In her victory speech last night, Marine Le Pen described the results of the first round of the French elections as “historic”. In many ways she’s right. The traditional parties suffered severe blows with neither the socialist candidate, Benoît Hamon, who received a humiliating 6.3% of the national vote, nor the republican one, François Fillon, even making it through to the second round.
But it’s not just the collapse of the traditional parties that has made this election like no other. The ongoing state of emergency and the continuation of extremist attacks in France have dominated the campaign, and the one on the Champs Élysées last Thursday made many ask whether Le Pen was going to be able to win more votes in the presidential election.
In the local elections that took place the week after the Bataclan attacks in 2015 the popularity of Le Pen’s Front National spiked, as she capitalised on the fear that followed the most deadly act of terrorism in France for decades. [436 comments]
[TOP RATED COMMENT 309 votes] "Home Grown" is just another way to muddy the waters. Timothy McVeigh in the US or the KKK you may say is homegrown or PIRA, Brigata Rosso, Baader Meinhof, ETA. But Jihadists are not "Home Grown" in the same meaning of that word. Sure the terrorists may have been born and raised in Bradford or Moelenbeek or the Banlieu but their motivations, inspiration and focus is not domestic.
Home Grown used in this context is a weasely way of not mentioning that their motivation is based on an ideloogy fundamentally at odds with liberal western values and they does not emanate from liberal western culture or even the west.
[2ND 249] if anyone's 'Fixated in what people choose to eat or wear' it's muslims.Women showing bare flesh or even their faces,adultery punishable by stoning, homosexual behaviour punished by execution. It's muslims who have to integrate with westerners Not the other way round.
[3RD 245] ".... they should focus on preventative measures and coherent plans for integration"
How will you force those people to integrate that don't want to?
[4TH 210] .... So because one particular criminal was locally born a state shouldn't deport foreigners with links to dangerous criminals?
Have I got that right?
And people wonder why a quarter of the electorate is voting for Le Pen.
[5TH 175] To tackle the problem, somebody needs to bite the bullet and start a conversation with the Muslim community about whether it's right to sell in bookshops interpretations of the Qu'ran from extremist schools such as Wahhabism. In reality it cannot really be a conversation because there's only one acceptable answer: No.
In any society, but especially one that purports to be secular, it cannot be justified that a book which purports to be a factual work can be allowed to go on sale - including to children - if it encourages the reader to engage in illegal, often violent activities on the grounds of religious observance.
If the Wahhabi interpretation of the Qu'ran was not a religious work, it would have been banned long ago; it seems absurd that because the Qu'ran is - purportedly - the word of god, it should be exempt from the normal rules which govern society, particularly a secular society. [Guardian Cif] Read more
