The terror attack happened to a French history teacher, Samuel Paty, on 16^th October, causing grave repercussions for entire France as the murder transmits a sign that some Muslims refuse to accept and also try to twist or even eliminate one of the core values, freedom, of France as in their understandings, religion superiors everything and everything should be corrected and directed by the religion. However, “the law is clear: we have the right to blasphemy, to criticize, to caricature religions,” said French President Macron, and he has decided to take intense actions towards Islamic separatism and extremism.

“The future of a society depends on the values children grow up with,” said Romy Strassenburg, editor-in-chief for the German edition of Charlie Hebdo. From this point, both the Islamic community and French society want to define and manage the role school has to play. French society aims to respect the republic, but the Islamic community requires to worship the religion. According to the data from France’s national education department, from September 2019 to March 2020, there were 935 cases against educational secularization in school, 57% of problem makers were students, but parents started to direct the case more and more. “An attack on a teacher is an attack on the republic,” concluded Romy.

To protect the republic, Macron announced to dissolve the “Cheikh Yassine Collective”, a pro-Palestinian organization including around 2,000 people, created in 2004 by radical Islamist Abdelhakim Sefrioui who direct encouraged the terror attack against Paty. Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister wants to dissolve Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), BarakaCity, and the Pantin mosque in Seine-Saint-Denis as they spreading hate speech against Paty. The Pantin mosque will be temporarily closed to rectify itself for 6 months since 21 October. Many politicians including Éric Dupond-Moretti, minister of justice, and Marlène Schiappa, minister of gender equality and the fight against discrimination, call for stricter regulation of spreading separatism and extremism online. Till now, at least 80 cases related to the terror attack has been processed. 231 foreigners who are in the FSPRT, the file for the prevention of terrorist radicalization will be deported shortly. The security of schools across France is strengthened, and all provinces will collect Islamic caricatures from Charlie Hebdo and show more students to build a secularistic spirit.

Secularism is a cornerstone of the republic, which was related to the powerful Catholic Church. France successfully separated it and state to reduce the deep and wide religious influence, and the idea of affairs now applies to all religions as well in France. There is no place for religions in the public sphere, which is a rising social conflict in current France with the largest Muslim population in Europe.

The determined actions of the French government led by Macron have drawn fire in the Islamic world. Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Algeria, Sudan, Palestine, and Morocco. They all criticize the caricatures from Charlie Hebdo, and they think the actions and words from French politicians hurt foreign relations. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan criticizes that Islamophobia in Europe has reached levels comparable to the treatment of Jews before WWII. He questioned the mental health of Macron as the latter mentioned Islamist separatism, which for Erdoğan is just freedom of faith. He also calls for a boycott of French products, which is unofficially ongoing in many Muslim countries since last weekend. In many grocery stores in Qatar, French products had been removed from the shelves such as instant yeast, chocolate bar, cheese, etc. Also, decades of French websites were under cyber attack Sunday over anti-France and supporting Islamism remarks, such as the victory of Mohammad, the victory of Islamism, France goes dead, etc.

Macron never said that he aims to tackle all Muslims or Islam, “ …what we must tackle is Islamist separatism…which claims that its own laws are superior to the Republic’s…Our challenge today is to fight against this abuse which some perpetrate in the name of religion, by ensuring that those who want to believe in Islam are not targeted and are citizens of our Republic in the full sense,” said him in a speech on 2 October, even before the case of Paty.

However, the death of Samuel Paty receives no pity from many Muslim countries, such attitude from the Islamic world is considered as an ignorant, acceptance or even support of Islamic extremism and separatism in France as they “legalize” the terror attack as a punishment for unrespect of Islam, which is unacceptable in many European countries.

Many non Muslim countries wish that Muslims living there can have deep understandings and full recognitions of the country’s values, which is hard to achieve in most of cases. The religious power of Islam hasn’t ever been weakened heavily or separated from any country, to make process will be considered as declaring the war against Islam. As the atmosphere between France and the Islamic world gets intense, many European countries including Italy, Netherlands, Austria, and Portugal choose to be against Islamic separatism and extremism, stand for republic values, and protect the common interests of the EU as the EU is not another Islamic world, and Islam won’t be allowed to dominate European society.

_{(Source: DW / Euronews / France Diplomacy)}

At 5 pm on 16^th October, Samuel Paty, a history teacher of a middle school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a city of province Yvelines close to Paris, was beheaded by an Islamic extremist.

The tragedy is confirmed due to the class discussion held by Paty after he showed caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, and he asked Muslim students out in case they felt uncomfortable. The caricatures were made by Charlie Hebdo, a famous French satirical weekly magazine publishing articles and producing cartoons about the far-right, religion, politics, and culture, which makes it a target of terrorism. There were three terrorist attacks in 2011, 2015, and 2020. All of them were connected to a number of controversial Muhammad cartoons that it published as Islamists thought that Charlie Hebdo didn’t respect Islam, for many french, it’s just press freedom. Professor Paty asked students to think “a dilemma: to be or not to be Charlie,” a common discussion adopted in “moral and civic education” class. “To be Charlie” represents blasphemy but isn’t prohibited by law, “not to be Charlie” means to admit that Charlie Hebdo provokes Islamists along with potentially risky attacks.

Defined in Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen of 1789, “the free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious human rights: any citizen can therefore speak, write, print freely, except to answer for the abuse of this freedom, in the cases determined by the law,” which allows french to provoke, criticize the religion but they can be sued if others feel insulted. Charlie Hebdo was sued several times for its religious caricatures.

Apparently for the suspect the freedom of opinion and expression is based on full respect of his religion. According to testimonies from the suspect’s relatives, he spent more time in strengthening religious beliefs online rather than make connections in reality. He read the post of Brahim Chnina, an unsatisfied parent of a Muslim student in Paty’s class, and the video of Abdelhakim Sefrioui, an Islamic extremist, who published the personal information of Paty and encouraged supporter to take action. He contacted a parent of a Muslim student in Paty’s class many times and he paid at least two students to know the appearance of Paty. After a long time and full preparation, he killed the teacher.

The suspect shot dead about 600 meters from its crime scene after he tried to attack the police with the same knife. He has been identified as an 18-year-old Moscow born Chechen refugee named Abdullakh Anzorov.

Chechnya is a predominately Muslim Russain republic in the North Caucasus. France has offered asylum to many Chechens since the Russian military waged war against Islamist separatists. The case is widely considered as rising Islamic extremism challenged republican values, an “Islamic terrorist attack”, called the French President Macron, “a citizen has been murdered today because he was a teacher and because he taught freedom of expression,” “terrosits will not divide France, obscurantism will not prevail,” said him.

For decades of years, French society has been suffering hatreds such as antisemitism, xenophobia, anti-democracy, Islamic extremism, etc. Here the radicalism and extremism refer to the Islamic extremism at first, who causes more crimes and increases horrible social impacts. The French government has realized the severity of it and started to strengthen deradicalization, or more precisely, to prevent the radicalization and to fight the Islamic extremism, especially after a series of terror attacks in 2015.

France has between five and six million practicing and non-practicing Muslims, around 9% of the population, which makes Islam the second strongest religion in the country, and makes the French Muslim community the first powerful community in Europe. The amount of Muslims keeps increasing due to multiple reasons or resources such as birth passion, illegal immigrants, political refugees, receiving members from bigamous marriage, etc. France is willing to accept diversity, but not separatism, and not the religious superiority at all.

The strong separatism from France of some extreme Islamists pushes the French government to monitor them more. France has formed an operating system including multiple level institutions led by the central government. In this system, Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Crime and Radicalization (CIPDR) is the core existence.

“For radicalization, we designate the process by which an individual or a group adapts a violent form of action, directly linked to an extremist ideology with political, social or religious content which challenges the established order on the political, social or cultural level,” defined Farhad Khosrokhavar, Franco-Iranian sociologist, director of studies at School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS). He locates three elements of “radicalization”: violence, ideology, and self-isolation, and clearly points out that extremism is not a sudden change but a long time process.

The process usually begins with family education, so the prevention program of the French Government has a huge portion of family reports. However, an extremist isolating from the social environment is always tied closely with his/her community, and his/her surroundings or supporters are unlikely to help the government to be against themselves. To many loyal Muslims, transforming them into qualified republican citizens may threaten the fundamental interests of Islam, there are obvious difficulties to process the program well in the reality, but France is trying, and all the Europe tries so too.  

_{(Source: France24 / Time / La Toupie / Le Gouvernement de la République Française / Maphill / Franceinfo)}