plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: not!
‘We have to act against radical preachers’
Nicolas Sarkozy, the likely next President de la Republique, via the Telegraph:
The gulf between British and French treatment of preachers of hatred and violence was thrown sharply into focus yesterday when France announced the summary expulsion of a dozen Islamists between now and the end of August. A tough new anti-terrorism package was unveiled by Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and a popular centre-Right politician. His proposals reflect French determination to act swiftly against extremists in defiance of the human rights lobby, which is noticeably less vocal in France than in Britain. Imams and their followers who fuel anti-western feeling among impressionable young French Muslims will be rounded up and returned to their countries of origin, most commonly in France’s case to its former north African colonies.
Mr Sarkozy also revealed that as many as 12 French mosques associated with provocative anti-western preaching were under surveillance. Imams indulging in inflammatory rhetoric will be expelled even if their religious status is recognised by mainstream Muslim bodies. Those who have assumed French citizenship will not be protected from deportation. Mr Sarkozy said he will reactivate measures, “already available in our penal code but simply not used”, to strip undesirables of their adopted nationality. “We have to act against radical preachers capable of influencing the youngest and most weak-minded,” Mr Sarkozy told the French daily Le Parisien.
However, one cannot entirely overlook the anti-British element in the French actions: “Mr Sarkozy’s crackdown on those ‘promoting radical Islamist polemic’ was disclosed at the end of a week that began with French anger at Britain’s failure to extradite the alleged financier of Islamist bombings in Paris in the mid-1990s.”