France targets radical Islam amid row with Turkey - BBC News

Outside is an official notice, taped in plastic against the rain, announcing its forced closure by the government for "involve[ment] in the Islamist movement", and for sharing a social media video targeting teacher Samuel Paty.

The French government's general crackdown on radical Islamism, in response to the beheading of the history teacher outside Paris this month, has been rapid and tough - a blizzard of inquiries, closures, plans and proposals that have sometimes been hard to keep track of.

"Fear will change sides," President Emmanuel Macron is widely quoted as telling his Defence Council last week.

Nothing on this scale happened after other attacks on President Macron's watch, despite the violent murder of some 20 people during his tenure, among them police officers, a young woman at a train station and shoppers in a Christmas market.

He believes that this attack was different, both in targeting a teacher and in its brutality, and that there has been a "shift in gear" within government.

"The government believes the response cannot only be about law enforcement.

He believes the government is right to challenge what he says are ideological threats to the Republic's laws, alongside security threats.

But Laurent Mucchielli, a sociologist at France's National Centre for Scientific Research, says that President Macron and his government have "overreacted" for political reasons; specifically, the presidential election in 2022.

Security has widely been seen as the weak spot in President Macron's armour, trailing behind his strong image abroad and forceful economic reforms at home.

But Marine Le Pen has also cast the peaceful public expression of Islam as a threat to French national identity.

Over his time in office, Mr Macron has taken great care to distinguish between security threats and secularism.

In September, Anne-Christine Lang, an MP from Mr Macron's liberal La République En Marche (LREM) party, walked out of the National Assembly after being asked to listen to testimony from someone wearing a Muslim headscarf.

And whether or not the government's response is winning President Macron supporters at home, it's certainly rousing his critics abroad.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has backed the boycott, and publicly questioned Mr Macron's mental health, after the French leader defended France's secular values last week, saying the country would "never give up [its] cartoons".

playFrance teacher attack: Macron leads vigil for beheaded teacher?

Samuel Paty: Beheading of teacher deepens divisions over France's secular identity?