: “the law guarantees women, in all fields, same equal rights as men.”

In the burkini affair, neither secularism nor individual freedom is at stake; but fundamentally and openly the principle of equality between men and women. … This term “burkini” integrates intentionally the word “burqa”; this word does not express the desire to go swimming at the beach (nothing prohibits this); or the affirmation of a religious freedom (no mayor has ever prohibited the exercise of the Muslim religion); the word burkini express only the essential inequality of women.

Contrary to their husbands, who feel free to exhibit their nudity, some women must be covered from head to toe. Not only because they are impure, but mostly because of the legal status conferred to them: they are under the private law of the husband, the father or the community.

The Republic cannot accept something opposed to its laws and values. Inequality of women cannot be defended on the ground of religious freedom… of freedom of conscience. This issue was addressed three centuries ago by our European philosophers, who are founding fathers of the Republic. To those who were legitimating oppression, slavery and inequality were merely the expression of free will, explained the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, inspiring our 1789 Declaration [of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen], and that freedom and equality are inalienable possessions.

France’s socialist government and administrative judges have apparently found it politically useful to make concessions to Islamists. Perhaps they originally agreed to burkinis not only because they may think that people should wear what they like, but also in the vain hope of calming down the permanent pressure that increasingly appears to be a cultural jihad. It may not even have occurred to them that they were potentially sacrificing the principle of equality of women.

Many people evidently still do not know that Islam is a religion and a political movement at war with the West — and openly intent on subjugating the West. It must be responded to as such. The problem is, every time it is responded to as such, Muslim extremists run for cover under the claim of freedom of religion.

It is high time for French and European politicians to draw a hard line between where one person’s right to worship as they see fit ends, and where society’s right to freedom and security begins. And it is time to outlaw, not necessarily the burkini, but the very real problem of aggressive supremacism.

The root problem is incitement to violence. It is crucial for Western societies to start making a distinction between freedom of speech and incitement to violence, and to begin seriously penalizing attacks on innocents, as well as calls to attack innocents.

Yves Mamou, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.

From time to time, France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) offers a glimpse of the ethnic composition of French society. The study, “Being born in France to an immigrant parent” (Être né en France d’un parent immigré), published in February 2017, is one of them.

Like few other glimpses, the Insee study offers a partial view of the ethnic composition of the French population. A statistical breakdown — with the answer to the perennial question: how many Muslims in France? — would be perceived as discriminatory and outrageous. Given France’s “integration model,” nobody should dare identify people by their origins, religion, color of skin and so on. A Frenchman is a Frenchman, whatever the color of his skin or his religion, and any measurement of the sub-Saharan population — for example, their level of education, that of their children, the type of jobs their parents are doing, how many times they go to mosque or if they have spent time in prison — is illegal, discriminatory and racist. Sub-Saharan populations must disappear in aggregate data about French people.

The study, however, provides some telling information. In 2015, 7.3 million people born in France had at least one immigrant parent (11% of the population). Of these 7.3 million people, 45% are of European origin, most of whom are children of immigrants who arrived in France from Spain (8%) or Italy (12%) as early as the 1930s, or from Portugal in the 1970s onwards. One can assume, although it is not written in the study, that these people are of Christian origin.

Another group is composed of Africans. 42% of the 7.3 million children born in France to an immigrant parent are of African background, mainly North Africa. They came from Algeria (15%), Morocco (11%), Tunisia (5%) and sub-Saharan Africa (11%). Although it is also not specified in the study, it would seem that the great majority are Muslim.

Another group, children from Turkish migrant families, represent 4% of the 7.3 million. These people are classified as Asian; they are not included in the African and Muslim group. Most of these Turks are also presumably Muslim.

A conclusion therefore would assume that 46% of the descendants of immigrants are Muslim and 45% are Christian. The remaining 9% are from East Asia or the Americas.

A new study from France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, “Being born in France to an immigrant parent,” provides some telling information on the ethnic composition of French society.

Criticizing the limited data of this study, Michèle Tribalat, a French demographer, published some personal conclusions in Atlántico, a news website. First, Tribalat expressed her regrets “not to have the population figures of persons of foreign origin for two generations”. But, she said, it is not so difficult to compile it one’s self.

“If we add the two generations (immigrants and children of immigrants), this gives a total of 13.5 million, or 20.4% of the population. Thus, we have slightly more than one inhabitant out of five of foreign origin, across two generations, in 2015”.

Asked by Gatestone how she came to the 13.5 million figure, she replied:

“Very simple. I added the 2015 migrant population (6.2 million) to the Insee’s 7.3 million children of immigrants, and it came to 13.5 million.”

In her Atlántico article, Tribalat maintains that more important than the 2015 data picture, is the growth-rate that led to the 2015 figure. Tribalat calculated her own estimates of this growth, with starting points in the years 1986, 1999 and 2011, coming up with figures of a stunningly fast growth for the number of migrants over two generations: the 13.2 million migrants of 2015 (20.5%; 300,000 that are “missing” are from French overseas territories), were 12.1 million four years earlier and 9.8 million in 1999. In other words, 19.2% in 2011 and 16.8% in 1999. The population of French persons of foreign origin would therefore have increased, when looking at two generations, by 9% between 2011 and 2015 alone.

For the same period, French children born in France to parents born in France increased by only 2.6%, writes Tribalat.

Consequently, France’s population is increasing significantly only because of immigration. But which immigration? Christian or Muslim? Tribalat continues:

“I showed that the annual average rate of increase of immigrants was almost zero between 1975 and 1999. But it is not the same story from 1999-2015. … The population of sub-Saharan origin is the one that grows more quickly. In four years (2011-2015), looking at two-generations (immigrants and children of immigrants), the sub-Saharan population seems to have increased by 43%. This population is extremely young. In 2015, 80% of the children of sub-Saharan immigrants are under 25 years of age”. (Author’s emphasis)

These conclusions are confirmed by another Insee study, “Demography of the descendants of immigrants” (Démographie des descendants d’immigrés), published in 2014.

“The Turkish and sub-Saharan African population is growing at an extremely rapid rate (which could lead to a doubling in less than 10 years if this continues)…. The total fertility rate of women born in Turkey is approximately 3, as it is for women born in sub-Saharan Africa. It is closer to 3.5 for women born in North Africa, while it is only 2 for women born in Europe, especially in France.”

In other words, if the Muslim population of France can be estimated at around 6 million today, it could grow to 12 million by 2020-2025.

This figure does even not take into consideration the Muslim population that immigrated to France from North Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s. There are a few million of them — nobody knows how many exactly. They became French very early, and for demographers, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren are not regarded as immigrants anymore. These Muslims are, rather, integrated into statistics as French citizens born of French parents. They are Muslim, but under the statistics radar.

France’s Muslim population could quickly grow to close to 15-17 million, but no one can know precisely unless the law prohibiting the official collection of ethnic data is changed.

These questions are not spoken about openly in the fierce pre-election presidential debate raging in France. The question is not politically correct. But in these times of expanding Islamism, they weigh silently in favor of Marine Le Pen.

Yves Mamou is a journalist and author based in France. He worked for two decades for the daily, Le Monde, before his retirement.

February 2, 2017: A “no-go zone” in the eastern suburbs of Paris. Police on patrol hear screams. They decide to check. While there, a young man insults them. They decide to arrest him. He hits them. A fight starts. He accuses a policeman of having raped him with a police baton. A police investigation quickly establishes that the young man was not raped. But it is too late; a toxic process has begun.

Without waiting for any further evidence, the French Interior Minister says that the police officers have “behaved badly.” He adds that “police misconduct must be condemned”. French President François Hollande goes to the hospital to give his support to the young man. The president says he has conducted himself in a “dignified and responsible manner.” The next day, a demonstration against the police is cobbled together. The demonstration turns into a riot.

Riots continue for more than two weeks. They affect more than twenty cities throughout France. They spread to the heart of Paris. Dozens of cars are torched. Shops and restaurants are looted. Official buildings and police stations are attacked.

The police are ordered not to intervene. They do what they are told to do. Few arrests take place.

Police look on as a car, which was destroyed by rioters in a Paris suburb, is removed on February 13, 2017. (Image source: Ruptly video screenshot)

Calm is slowly returning, but the riots can easily start again. France is a country at the mercy of large-scale uprisings. They can explode anytime, anyplace. French leaders know it, and find refuge in cowardice.

What is happening is the result of a corrosive development initiated five decades ago. In the 1960s, after the war in Algeria, President Charles de Gaulle directed the country toward closer relations with Arab and Muslim states.

Migratory flows of “guest workers” from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, which had started a few years earlier, sharply increased. Immigrants were not encouraged to integrate. Everyone assumed they would return home at the end of their employment contracts. They were settled in the outskirts of big cities. The economy was dynamic, with strong job creation. It seemed there would be no problems.

Twenty years later, serious difficulties became obvious. The immigrants now numbered millions. People from sub-Saharan Africa joined those coming from Arab nations. Neighborhoods made up of just Arabs and Africans were formed. The economy had slowed down and mass unemployment settled in. But the jobless immigrants did not go back home, instead relying on social benefits. Integration still did not exist. Although many of these new arrivals had become French citizens, they often sounded resentful of France and the West. Political agitators started teaching them to detest Western civilization. Violent gangs of young Arabs and Africans began to form. Clashes with police were common. Often, when a gang member was wounded, political agitators would help to incite more violence.

The situation grew difficult to control. But nothing was done to fix it; quite the opposite.

In 1984, a movement called SOS Racisme was created by Trotskyist militants, and began to define any criticism of immigration as “racist”. Major leftist parties supported SOS Racism. They seem to have thought that by accusing their political opponents of racism, they could attract the votes of “new citizens.” The presence of Islamist agitators, alongside agitators in Arab and African neighborhoods, plus the emergence of anti-Western Islamic discourse, alarmed many observers. SOS Racisme immediately designated those who spoke of Islamic danger as “Islamophobic racists.”

In 1990, a law drafted by a Communist lawmaker, Jean-Claude Gayssot, was passed. It stipulated that “any discrimination based on ethnicity, nation, race or religion is prohibited.” Since then, this law has been used to criminalize any criticism of Arab and African delinquency, any question on immigration from the Muslim world, any negative analysis of Islam. Many writers have been fined, and most “politically incorrect” books on those topics have disappeared from bookshops.

The French government asked the media to obey the “Gayssot law.” It also asked that history textbooks be rewritten to include chapters on the crimes committed by the West against Muslims, and on the “essential contribution” of Islam to humanity.

In 2002, the situation in the country became dramatic.

Arab and African neighborhoods had become “no-go zones.” Radical Islam was widespread and Islamist attacks began. Dozens of cars would be torched each week. Muslim anti-Semitism was rising rapidly and led to an increase in anti-Jewish attacks. SOS Racisme and other anti-racist organizations were silent on Muslim anti-Semitism. Unwilling to be accused of “Islamophobic racism,” organizations tasked with fighting against anti-Semitism were also silent.

A book, The Lost Territories of the Republic, by Georges Bensoussan (under the pen-name “Emmanuel Brenner”), was released. It depicted accurately what was going on. It spoke of the sweeping hatred for the West among young people of immigrant origin, and of the full-blown hatred of Jews among young Muslims. It said that “no-go zones” were on the edge of secession and no longer a part of French territory. The mainstream media ignored the book.

Three years later, in October 2005, riots broke out across the country. More than 9,000 cars were torched. Hundreds of stores, supermarkets and shopping centers were looted and destroyed. Dozens of police officers were seriously injured. The storm stopped when the government reached an agreement to make peace with Muslim associations. Power had changed hands.

Since then, the state scarcely maintains law and order in France.

Another book, A Submissive France, was recently published by the man who had written The Lost Territories of the Republic fifteen years before, the historian Georges Bensoussan. Now, the French Republic itself is a lost territory.

“No go zones” are no longer French territory. Radical Islam and the hatred of the West reign among Muslim populations and, more broadly, among populations of immigrant origin. Muslim anti-Semitism makes life unbearable for Jews who have not yet left France and who cannot afford to relocate to areas where Jews are not yet threatened: the 16^th and 17^th arrondissements, the Beverly Hills of Paris; or the city of Neuilly, a wealthy suburb of Paris.

Everywhere in France, high school teachers go to work with a Qur’an in their hands, to make sure that what they say in class does not contradict the sacred book of Islam.

All history textbooks are “Islamically correct”. One-third of the French Muslims say they want to live according to Islamic sharia law and not according to the laws of France.

In hospitals, Muslims are increasingly asking to be treated by Muslim doctors only, and refusing to let their wives be treated by male doctors.

Attacks on police officers occur on a daily basis. The police have orders: they must not enter “no-go zones.” They must not respond to insults and threats. They must flee if they are assaulted. Sometime, they do not have time to flee.

In October 2016, two policemen were burned alive in their car in Viry-Châtillon, south of Paris. In January 2017, three police officers fell into an ambush and were stabbed in in Bobigny, east of Paris.

Police officers did respond to the incident on February 2. When a man became violent, they did not flee. The French government could only find them guilty, accusing a police officer of raping his attacker. But the police officer was not guilty of rape; he was guilty of simply having intervened. The French government also found his colleagues guilty. They were all accused of “violence.” They now will have to go to court.

The young man who destroyed the lives of these police officers is not being accused of anything. In all the “no go zones,” he is now a hero. Mainstream television channels ask him for interviews. His name is Theodore, or Theo. “Justice for Theo” stickers are everywhere. Banners sporting his name are waved at demonstrations. Rioters shout his name along with the name of Allah.

A few journalists have said that he is not a hero; that “no go zones” are reservoirs of anti-Western, anti-Semitic and anti-French hatred ready to burst. But these journalists are also cautious. They know they might be prosecuted.

Georges Bensoussan, the Moroccan-born author of The Lost Territories of the Republic and of A Submissive France — is currently on trial. A complaint was filed against him by the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF). They are suing him for having said: “Today we are witnessing a different people in the French nation; they are causing the return of a number of democratic values to which we adhere,” and “This visceral anti-Semitism, proven by the Fondapol Survey last year, cannot remain in silence.”

Judges were immediately assigned to the case. The verdict is due March 5. If Bensoussan is not sentenced, the CCIF will be sure to appeal. Bensoussan is a man from the left. He is a member of “J Call” (European Jewish Call for Reason), a movement criticizing “Israel’s occupation of the West Bank”, and asking for “the creation of a viable Palestinian state”. Even such positions are no longer enough to protect him. The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA), an organization founded in 1927 to combat anti-Semitism, supported CCIF. Organizations ostensibly fighting anti-Semitism in France instead seem to be clinging to futile fantasies of appeasing their tormentors. They never mention Muslim anti-Semitism, and have now fully joined the fight against “Islamophobic racism” against Jewish authors such as Georges Bensoussan.

Elections will be held in France, in April. The Socialist Party chose a candidate, Benoît Hamon, supported by the UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France), the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The far-left and the communists will also have a candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, an unconditional admirer of Lenin, Hugo Chavez and Yasser Arafat, and a resolute enemy of Israel.

Hamon and Mélenchon will likely each receive about 15% of the vote.

A third candidate from the left, Emmanuel Macron, is a former member of the French Socialist government under François Hollande. To attract the Muslim vote, Macron went to Algeria and said that French colonization was a “crime against humanity.” He stated several times that French culture does not exist, and that Western culture does not exist either; but he added that Arab Muslim culture must have “its place” in France.

The conservative candidate, François Fillon, promises to fight Sunni Islam, but says he wants a “strong alliance” between France, Iran’s mullahs and Hezbollah. His reputation is badly damaged by a “fake jobs” scandal. He has attacked France’s Jewish community, presumably to secure the Muslim vote. He said it does not respect “all the rules of the Republic.” He has said that Israel represents a threat to world peace.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate of the National Front, may seem the most determined to straighten France out, but her economic program is as self-defeatingly Marxist as that of Hamon or Mélenchon. Le Pen also wants to attract the Muslim electorate. She went to Cairo a few months ago to meet the Grand Imam of al-Azhar. Like all other French political parties, her party supported the anti-Israeli positions of former U.S. President Barack Obama, as well as UN Security Council Resolution 2334, passed last year on December 23.

Le Pen will likely win the first round of the two-round election, but will almost certainly be defeated in the second round: all the other candidates will gather behind the candidate facing her, probably Macron or Fillon (if he still is in the race). Le Pen might think that in five years the situation in France will be even worse, and that then she will have a serious chance to be elected President.

A few months ago, in a recently published book, Civil War is Coming, the French columnist Ivan Rioufol wrote: “The danger is not the National Front, which is only the expression of the anger of an abandoned people. The danger is the ever-closer links between leftism and Islamism…. The danger must be stopped.”

Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.

France is taking steps to de-radicalize its mosques in the hopes of preventing the radicalization of its Muslim community.

Since December, the French government, acting under expanded emergency powers, has shut down twenty mosques for preaching Salafism, a strict and highly politicized Sunni interpretation of Islam. Groups such as ISIS adhere to Salafism. About 120 of France’s 2,500 mosques and prayer halls are considered Salafist.

A little background: the United States’ 9/11 Commission found that Saudi Arabia uses charity and “government funds to spread Wahhabi [a Saudi form of Salafism] beliefs throughout the world, including in mosques and schools.” The technique of spreading Wahhabi-Salafi beliefs by funding mosques and, crucially, those who preach in them, has occurred in places as far-flung as Pakistan, Senegal, and Germany.

In Belgium, the Saudis remade an Oriental pavilion into the Great Mosque of Brussels. They continue to fund many Belgian clerics whose “radical Salafist teachings came from a very different tradition” from the Islam of the Muslim communities who immigrated to Belgium from Morocco and Turkey. Gulf charity funds likewise radicalized the previously tolerant Muslim community in Kosovo. Both countries are among the largest sources of ISIS fighters in Europe. Belgium has provided more fighters per capita than any other country in Western Europe; Kosovo is the overall second-largest European country of origin, again, per capita.

The problem is not that foreign charities directly subsidize jihadi activities, but that they promote a highly aggressive ideology with a political agenda, whose followers are more likely to take the next step into violent action. In trying to contain radical Islam, Kosovar authorities have arrested 14 imams and shut down 19 Muslim organizations for acting against the constitution, inciting hatred and recruiting for terrorism. Belgium has arrested militant preacher Fouad Belkacem and threatened to close radical mosques in the Molenbeek district of Brussels.

The Saudis have also funded mosques in France, including one in Nice that opened in July (two weeks before the Bastille Day attack) after a 14-year struggle. The city’s former mayor, Christian Estrosi, had accused building owner Sheikh Saleh bin Abdulaziz, who is Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Affairs Minister, of “advocating sharia.”

A Saudi-funded mosque opened in Nice in July (two weeks before the Bastille Day attack) after a 14-year struggle.(Image source: Institut Niçois En-nour)

France has had a long-running debate about foreign influence over its Islamic institutions. A Senate report published on July 5, 2016, recommended monitoring foreign funds by having them channeled through a dedicated foundation. It also called for setting up a training program sufficient to train the country’s Muslim religious leaders that is “adapted to the French context.” Currently, France has two small institutions qualified to train imams, which are inadequate to meet the community’s needs. Therefore, about 300 imams were hired from abroad. The foreign imams are not well-adapted to France, and many of them speak French poorly, if at all. Finally, the report cautioned that there is an inherent tension between the government’s desire for more control over French Islam and the country’s legal separation of “church” and state.

Apparently in response to the report’s recommendations, on July 29, Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced he favors imposing a temporary ban on foreign funding of mosques. Valls also urged that imams be locally– rather than foreign-trained.

On August 1, the French Muslim Council announced the creation of a new foundation to help finance French mosques and keep out radical benefactors. Council head Anouar Kbibech made the announcement after meeting with Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. Cazeneuve, who announced the planned closure of 20 mosques after the same meeting, said he wants the foundation to launch in October, and added that the government is working to assure “total transparency” in mosque financing.

The announcement was welcomed by France’s political opposition, although politicians have expressed concern that the de-radicalization efforts will undermine France’s strict policy of separating church and state, called laïcité. Democratic Movement party president, François Bayrou, and Socialist party member, Julien Dray, appeared to endorse the proposal, stating, “Funding is an urgent issue for French society. The financing of mosques is a problem since it is financed by foreign powers.”

Roger Karoutchi, spokesman of the French Republican party, also expressed support, but cautioned “there should be no renunciation of the 1905 Act [separating church and state].”

Cazeneuve likewise stated that the government seeks a way forward that will “strictly respect the secular principles of the Republic.”

The main practical problem to implementing the new foundation appears to be funding. State money may not be used to fund religious institutions directly. Bayrou, Dray, and others have advocated raising money by taxing halal food, but that idea is controversial. Among other things, it may embroil France’s Muslim community in a dispute to create a commonly recognized standard about what constitutes halal food.

Thus, France has opened a new front in its battle against Islamist terrorism. Fighting terrorism is not just the responsibility of the government, the prime minister said, but rather all of society needs to get involved. Salafism “has no place in France,” Valls stated, adding that France needs to “invent a new relationship with Islam.” In essence, the French government is trying to promote the development of a “kinder, gentler” form of Islam in France by limiting the influence of foreign Salafists.

Johanna Markind is an attorney who writes about public policy and criminal justice.