President Emmanuel Macron has given the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) two weeks to agree to a “Republican values charter” and vow to end all practices of political Islam.
The French leader, alongside Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, met with eight of the nine representatives of the CFCM and demanded the group draft and ratify a “charter of Republican values” as soon as possible.
“There will be those who sign and those who will not sign. We’ll learn from it. Either you are with the Republic or you are not with the Republic,” Macron told the representatives, Le Figaro reports.
According to the newspaper, Macron gave the group two main conditions: to end “all practices of political Islam” and “commit to putting an end to any foreign interference”.
Those groups which refuse to agree to the conditions will be viewed as “separatists”, an adviser told the paper, noting that Macron would not compromise on either subject.
The president also pushed for the creation of a French National Council of Imams and called on the CFCM to come up with their own guidelines for the training of Muslim religious leaders using the model of the Orders of Lawyers and Physicians as a guide.
The project was already in the works and expected to be rolled out by the end of the first quarter of 2021, but due to the recent terrorist attacks, Macron has ordered the policy be expedited.
Chems-Eddine Hafiz, the rector of the Paris mosque, commented on Macron’s push to fight Islamist ideology, saying: “The president is asking for an unambiguous commitment to fight Islamism. If he fights it without any electoral ulterior motives, I fully adhere to it.”
Since the murder and beheading of teacher Samuel Paty last month and the subsequent Nice church terror attack, Macron has vowed to crack down on Islamist ideology and Islamist-linked groups.
One group, the NGO BarakaCity, has already been dissolved and its founder recently asked President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for asylum in Turkey.
The French leader has also called for a reformation of the European Union’s internal Schengen free movement agreement to combat terrorism and linked illegal migration to terrorist acts.