TS Chandrashekar
An Open letter’s, Signed by a number of retired generals as well as by at least 18 servicemen including four officers, published by right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles warned French President Emmanuel Macron that the country was headed for “civil war” unless he cracked down on Islamists, anarchists and anti-racism activists. The “laxist” policies would result in chaos requiring “the intervention of our comrades on active duty in a perilous mission of protection of our civilisational values. “We are not talking about extending your mandates or conquering others. We are talking about the survival of our country, the survival of your country,” said the latest letter.
Muslims in France are from the former colonies of north and west Africa as well as the Middle East and are estimated at nearly four million, about six percent of the population. France has the largest number of Muslims in the Western world with majority belong to the Sunni denomination. The vast majority of French Muslims are of immigrant origin, while an estimated 100,000 are converts to Islam of indigenous ethnic French background. French governments have often been at odds with Muslim traditions when they were perceived to run counter to core French values or hinder integration. In 2004, a law banned headscarves from French schools, followed six years later by the so-called “burqa ban”, prohibiting the wearing in public of the full-face veil. More recently, some southern French seaside resorts banned Muslim women from beaches if they wore full-body “burkinis”.
France Muslims have also been radicalized more after Samuel Paty, a junior high school teacher was attacked in the street and beheaded after showing cartoons of the Prophet in a civics class. In 2015 shooting sprees at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan concert hall; and the stabbings at a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice the same year. Nice was also the scene of a 2016 attack that killed 86 people when a man rammed a truck into Bastille Day revellers. Acknowledging that Islamist radicalisation can be homegrown as well as imported with jihadist ideology by big immigrants the French Society is disturbed.
So in the Letters they said “Failure to act against the “suburban hordes” a reference to residents of the mainly immigrant tower blocks that ring French cities and other unnamed groups who “scorn our country, its traditions and its culture” will lead to “civil war” and deaths “in the thousands”, the signatories warned. The authors described themselves as soldiers from the younger generation of the military, a so-called “generation of fire” that had seen active service. They charged that for some religious communities “France means nothing but an object of sarcasm, contempt or even hatred”.
“If a civil war breaks out, the military will maintain order on its own soil… civil war is brewing in France and you know it perfectly well,” the letter said. In contrast to the previous missive, the latest letter can be signed by the public. They claimed also to have served in the Sentinelle security operation within France, launched after a wave of jihadist attacks in 2015.
The French General Francois Lecountre chief of staff called on a group of soldiers who signed an open letter warning about the risk of “civil war” in France to quit the armed forces. ” Defence Minister Florence Parly dismissing them as part of a “crude political scheme” and reminding soldiers of their obligation of neutrality. But the letter has been welcomed by far-right leader Marine Le Pen, seen as Macron’s main rival for next year’s presidential election.
In the second letter on threats of punishment for signing the letter, the group attacked government of “trampling” on veterans’ honour and “sullying” their reputation “when their only fault is to love their country and mourn its visible decline. Cowardice, deceit, perversion: this is not our vision of the hierarchy. On the contrary, the army is, par excellence, the place where we speak the truth because we commit our lives,” it added. It concluded, Once again, civil war is brewing in France and you know it perfectly well.” The Fact is according to official data by Europol, France has witnessed more jihadist attacks than any other European Union member since 2014,
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