French legislators are set to debate a bill to tackle radical Islamic ideology.

Some authorities maintain that such radical beliefs are creeping into public services, schools and online platforms, with the goal of undermining national values.

The bill is broad and controversial, with 1,700 proposed amendments, and guarantees heated debate for the next two weeks in the lower house of the French parliament.

It reflects a priority for France’s president Emmanuel Macron, who in an October speech painted a dark picture of a perverse version of Islam, France’s second most-popular religion, quietly making inroads and creating a “counter-society”.

Interior minister Gerald Darmanin, a right-leaning member of Mr Macron’s centrist party, wrote a short book on the subject, due to be released in a matter of days. His Manifesto For Secularism outlines fundamental values of France that the bill he sponsors is meant to protect.

“Islamism is a Trojan horse hiding the fragmentation bomb of our society,” Mr Darmanin wrote, according to excerpts from the daily Le Figaro.

“In the face of such a dangerous and insidious enemy, which we know is far from the religion of the prophet (of Islam), it is normal that public officials take unprecedented measures.”

Multiple terrorist attacks in France by Islamist extremists provide a backdrop for the bill.

The text applies to all religions, but some Muslims say the legislation once again points the finger at Islam.

Other critics say the bill covers ground already addressed in current laws.

Meanwhile, far-right leader Marine Le Pen says the bill does not go far enough or even name the enemy: radical Islam.

In ways small and large, the bill seeks oversee the functioning of associations and mosques, including foreign financing, aiming plug up entry points for Islamist ideology into the lives of Muslims.

Among the 51 articles, the bill aims to ensure that public service employees respect neutrality and secularism, while protecting them against threats or violence.

In a bid to protect children from indoctrination and to do away with underground schools, the text requires all children from the age of three to attend a regular school.

Some 50,000 children were home-schooled in 2020, according to French media. But the number of “clandestine schools” where children are reportedly indoctrinated in radical ideology is unknown.

Among other key points, the bill aims to keep a close watch on associations, including those that often run mosques, with measures including one aimed at ensuring that outsiders cannot take control of an association.

Another measure requires associations receiving state funds to sign a “contract of Republican commitment” ensuring they honour French values.

Funding must be reimbursed if the contract is broken. While foreign funding for mosques is not banned, amounts over 10,000 euros (£8,800) must be declared.

If some Muslims feel they have been stigmatised, France’s other religions say they are suffering collateral damage.

Le Monde newspaper reported religious leaders were unanimous in their criticism of the treatment of associations, telling a parliamentary commission that it adds unnecessary layers of work and oversight and arouses suspicion over all faiths.

The proposed law also seeks to halt doctors issuing virginity certificates, as well as the practice of polygamy and forced marriage.

Doctors would be fined and risk jail for providing virginity certificates.

The law includes an article that justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti has called the “Paty law” after the beheading of school teacher Samuel Paty, who showed students in a civics class caricatures of the prophet.

It creates a new crime for hate speech online in which someone’s personal details are posted.

A Chechen refugee beheaded Mr Paty after information about the teacher was spread online.

Centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen are set to face each other in a May 7 runoff for the French presidency after coming first and second in Sunday’s first round of voting, according to multiple projections.

Though Macron, 39, is a comparative political novice who has never held elected office, opinion polls in the run-up to the ballot have consistently seen him easily winning the final clash against the 48-year-old Le Pen.

Sunday’s outcome spells disaster for the two mainstream groupings that have dominated French politics for 60 years, and also reduces the prospect of an anti-establishment shock on the scale of Britain’s vote last June to quit the EU and the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president.

The euro currency was quoted higher immediately after the first projections were issued, with banks quoting around $1.092 versus $1.072 on Friday evening, according to Reuters data.

In a race that was too close to call up to the last minute, Macron, a pro-European Union ex-banker and economy minister who founded his own party only a year ago, was projected to get 24 percent of the first-round vote by the pollster Harris, and 23.7 percent by Elabe.

Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigration and anti-EU National Front, was given 22 percent by both institutes. At least three further pollsters all projected broadly similar results.

Macron’s supporters, gathered at a Paris conference centre burst into singing the national anthem, the Marseillaise, a few seconds after results came through. Many were under 25, reflecting some of the appeal of a man aiming to become France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon.

Le Pen, who is herself bidding to make history as France’s first female president, follows in the footsteps of her father, who founded the National Front and reached the second round of the presidential election in 2002.

Jean-Marie Le Pen was ultimately crushed when voters from right and left rallied around the conservative Jacques Chirac in order to keep out a party whose far-right, anti-immigrant views they considered unpalatably xenophobic.

His daughter has done much to soften her party’s image, and found widespread support among young voters by pitching herself as an anti-establishment defender of French workers and French interests.

“RAMPANT GLOBALISATION”

“The great issue in this election is the rampant globalisation that is putting our civilisation at risk,” she declared in her first word after results came through.

Nevertheless, Le Pen seems destined to suffer a similar fate to her father.

Defeated Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon, Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and defeated right-wing candidate Francois Fillon all urged voters to rally behind Macron in the second round.

Harris gave both Fillon, badly damaged by allegations that his wife had been paid from the public purse for work she did not do, and far-left contender Jean-Luc Melenchon 20 percent in the first round.

“This defeat is mine and it is for me and me alone to bear it,” Fillon told a news conference, adding that he would now vote for Macron.

The result will mean a face-off between politicians with radically contrasting economic visions for a country whose economy lags that of its neighbours and where a quarter of young people are unemployed.

Macron favours gradual deregulation measures that will be welcomed by global financial markets, as well as cuts in state expenditure and the civil service. Le Pen wants to print money to finance expanded welfare payments and tax cuts, ditch the euro currency and possibly pull out of the EU.

Whatever the outcome on May 7, it will mean a redrawing of France’s political landscape, which has been dominated for 60 years by mainstream groupings from the centre-left and centre-right, both of whose candidates faded.

Macron ally Gerard Collomb said the defeat of the mainstream centre-left Socialists and the centre-right Republicans showed a “deep malaise” in French society.

The final outcome on May 7 will influence France’s standing in Europe and the world as a nuclear-armed, veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council and founding member of the organisation that transformed itself into the European Union.

Jewish leaders criticised French presidential frontrunner Francois Fillon on Wednesday for suggesting Jews had in the past not wanted to respect the country’s rules.

Fillon, tipped to win the second round of a primary this weekend to become the conservative candidate for next year’s presidential election, was talking to Europe 1 radio about the need to fight radical Islamism.

“We must fight that fundamentalism, in the same way that in the past … we fought some forms of Catholic fundamentalism and we fought the drive by Jews to live in a community that did not respect all the rules of the French Republic.”

It was not clear what precisely Fillon was referring to.

France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia later spoke with Fillon about his comments, a spokeswoman for the rabbi said in a statement.

Korsia said that although Jewish groups may in the past have lived in relative isolation from wider society, that was “in no way Jewish citizens’ choice, but the consequence of French society not accepting their peers at the time,” the statement said.

Sacha Ghozlan, head of the French Jewish students’ union UEJF said: “Those surprising comments raise questions about how Francois Fillon defines fundamentalism.”

“The UEJF wonders what period Francois Fillon is referring to when he says Jews refused to abide by the rules of the French republic, if it’s not at the time of Vichy (the war-time government that collaborated with Nazi Germany) when Jews were forced to hide and wear a yellow star,” Ghozlan said in a statement.

Fillon later wrote on his Facebook page that his comments had been misunderstood.

“I never meant to call into question the Jewish community’s attachment to our common values and to the respect of the rules of the Republic,” he said.

Security is one of the top issues in the presidential race following a wave of Islamist attacks over the past year and half.

Fillon, who is likely to face the far-right National Front’s Marine Le Pen in the final presidential ballot if he wins Sunday’s primary, has repeatedly warned of the risk of French Muslims being radicalised.

“There is a rise of fundamentalism in the Muslim community, fundamentalists are in the process of taking the Muslim community hostage,” Fillon told Europe 1 before his comments on Catholics and Jews.

Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician leading calls for an EU ban on Muslim immigration, defied prosecutors in his discrimination trial on Friday by repeating in court that he wants “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands.

Wilders is accused of inciting hatred and discrimination against the Moroccan minority, in a trial that coincides with heated debate in European Union countries about the million or more people who have poured into the region over the past year fleeing war and poverty. Many Dutch people oppose the influx.

Wilders could face up to a year in prison.

“Why did I speak about fewer Moroccans?” he said. “The honest answer is because I want fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands.”

The case against Wilders, which follows the acquittal in December of his political ally Marine le Pen in France on similar charges, pits freedom of speech against freedom from discrimination.

Wilders says the trial is politically motivated and his comments are protected by his right to free speech.

With his trademark peroxide blond hair, Wilders sat calmly listening to a day of legal arguments before asking judges to acquit him.

“I didn’t say all Moroccans should leave the country, or all Moroccans are no good, but I spoke about fewer Moroccans because that’s what I want and with me millions of Dutch citizens,” he said, repeating that he wants the border closed to all non-Western migrants.

But he added: “I don’t hate anyone and I don’t spread hate. I reject everything that has to do with discrimination.”

Prosecutors say comments Wilders first made during election campaigning in March 2014 crossed the line of what can and cannot be said under Dutch law.

“Freedom of expression is not absolute, it is paired with obligations and responsibilities,” said lead prosecutor Wouter Bos. “Racism and hatred of foreigners constitute a direct violation of the foundations of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.”

In the televised 2014 incident that led to his prosecution, Wilders asked supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans, triggering the chant: “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!”, to which a smiling Wilders responded: “We’ll take care of that.”

Prosecutors said his supporters had been coached before the event, significant for their attempt to show that Wilders had intended to incite hatred. Later, Wilders publicly referred to Moroccans, who make up about 2 percent of the population, as “scum”.

LEADING IN POLLS

Wilders and his decade-old Freedom Party have become the most popular party in national opinion polls by a wide margin, with elections expected in March 2017.

He has lived under 24-hour protection since the 2004 murder of writer Theo van Gogh, who – like Wilders – made films criticising Islam.

An earlier discrimination case against him in 2011 centred on his calls for “Muslim criminals” to be stripped of their Dutch nationality and deported, and his comparison of the Koran to Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf”.

Judges concluded then that Wilders’ remarks might have been offensive, but acquitted him because the target was a religion, not a race.

Wilders faces one charge of discrimination and a second of inciting hatred of Moroccans. If convicted, he could go to jail or be fined a maximum of 7,400 euros (5,802.5 pounds).

The post Dutch far-right leader tells court – ‘I want fewer Moroccans’ appeared first on TELL MAMA.