"I will not allow any country to feed us with separatism," Macron said at a press conference in the city of Mulhouse in the east of the country, Reuters reports, as reported by Free Europe.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday (October 2nd) that he is committed to fighting "Islamist separatism" which he said threatens to take control of some Muslim communities across France.
The French president said this at a time when local elections are less than a month away.
France has struggled with domestic militant Islamist influences for years, but Macron's government is increasingly concerned about broader signs of radicalization — often nonviolent — within Muslim communities, French officials say.
Examples include the refusal of some Muslim men to shake hands with women, swimming pools that impose separate times for men and women, four-year-old girls being told to cover their faces and the spread of religious schools.
"What we have to fight against is Islamist separatism," Macron said during a visit to the impoverished Paris suburb of Les Mureaux. "The problem is the ideology that claims that one's own laws should be superior to the republic's."
France follows a strict form of secularism, known as "laïcité", which is designed to separate religion and public life. The principle was legislated in 1905 after anti-clerical struggles with the Catholic Church.
More than 250 people have been killed on French soil in the last five years in terrorist attacks.
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