President Macron’s hate affair with the American media continues, if a recent New York Times article is anything to go by. The president is not happy, and thinks the Anglo-Saxon press fails to understand French laïcité and the universalist model, as opposed to the Anglosphere model of multiculturalism, with its distinct roots in the British Empire. While this is undoubtedly true, the more pressing issue might be the gulf in understanding of Islamism, the target of Macron’s campaign.
France’s introduction of new measures to combat so-called “Islamist separatism” and the decisions to raid Islamist organisations and dissolve others in the aftermath of Samuel Paty’s murder have caused consternation among Western elites. Over the weekend, Twitter was awash with comparisons between France’s policies and the plight of Jews in 1930s Germany. These conspiratorial takes not only demonstrate a deep moral and intellectual confusion, but at this point they are actively endangering French citizens — almost 300 of whom have been slaughtered in the streets by Islamist murderers in the last few years.
Macron’s strategy against Islamism warrants intense scrutiny, but that scrutiny must start with an acceptance that Islamism is a real phenomenon and a serious challenge to France, both in terms of violent radicalisation and social cohesion.
The Anglosphere should know by now that Islamism does not mean the same as Islamic. As was explained by two of France’s leading scholars, Bernard Haykel and Hugo Micheron, failing to make this differentiation only confirms Islamist and far-right presentation of events.
Modern Islamism has its roots as much in political parties founded in Egypt and the subcontinent during the 20th Century as religious scripture, its ideological trajectory shaped by a series of theorists and scholars right up until the present day.
Islamists are not simply religious conservatives — indeed they are opposed to many traditional cultural practices — and the extent of Islamism is not only defined by acts of terror. It is a comprehensive political theory, albeit one with a religious basis: Islamists seek a fundamental reordering of society and the establishment of a state governed in accordance with the shar’ia.
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