https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54692802
"Fear will cross over to the other side," the world press has been actively quoting President Emmanuel Macron as saying to his Defense Council last week.
The general French government's offensive against radical Islamism in response to the beheading of the history teacher near Paris was swift and brutal - a storm of requests, closings, plans and proposals that were sometimes difficult to keep track of.
In many Muslim countries, the reaction of the French authorities was perceived as an attack on Islam - the head of the movement is the leader of Turkey, R.T. Erdogan.
The French government has announced more than 120 home searches, the dissolution of associations accused of spreading Islamist rhetoric, anti-terrorist financing plans, renewed support for teachers and renewed pressure on social media companies to better control content.
Nothing like this has happened since other attacks, including during Macron's presidency, despite the brutal killing of about 20 people during his tenure, including police officers, a young woman at a train station, and shoppers at a Christmas market. So what has changed now?
Experts believe that this attack was different, both in terms of the attack on the teacher and in terms of its brutality, and that a "paradigm shift" took place in the government. It is no longer about organized jihadist networks, but was attacked by a terrorist who came from a friendly country as a private person, but who was radicalized.
The French government believes that the response should not only concern law enforcement. It is necessary to manage social networks and associations. The system needs to be changed.
Polls show that a third of teachers “self-censor” to avoid conflicts over secularism, ie. one can speak of ideological threats to the laws of the republic, along with threats to security.
However, it is believed that President Macron and his government "overreacted" for political reasons, in particular, because of the presidential elections in 2022.
It is not yet clear how the confrontation between official European secularism and at least a part of the Muslim world will end.
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