France: President Macron:"we must not repeat the mistakes of the Middle Ages to demonize Islam as we did to Protestants"

French President Emmanuel Macron

A fascinating debate is bubbling along among intellectuals in France following M Macron’s election as President of France, concerning something the French political system is supposed to be completely free from: religion. In 1905 a law of laïcité formally separated Church and state.

Most French people are notionally Catholic, and a significant proportion appear to be observant. The Protestant church in France estimates a following of just over a million people, or 2% of the population.

President Macron grew up in a secular household, and he has several times expressed his commitment to the idea of laïcité: but when he was 12 years old, feeling, as he has put it, the need for some “spirituality”, he asked to be baptised as a Catholic.

It is worth parsing Mr Macron’s ideas about religion because he has a particular interest in the subject.

He was baptized into the Catholic faith at his own request at the age of 12, and schooled by Jesuits, brainy Catholics who often live on the border between their own religion and other faiths and cultures.

Mr Macron has in his speeches likened the internal problems of the European Union and its monetary system to a religious conflict. The Protestant north had a rigid and moralistic attitude towards debt while the Catholic south, with its culture of confession and absolution, took a more happy-go-lucky view, he once said.

On the subject of Islam, some of what Mr Macron says is broadly what you would expect from a centrist politician in France.

French Muslims must be encouraged to develop their own, enlightened reading of the faith, fully compatible with the laws of the republic. They must be helped to wean themselves off dubious sources of foreign funding. They must be part of the struggle against terrorism. Although the state can facilitate all these developments, the main responsibility must be borne by Muslims themselves.

Most of these sentiments have been expressed by other French office-holders, and they are worthy if difficult to put into practice. But in that Montpellier speech, Mr Macron said one thing which was highly contentious for Muslims and non-Muslims alike:

"Our mission…it will be difficult, it will take time, it will be demanding for all men and women…will be to act in such a way that French people of the Muslim faith are always more proud of being French than of being Muslim…"

Is that actually conceivable? Being a citizen of the French republic, with all its rights, obligations and ideological axioms, is a demanding business. For its most fervent adherents, French republicanism is supposed to supersede all previous loyalties, be they Catholic, Protestant or Jewish.

But being a Muslim, a member of the umma, the global community of believers, is pretty demanding too. In practice, people do find ways of negotiating their political and religious loyalties.

Traditional Islam does not urge its followers to disobey the laws of well-organized states: on the contrary, it encourages a cautious and conservative way of life. But for many Muslims, asking them to be “less proud” of their faith than their passport will still be asking too much.

For all his cerebral intensity, Mr Macron was not giving a history lesson for its own sake. His aim was to warn his compatriots not to repeat the mistakes of the Middle Ages. Just as it was wrong and inexpedient for medieval France to demonize the Protestants, so too it would be wrong for today's politicians to demonize Islam or its followers.

EU-Digest