The bill is part of broader French efforts to fight extremism in recent years that gained new urgency after a teacher was beheaded in October and other attacks. President Emmanuel Macron says the efforts are also needed to protect French values like gender equality and secularism from encroaching fundamentalism in some communities.
h/t Marvin
Khairi Saadallah, 26, shouted “Allahu akhbar” as he fatally stabbed friends James Furlong, 36, Dr David Wails, 49, and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39, on June 20 last year. Three other people – Stephen Young, 51, Patrick Edwards, 29, and Nishit Nisudan, 34 – were also injured before Saadallah threw away the eight-inch knife and ran off, pursued by an off-duty police officer.
There is no doubt about it whatsoever, and every decent person must say it loudly and without hesitation: It is very, very unkind of the people to call members of the Makkah Mosque rude names. It would be so nice if people didn’t do that.
Macron argues the legislation is needed to shore up France’s staunchly secular system but the plan has further stirred up social tensions over the consequences for Europe’s largest Muslim community.
All of Europe mourned the victims of the Islamist terrorist attack in Vienna. Hundreds expressed this mourning by laying candles for the victims on the spot, leaving a veritable sea of lights. But a Turkish woman was probably affected by completely different feelings: she went rioting across the memorial on Sunday and simply kicked over the lovingly placed candles of the mourners!
The body of the killer who decapitated teacher Samuel Paty, and was lauded as a ‘lion of Islam’ at his funeral, had been returned from France on Saturday.
