.... The battle between priests and secular primary school teachers — waged in villages across the country throughout the 19th century — was decisive in shaping the nation's political psyche. It turned France into a country where religion was accepted, but distrusted by the republican institutions.
Politicians, commentators, but also swaths of French public opinion, see radical Islam as a challenge to the secular state and to the values that it is supposed to promulgate — liberty, equality, fraternity. [Times Online] Read more
