Let’s talk about a new law in France that they want to bring in.
It’s called Reinforcing Republican Principles.
The French president says it's about preventing religious extremism.
The bill doesn’t actually single out any one religion.
But some French Muslims say it’s targeting them and that it’s being used to score political points.
So what’s in this proposed law?
Is it as bad as some people say?
And what does it have to do with France’s whole thing about secularism?
When it comes to religions France is a pretty diverse place.
Just over half of its population identifies as Christian, it has the largest Muslim and Jewish communities in Europe
and a third of people in France don’t affiliate with any faith at all.
And all of those communities have been able to coexist in part because of a legal principle called laicite, which roughly translates as secularism.
It was passed into law in 1905 to separate the French republic from the Catholic Church after years of power struggles.
These days you can see laicite in action in the way the French president, for example, isn’t sworn in using a holy book.
But over the years French governments have interpreted laicite in new ways.
They’ve brought in all kinds of measures to keep religion out of public life to the point though that some people accuse the state of going after religion.
Like a law in 2004 that banned religious symbols in public schools.
So what does laicite, or secularism, have to do with this new bill?
Well the proposed law doesn’t explicitly mention laicite.
But it talks about republican principles like free thinking and free speech, which President Emmanuel Macron says are under threat because of terrorism.
Since 2015 more than 200 people in France have been killed — mostly by attackers recruited or inspired by ISIL or al-Qaeda.
Like the attack on staff at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
It had published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, whose depiction is widely forbidden in Islam.
90 people killed at the Bataclan theatre.
A truck driven through crowds.
A Christmas market shooting.
And then there was everything that happened in 2020.
Charlie Hebdo republished the prophet’s caricature and two people were stabbed outside the magazine’s old building.
That’s when Macron announced he was drafting this bill.
But that didn’t go down well with leaders in Muslim-majority countries.
Protests spread and some people boycotted French products.
Not long afterwards a teacher in France showed students the caricature during a lesson about free speech.
There was a social media campaign against him, he was tracked down and beheaded.
And then a week later several people were killed inside a church.
So Macron went ahead and proposed his bill.
He gave the problem a name — Islamist separatism — and explained it this way.
OK, so what’s in this proposed law?
Things like tougher penalties for people who threaten or attack public workers in the name of religion.
More powers to go after hate speech online.
And limits on big foreign donations to religious institutions.
But there’s other stuff in there like giving officials more power to stop forced marriages, polygamy and anyone issuing “virginity certificates” for women about to marry.
There are even restrictions on religious private schools and home-schooling.
That’s the thing about this bill. It seems to be about a lot of things.
Laicite, terrorism, mosques, schools, women — even what the politicians describe as “separatism”.
Some take that to mean everything from radicalised young people to communities not assimilating.
Even as far as how halal and kosher food are stocked separately.
And it’s not just this bill. There’s a lot more going on.
The government has closed down several mosques and Muslim associations for having radical links, which they’ve denied.
They’ve also got Muslim religious leaders to agree on a charter of principles that rejects political Islam and foreign interference.
So how do Muslims in France feel about all of this?
Well, religious leaders are split.
One Muslim association said “separatism” is “a reality that must be faced”.
At the same time a lot of people feel this bill just reinforces a feeling that French Muslims are never French enough.
But if you listen to French commentators there’s another theory about why Macron’s pushing this bill.
It’s that ahead of elections in 2022 he’s making a political calculation to win support on the far right and on the left.
France’s parliament and senate still have to vote on the bill before it becomes law.
They’ll have to weigh up a lot of things but chief among them is whether this proposed law goes against the very principles people say it’s trying to defend.
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