Radical Islam is THE Issue in France's Coming Election

A memorial to the victims of the November 13, 2015 terrorist attack in France. Photo by © Citron / CC BY-SA 3.0

Each of the candidates for the French presidency has staked out a position on the question of how to deal with radical Islamist terrorists in France.

Marine Le Pen has taken the hard line, with a trove of ideas for clamping down on the spread of the violent radical Islamist ideology in Gaul.

Scott McConnell lays out Le Pen’s plan and the plans of the other candidates at The American Conservative.

In any case, Le Figaro today published its investigation of the state of the Muslim vote in the campaign. It is still quite small, a million perhaps, but growing. Of course all the candidates have at least put forth some ideas of how to deal with radicalization: Muslim imams should be trained in French universities, so that they absorb “the values of the Republic” (Macron); Muslims who go abroad to fight should be stripped of their nationality (Fillon); support the values of laïcité, protect the girl who wears shorts as well as the one who wears the headscarf (Hamon); the left-most candidate Mélenchon warns against the “instrumentalisation” of laïcité against Islam, which I suppose is is a nice way of saying he doesn’t plan to do anything. Le Pen, of course, has a long list of ideas, ranging from the aforementioned dissolution of the UOIF, to banning the wearing of ostensible religious signs or garments, shutting down Salafist mosques, the requirement that sermons be preached in French and the creation of a special surveillance agency to keep track of radical prisoners. To see these ideas written out makes me suspect no satisfactory political solution is going to be reached any time soon.

In its survey, Le Figaro makes the point that the Left can’t be assured of picking up the Muslim vote, that 86 percent of Muslims voted for President Hollande last election and yet feel “disappointed by the Hollande years.” But it’s fair to say the disappointment goes both ways, and the fact that heavily armed policeman are needed to guard religious services on Good Friday is an expression of what the politicians understand but don’t want to talk about.