LES MUREAUX, (France): President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a plan Friday to defend France's secular values, announcing stricter oversight of schooling and better control over foreign funding of mosques.
Macron insisted that "no concessions" would be made in a new drive to eradicate extremist religious teaching in schools and mosques. At the same time, Macron said France must do more to offer economic and social mobility to immigrant communities, adding radicals had often filled the vacuum.
His long-awaited address came 18 months before presidential elections where Macron is set to face a challenge from the right, as public concern grows over security in France.
He said the government would present a bill in December that would strengthen the country's bedrock 1905 law that officially separated church and state. Among the new law's provisions, there will be closer scrutiny of the curriculum at private schools and stricter limits on home-schooling for reasons other than a child's health problems. Community associations that receive state subsidies will have to sign a contract avowing their commitment to secularism and the values of France.
There will be closer scrutiny of such organisations, and the law will make it easier to shutter those breaking anti-indoctrination rules. The new measures will also include a ban on the wearing of religious symbols for employees of subcontractors providing public services, such as transport operators.
The rule already applies to public servants. Macron stressed that the measures did not seek to stigmatise or alienate France's Muslims but to bolster "our ability to live together." He urged better understanding of Islam and said the problem of radicalisation was partly a product of the "ghettoisation" of French cities and towns where "we constructed our own separatism."
"We have concentrated populations based on their origins, we have not sufficiently created diversity, or ensured economic and social mobility" in segregated areas, he said.
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