(AFP) President Emmanuel Macron has stirred controversy even beyond the Muslim world with a staunch defence of the French model for secularism and integration of minorities in the wake of a string of attacks blamed on Islamist radicals.
The approach of Macron to the integration of Europe’s largest Muslim community and his combative rhetoric towards radical Islam have been called into question not just in angry protests in Islamic countries but by English-language newspapers and even international political allies.
“Is France fuelling Muslim terrorism by trying to prevent it?” read the headline in a recent column in the New York Times. The Washington Post newspaper advised him to fight racism rather than try to “reform Islam.”
