(CBC) “This is our separatism.”
Separatism — a word that has weight in many countries, notably Canada.
Here the speaker was French, in fact it was French President Emmanuel Macron.
The separatism he was talking about, in a major and long-delayed speech on Oct. 2, was Islamist separatism in France, an effort by Muslim hardliners in the country to capitalize on the alienation many young Muslims feel to create a regiment of fighters for jihad, or holy war against France, the West and Jews.
The result has been a series of fatal attacks in the last decade in France, as well as the presence of French Muslims fighting in extreme groups in the Middle East.
