The “MeToo” media wildfire and the public inquisition that followed evoke memories of historical tales of mass hysteria and of the games played out in the "The Stepford wives" and "The Witches of Eastwick. "

Guilty because accused – the demons of Loudon
"The Devils of Loudon" is the title of a book by Aldous Huxley that deals with a historical case of mass hysteria in the city of Loudon in France in the first half of the seventeenth century.
In a Ursulin monastery in the city, the prioress Jean de Anges and 16 nuns are seized by unexplained demons that lead to spastic movements and wild speech.
During exorcism, it became clear that the nuns were gripped by visions of a person they had never met, the young elegant prelate Urbain Grandier, who already had a reputation as a seducer in the city.
"The exorcisms were impressive, and the lewd and bizarre behavior of the young nuns during the exorcisms attracted an ever-increasing audience. The nuns shouted expletives, barked, exposed themselves, spoke a garbled form of Latin (which they did not know), and contorted their bodies into obscene positions. " (M. K. Hunter).
No wonder then that Urbain Grandier was accused of having caused the mass hysteria of the nuns. A large number of witnesses even claimed to know that Grandier had made a pact with the devil and that his body bore the "mark of the devil."
After an extensive trial Grandier was sentenced in 1634 to be tortured and burned at the stake for "sorcery, placing evil spells, and taking possession of the Ursulines, as well as certain nonreligious women."
Some of accusations in the "MeToo" wildfire may be reminiscent of the accusations against Urbain Grandier, with women being possessed by contemporary demons of a social media wildfire. Leading them to see abuse everywhere and magnify incidents that have been innocent or never seen as serious abuse.
In a parallel to the Loudon case, one could argue that the “MeToo” wildfire would lead to a situation where men are guilty simply by being accused, especially if there are numerous accusations. That at least seems to be the reasoning behind some of the knee jerk reactions we have seen. The author Margaret Atwood has a similar opinion in her comparison with accusations of witchcraft "in which you were guilty because accused." What is worrying is that accusations are enough for the accused to be hit by serious and far-reaching sanctions.

The unreal "The Stepford Wives"
Abuses in the film industry seem to go back a long way. So why raise accusations now?
A really speculative thesis could be that female Hollywood actresses may have acted like "Stepford Wives,” and like them moulded in a beautiful but uniform shape. (a shape that can hardly be said to represent an average section of the female gender in the United States). In "Stepford Wives" story, a satirical thriller by author Ira Levin, a newly arrived female immigrant to Stepford observes that the women in the city look like "actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real. " (thedailybeast.com).
Gradually it dawns on her that women are not real women either. They are robots created by the men in the city, using what we might call a kind of Disney animatronics.
Today one might get the heretical thought that Hollywood's "pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent," have suddenly discovered that they have also been created and moulded and manipulated by powerful men in the movie industry and that this sudden self-discovery has triggered the current wave of "MeToo" accusations.
Such an explanation may suggest that “MeToo” is not just about sexual assault, but also about a Hollywood movie industry that has created an image of women that has never been real. The stars who now raise "MeToo" accusations have never been representative of women in the rest of the world.
Can we therefore believe them? Can and should we follow their example? For example, by following them in their more or less superficial manifestations of solidarity, like wearing black at the "Golden Globe," and white roses at the "Grammy" award ceremony. Or do they continue to act true to the form in which they were created by powerful Hollywood males.
It is strangely contradictory to see a throng of beautiful female actors in elegant dresses revealing and highlighting their bodies for a "Golden Globe" or "Grammy" award, in which they want to draw attention to the "MeToo" movement. As if they do not even understand the game. "Women are apparently the helpless dupes of the fashion and cosmetics industry, and have been brainwashed into spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year in order to be noticed by men." (City Journal).
Now, don’t think that this is an argument for actresses to be wrapped in burqas next time. No, it's just a reminder of what the game is also about.

Playing their own bewitching games – "The Witches of Eastwick"
The novel by John Updike and the film about the Witches of Eastwick (Hollywood again) may give rise to an even more problematic suspicion.
Three women in Eastwick who have amused themselves with petty witchcraft are fascinated by a mysterious stranger, Daryl Van Horne, who has moved to the city. He does not seem particularly attractive, one might perhaps see a corpulent Harvey Weinstein, instead of the movie's Jack Nicholson. "Van Horne, ... is part Mephistopheles, offering Faustian pacts and lusting for souls, part alchemist-chemist. "
The three women are seduced by Van Horne and continue with more and more daring displays of their magical abilities, among other things by casting a curse on another woman. And the devil in the form of Van Horne continues with his magical "spells." As it is said in a comment: "What the witches want from the Devil is to play without consequences. But all the Devil can really offer is temptation; hot-tubbery has its price, and the Devil must have his due; with the act of creation comes irreversibility, and guilt. " (NYT).
As the women finally begin to realize what is happening, they attempt to make Van Horne disappear using some Voodoo-doll witchcraft.
Yes, that may sound a bit far-fetched, but may the story not be a parable on female actors' relationship with an equally unattractive Harvey Weinstein. Where they first participate in the game with the devil for their own sake, but eventually discover what is happening to themselves and then try to cast a curse on all the "harvey weinstein males" they have met along the way to becoming famous.
Perhaps Germaine Greer has had a similar thought in her interview with the "Sydney Morning Herald," in which she accuses the “MeToo” actors of whining unnecessarily. "When the man has economic power, as Harvey Weinstein has ... if you spread your legs because he said 'be nice to me and I'll give you a job in a movie' then I'm afraid that's tantamount to consent, and it's too late now to start whingeing about that ”(SMH).
The "whingeing " actors play the game until they themselves have gained a power or influence in the media that can compete with the power of the men who, in return for their pliancy, brought forward their careers. Apparently not many of the actresses said “No” during the course of their careers, at least not as pronounced as they do when yelling “MeToo”!
Along the way in their careers, many of those who now declare themselves followers of the “MeToo” movement, have in their movies contributed to a culture in which women are dominated by men. Where abuse was part of the game and the context, if one can put it that way. In the movies they may have acted in violently woman-degrading and sexist images and dialogues. In other words, some of the toughest accusers in the "MeToo" inquisition have contributed to the culture they now accuse of abuse.

The social media inquisition
In January 2018, the “MeToo” inquisition had accused more than hundred influential or powerful men known from movies, media, business and politics of abuse. This may only make up the tip of the abuse iceberg. The “dunkelziffer” of lesser-known men, who are accused in “MeToo” postings or similar initiatives, such as the French hashtag #BalanceTonPorc, must be assumed to be very much higher based on their number of “MeToo” and Facebook postings.
Established media are joining the social media in the hunt to expose and accuse offenders and violators. And everything can be blown up to look like sensations.
Icelandic Björk tells a Danish tabloid about sexual abuse by the controversial film director, Lars von Trier. “After each recording, the director put his arm around me for a long time in front of the whole team and caressed me. Sometimes for several minutes against my wishes." In a survey carried out by the Danish Acting Association, 241 of the 378 respondents report that they have been subjected to violations within the past 10 years.
Based on anonymous allegations, a list of names of men anonymously accused of assault has begun circulating online. The "Shitty Media Men" list accuses men in the media industry: An approach, for example, The Guardian seems to applaud with its "to take control of the narrative by speaking out."
For abuse in academia, there is "Sexual Harassment in the Academy" with so far up to 2,000 episodes, in which the names of the institutions appear.
A wave of the “MeToo” accusations is sweeping like a tsunami through social media in large parts of the World, followed by a chaotic tangle of knee jerk reactions. Not after lawsuits or thorough investigations, but just as a result of social media’s accusing “J’accuse” finger pointing.
The punishment ranges from being placed in a public pillory, where everyone has the right to spit on the accused, to being "kicked" out of one's job or being forced to leave. Here we are only concerned with the reactions that do not include legal accusations with subsequent trials, but only the "J'accuse" finger pointing of social media, sometimes with women standing up, sometimes with unsubstantiated anonymous accusations of large and small violations that may reach be far back in time,
A curious English example. The charge against then Defence Secretary Michael Fallon for repeatedly touching a female journalist's knee at a dinner during a Conservative party conference 15 years earlier. The journalists' reaction: "I calmly and politely explained to him that, if he did it again, I would 'punch him in the face'." That was it and that is why today she considers the accusations against Fallon to be "mildly amusing." Whether there is more behind the accusations is not known, but Michael Fallon resigned, after the media’s "I am not amused" campaign.
Another example of placement in the public pillory is the accusation against the American stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari from a young woman, who had apparently done what she could to be noticed by him. She manages to be invited to dinner and then accompanies him to his apartment. When he wants to have sex with her, she says no and then they watch Seinfeld on TV together, while she blames him. "You guys are all the same." Here, a commentator in the New York Times apparently thinks the "MeToo" accusations have gone too far. "There is a useful term for what this woman experienced on her night with Mr. Ansari. It's called "bad sex." It sucks.”
That such a story even gets into the media shows how far out in the wild the accusations of the “MeToo” inquisition has come. And it gets even more bizarre. A poem in Spanish by the Bolivian-Swiss author Eugen Gomringer on the gable of the "Alice-Salomon-Hochschule" in Berlin is accused of belittling or trivializing sexual abuse. In the English translation, the poem "Avenidas" reads:

Avenues
Avenues and flowers
Flowers
Flowers and women
Avenues
Avenues and women
Avenues and flowers and women and an admirer

Proponents of over-painting the poem are calling for a showdown with patriarchal structures and violations of women and see the decision to remove it as "lived democracy." In the same spirit, "Grid girls" at the opening of Formula 1 racing and so-called "walk on girls" at dart tournaments must be removed.
Absurd perhaps, but once you become part of a meaning-tsunami, you no longer distinguish between big and small. To make sure the tsunami, like a real tsunami, destroys everything in its path.
Perhaps it is in recognition of this that the Manchester Gallery has decided to take down the painting "Hylas and the Nymphs." The painting, inspired by Greek mythology, show young nymphs with naked breasts in a lake filled with water lilies, luring the youth Hylas into water. Postcards with the motif are also removed from the museum shop. The museum curator explains that "the debates around Time's Up and “MeToo” had fed into the decision ... or me personally, there is a sense of embarrassment that we haven't dealt with it sooner. Our attention has been elsewhere." (The Guardian).
Other reactions. With the "TimesUp" initiative, women in Hollywood have presented a "Dear Sisters" manifesto that calls for increased responsiveness to accusations from women who have been abused: "Now, unlike ever before, our access to the media and to important decision makers has the potential of leading to real accountability and consequences. We want all survivors of sexual harassment, everywhere, to be heard, to be believed, and to know that accountability is possible. We also want all victims and survivors to be able to access justice and support for the wrongdoing they have endured."
Probably inspired by this, people in the Danish movie and theatre industry have presented a similar manifesto demanding "new culture with zero tolerance for sexism." (Timesupnow.com).
Just a little “seitenhib.” Are the women behind the manifesto the same women who find it perfectly okay for women to wear religiously determined scarves and other forms of wrapping covering the body, arguing that it is a women's right and not at all something they have been forced to do by a religiously defined patriarchal culture? Or does “MeToo” not apply to these women?

Chattering classes demanding a reined in and apologetic male
Actor Matt Damon in a recent interview: "I think we're in this watershed moment. I think it's great. I think it's wonderful that women are feeling empowered to tell their stories, and it's totally necessary… I do believe that there's a spectrum of behavior, right? And we're going to have to figure - you know, there's a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right? Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they should not be conflated, right? "(ABC News).
He should never have said that. After fierce criticism, he apologized and chose to "move to the back seat" in the debate.
But he was right, wasn’t he? And gets support from American author, Rebecca Traister, who argues that all possible words and gestures may be seen as gross violations and harassment: "The rage that many of us are feeling does not necessarily correspond with the severity of the trespass: Lots of us are on some level as incensed about the guy who looked down our shirt at a company retreat as we are about Weinstein, even if we can acknowledge that there's something nuts about that, a weird overreaction. " (The Cut).
A chattering class of ignorant, superficial celebrities helps to reinforce and exaggerate what is seen in social media as a struggle for the unconditionally right and just view, – and against the unjust and what is in their eyes reprehensible. They not only dominate the social media, but also set the tone in the established media.
If you do not agree with them, you are a backward misogynist.
Divergent voices, rational deliberations and insightful objections drown in an accusing chorus of insults and curses. If dissenting voices still manage to win a place in the media, they, like a Matt Damon and a Catherine Deneuve, are quickly taken down by the chattering class in hateful tweets and chats followed by thousands of unconscious followers. Due process and rule of law is ignored in return for a mob-like persecution. A social media inquisition that does not worry about insight, knowledge or evidence. The mass chorus of accusations acts as the torture that forces the accused to admit to his crime.
Atwood accepts that the justice system may not have been good enough to handle complaints about violations of women, but what about the alternative? "If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffective, what will take its place?
Who will be the new power brokers? It will not be the Bad Feminists like me. We are acceptable neither to Right nor to Left. In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who does not puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated. "
We run the risk that legal rules and the justice system will be replaced by the social media inquisition. With wild waves of accusations, almost reminiscent of accusations of witchcraft in the past, and demands for immediate sanctions on social media.
If so, who benefits from it? No one, probably not even the women who have been abused. As in the Spanish Inquisition it leads to a culture of suspicion, where everyone watches each other and become afraid to be caught in the social media inquisition by a multitude of quick jabs on keyboards and mobile phones.
The inquisition catches up with women who are not helping to stoke the wild fire. They are despicable: "Whether they're voting for Trump or Brexit, or doing jobs that involve wearing revealing clothes, or questioning the sexual-harassment panic, or doing something else that the feminist elite disapproves of, these women will be diagnosed as having had their brains warped by The Culture."
With the wildfire triggered by “MeToo”, there will inevitably be a tendency towards a hyper awareness of how men act towards women and a hyper intolerance that will contribute to mutual suspicions that can destroy the fine and imperceptible attentions and plays that are the prerequisite for the development of relationships between people. Now, the relations must be made explicit and subject to outside surveillance and control.
"Treating the untamed male libido as a political problem calls forth a legal remedy. The sex bureaucracy is exploding on college campuses; college administrators are busily writing highly technical rules for sex, the very domain of the irrational. The unstated goal of those rules is to move the default for premarital sex back to "no" by requiring "affirmative consent." But law is less effective than informal norms in regulating behavior, especially in a postliberation environment that has stripped females of the protections of modesty and restraint. Traditional culture tried to civilize the male libido by celebrating the virtues of gentlemanliness and respect. " (City Journal).
Attempts to regulate and make explicit the "right" behaviour in detail can be found in an example from Dartmouth College in the USA. Here one finds instructions on how to initiate relationships:

Some years ago, a self-appointed "Affirmative Consent Project" was initiated in the United States. It wanted to hand out so-called "Consent conscious kits," which contained instructions for concluding a formal written sexual contract. With copies stored on the parties' mobile phones, to ensure that there was a pre-agreed mutual understanding. Today, such kits are probably not necessary because there are apps like "We-consent" with similar proposals for contracts that are automatically saved in the cloud after conclusion.
What we see here are examples attempting to make explicit relationships and mutual behavior that is difficult to define unambiguously. Probably with completely unintended consequences. Under what conditions is the contract entered into? Are the parties conscious and fully aware of what they are doing and not under the influence of drugs or alcohol? What specific types of behavior does the contract cover? Should it be further specified? Are there built-in stop points? Can the contract be used as an excuse for later abuse or what?
The whole idea is really absurd. It will prove very problematic to try to regulate a relationship between people, as if it was equivalent to the purchase of a product or service with consumer protection. "Consent shouldn’t be reduced to a signature. Sexual partners should be bound together by chemistry and mutual desire, not documentation, and should be able to change their minds whenever they like. Contractual agreements belong in the boardroom, not the bedroom" (Telegraph).
However, it is not such concerns that one is preoccupied with at the moment. In Sweden, the Swedish Parliament some time ago presented a "proposal for consent."
The bill includes the following: "It will be forbidden to have sex with a person who has not explicitly said yes or actively shows that he/she wants to participate. The perpetrator shall no longer be required to have used violence or threats, or taken advantage of the victim's particularly vulnerable situation, to be convicted. " (svt.se).
Admittedly, the proposal has been criticized by the "Law Council" for reducing the rule of law.
In the USA, the House of Representatives in 2018 voted in favor of a law that will counteract abuse in amateur sports, e.g. with the following content: '' (C) procedures to ensure that covered individuals are instructed to avoid one-on-one situations with any amateur athlete who is a minor (other than such an athlete for whom the covered individual is a legal guardian) at an amateur sports organization facility, at any event sanctioned by a national governing body, or any event sanctioned by a member of a national governing body, without being observable or interruptible by another adult; "(Congressional Record).
So, from now on keep an "observable and interruptible distance" to each other. Fantastic, an extended and monitored arm's length principle. What may the next absurd initiative contain?

This essay is revised version of an essay in Danish published in 2018.
https://wahrnehmungen.weebly.com/blog/nobody-expects-the-social-media-inquisition

A religion plagued by radicalism …
In a remarkable speech on October 2 President Macron asserted that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis today all over the world, … including in countries where Islam is the majority religion.” A crisis due to tensions between religious fundamentalism and political projects, that is leading to growing radicalization. “A crisis of Islam everywhere that is plagued by these radical forms, by these radical temptations and by a yearning for a reinvented jihad, which is the destruction of the other.”
It is a radicalization that has been influenced and furthered by Wahhabism, Salafism, and the Muslim Brotherhood: “They carried messages of rupture, a political project, a radicalism in the negation for example of equality between women and men, and by external funding, by indoctrination from outside.”
France has created its own breeding ground for radicalization to grow by allowing people to concentrate according to their origins and social background. “We have built our own separatism. It is that of our neighbourhoods, it is the ghettoization that our Republic, initially with the best intentions in the world, … we have built a concentration of misery and hardship, and we know that very well… We have thus created neighbourhoods where the promise of the Republic has no longer been kept.”
France’s retreat from these neighbourhoods and the inadequacies of the integration policy,
has allowed bearers of radical Islam to gain influence in the ghettos.
“Let us approach it and name it, this radical Islamism, since it is the heart of the subject, … a methodical organization to contravene the laws of the Republic and create a parallel order, to erect other values, develop another organization of society, separatist at first, but whose final goal is to take control, complete it. And this is what makes us gradually come to reject freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, the right to blasphemy.”
Macron therefore insists “We must therefore face with great determination and force the unacceptable and radical forms today, in the short term. We must regain everything that the Republic has allowed to happen and which has led part of our youth or our citizens to be attracted by this radical Islam… What we need to tackle is Islamist separatism. It is a conscious, theorized, politico-religious project, which materializes through repeated deviations from the values of the Republic, which often results in the constitution of a counter-society and whose manifestations are the dropping out of schooling of children, the development of community-based sporting and cultural practices which are the pretext for teaching principles which do not comply with the laws of the Republic. It is indoctrination and through it the negation of our principles, equality between women and men, human dignity.”

Some relevant background to Macon’s speech
France has a large Muslim population. Of the French population of around 65 million, 5.4 million identify themselves as Muslims, or more than 8% (according to forecast data by Statista in 2020). While Christians make up almost 38 million and the unaffiliated around 21 million.
The Muslim population is younger than the population average, with more than 10% of young people under 25 identify as Muslim (Institut Montaigne).
The proportion of Muslims is expected to increase quite significantly in the coming years. Projections under different scenarios show that under medium migration scenario the Muslim population could reach more than 12 million in 2050, while the overall population is assumed to reach 70 million under medium scenario. In this case the Muslim population would make up around 17% of the population.
The French politician Jean-Louis Borloo, author of a cohesion plan to solve ghetto problem has estimated that there are around 1.500 problem neighbourhoods in France (many with a majority of Muslims). He described them as “Closed archipelagos.”
According to Institut Montaigne there are some widely shared traits that distinguish Muslims of France from the rest of the population:
A much more frequent religious practice:
31% of respondents identifying as Muslim attend a mosque or prayer room once a week, compared to 8.2% among the wider population2;
A noted respect of halal food preparation: 70% of respondents say that they “always” buy halal meat, 22% buy it “sometimes” and only 6% “never”;
Support for the hijab which remains a majority opinion despite major rifts: around 65 % of those of Muslim faith or culture claim to be in favour of the hijab;
According  to survey by Institut Montaigne the Muslim population can divided into three groups according to their views:
The silent majority of Muslims is making up 46% of respondents. “Their belief system allows them to adapt to French society, which in turn evolves thanks to specific aspects of their religion;
The conservatives. They make up 25% of the sample and are at the heart of the political and ideological struggle;
The authoritarians make up the last group, 28% of the total sample. They are mostly young, low-skilled and facing high unemployment; they live in the working-class suburbs of large cities. This group is no longer defined by conservatism, but by its appropriation of Islam as a mode of rebellion against the rest of French society. ( Insitut Montaigne).
Some of the between 2.300 and 3.000 mosques have been shut down by the authorities for preaching radical Islamist ideology. In 2016 interior minister Cazeneuve argued that “There is no place … in France for those who call for and incite hatred in prayer halls or in mosques … About 20 mosques have been closed, and there will be others. (The Atlantic).
It is of course difficult to get an idea of the number of Muslims that may have been radicalized, but interior minister Gerald Darmanin has said the 8.132 individuals have been registered on France’s database of suspected Islamists radicals considered to be a potential threat, and the threat of Islamic inspired attacks remains high.
A European comparison of the number of suspects arrested for Islamist inspired terrorism in 2019 indicates that France remains a hotbed for this kind of terrorism (Europol report TE-SAT 2020).

The recent beheading of a French schoolteacher, by a young Chechen Islamist, after the teacher had taught a class on freedom of expression during which he showed pupils caricatures of the prophet Mohammed, underlines the threat to the Republic from radical Islamism.
Macron: 'It was no coincidence that the terrorist killed a teacher because he wanted to kill the Republic and its values. The Enlightenment, the possibility to make our children, wherever they come from, whatever they believe in, whether they believe or not, whatever their religion, to turn them into free citizens.
More or less suddenly we realise that there is a gap between our deeply held values and developments we now face. A gap opens up between our collective expectations, based on deeply held values, and the behaviour we witness, which does not fit the expectations any more. This may not matter much as long as only a few isolated individuals feel the discrepancy. Only if there is a general feeling that there is something wrong will there be a potential for change. (see Beyond Rules, Petersen 2002).

Regaining the laïcist Republic
To regain the laïcist or secular republic Macron calls for a republican awakening. Here Macron refers especially to a law from 1905. This was the law that definitively sealed the separation between Church and State. It abolished the Concordat of 1801 and put an end to the system of “recognised religions.” The law marked the beginning of modern French secularism, which has roots reaching back to the 1789 revolution. Two articles of the law relevance in relation to Macron’s speech:
Article 1: The Republic ensures freedom of conscience. It guarantees freedom of worship limited only by the following rules in the interest of public order.
Article 2: The Republic neither acknowledges, nor pays for nor subsidises any form of worship. Consequently, ..., all spending related to worship will be eliminated from the budgets of the State and localities. Later lobbying by the Catholic Church have weakened this article and allowed some support.
In his speech Macron announced that “The Minister of the Interior and his deputy minister will present a bill on December 9 in the Council of Ministers which, 115 years after the final adoption of the law of 1905, which will aim to strengthen secularism and consolidate republican principles.”
Macron then lists five initiatives or axes that will be necessary to regain the laïcist Republic

1. Public order and public service neutrality
“The first axis of this awakening, of this republican patriotism on this subject that I wish for, is first of all a set of measures of public order and public service neutrality, which constitute immediate, firm responses. to observed, known situations that are contrary to our principles.”
Apparently, he wants to abolish exiting practices where public officials and institutions give in to religious demands.
Examples being the introduction of denominational menus in canteens, or  for example separate time slots for women only in swimming pools. When the new law is introduced such practices would be suspended.
In the interest of public order, the neutrality of public service will have to be enforced. This also means the enforcement of equality between men and women. Contrary to what one may find today, such as “controllers who deny women access to buses because of their clothing – to be very clear because they do not have an outfit that they themselves consider to be decent.”

 2. Associations serving republican values
Macron wants to be able to dissolve associations that are dominated by Islamist ideologies undermining the secular republic.
“Associations must unite the nation and not fracture it - and we will not give up on this principle which is at the very heart of the freedom that is associated with the protection of associations in our country and the special status they occupy in the Republic. The grounds for dissolving associations in the Council of Ministers were until now very limited: limited to acts of terrorism, racism and anti-Semitism. They will be extended to other grounds such as acts of attack on the dignity of the person or psychological or physical pressures”
Macron therefore insists on strict principles for supporting associations: “Any association requesting a subsidy from the State or a local authority will have to sign a contract respecting the values of the Republic and the minimum requirements of life in society.”

3. Stricter control of schools and the curriculum
Macron wants to reverse a trend that “exclude thousands of children from education for citizenship, from access to culture, to our history, to our values, to the experience of otherness which is the heart of the Republican school.”
“[The] school is the Republican melting pot. This is what ensures that our children are completely protected from any religious sign, from religion. It is really the heart of the space of secularism, and it is the place where we train consciences so that children become free, rational citizens, able to choose their life. School is therefore our collective treasure. This is what makes it possible in our society to build this common that is the Republic.”
“Today, more than 50,000 children are educated at home, a figure that is increasing every year. Every week, principals discover cases of children totally outside the system. Every month, prefects close schools, … because they are not even declared as such, illegal, often administered by religious extremists.”
Macrons wants to curb a system in which teaching is subject to religious and foreign influence, “which led to having on our soil, in a contractual framework with the countries of origin, teachers who sometimes did not master not French.”
This system will be ended in order to gain control over foreign teachers, to make sure that they respect French values, and have the ability to teach in French.
Macron wants to uphold the freedom of education, but insists on stricter public control with schools, staff, curriculum, and funding. “And so what was decided is to endow the ministry, with the ways and means to control each of these subjects, to be able to proceed with administrative closures when they are necessary.”

4. Creation of a French Islam
Macron want to help Islam to “structure itself to be a partner of the Republic in terms of the matters that we share.”
“An Islam in France which can be an Islam of the Enlightenment … We could speak of an Islam of France.”  
An Islam in France must be free from foreign influence.
The first influence to be reduced is related to practice of Arabic countries of sending imams and muezzins, or chanters, to France to practice and teach. According to the newsmagazine L’Express, 70 percent of imams practicing in France are not French. Take the example of Turkey, which oversees more than 250 mosques, and the more than 200 imams it has sent to France.
This foreign link must be broken. “We will train our imams and our chanters ourselves. And therefore, we must detach this link which is what we call consular Islam. Because it feeds rivalries, dysfunctions but above all… it does not allow the structuring of this religion in our country to move forward properly.
To support the development of French Islam Macron proposes “the development of highlevel Islamic studies at university. I also decide that we will create a Scientific Institute of Islamology.”
There is also the desire to protect mosques from hostile takeovers by extremists.
“What we are going to install very clearly is an anti-putsch device, very robust, in law, which will prevent these protagonists who are the most subtle, the most sophisticated, from using the weaknesses of our own rules to come and take control of religious associations and mosques to go and preach the worst, organize the worst, often caried out within the framework of the religious association activities”
The other influence, more pernicious, more serious, is that of financing. The practice whereby Arabic countries finance Islamic institutions and mosques in France. Macron doesn’t provide numbers, but a thesis provide us with this example (C. Hauth)

To Macron it is “It is not a question of prohibiting funding from abroad. It is simply a question of supervising them, of making them transparent, of controlling them. This is an essential element to free Islam in France from foreign influences which are rarely for the better and as we have seen, most often for the worse. And it is really about getting back to the spirit and the letter of the 1905 law, to the substance that these workarounds and decades of carelessness have watered down in practice.”

5. Creating opportunities and hope
“If the Republic must be feared by applying its rules without weakness and restoring force to the law, if it is necessary to reconquer the essential axes that I have mentioned, we must also make it loved again by demonstrating that it can allow everyone to build their life. Basically, we have a duty to hope.”

Justice
“Our horizon is simple: it is to ensure a Republican presence at the bottom of every tower, at the bottom of every building. Where we had retreated, we must come back. Where the response of the Republic was no longer intelligible because it took months and months to respond to crimes, we must give it meaning collectively by allowing our justice to find the means to respond quickly, … so that everything finds meaning, the victim as well as the troublemaker and our security forces.”

Equal opportunities
Macron wants to assure “that everyone, whatever their skin color, their origin, their religion, can find their place. Neither racism nor anti-Semitism is compatible with the Republic. Opening up equal opportunities by fighting against discrimination, in employment and in housing.”

Recovery of neighbourhoods
In terms of housing, we must finally radically change our texts. We cannot continue to add poverty to poverty.” There must be a “profound reform of our organization in terms of housing, in particular social housing. And a “recovery plan that allows the cultural, economic and ecological emancipation of our neighborhoods”

The secular state is in crisis
Who is actually in a crisis?
A religion that seems to have been able to further an agenda suiting its ideology?
Or Western countries that seem to have lost faiths in their own civilization, plagued by self-doubt, and open to demands from a strong religious minority.
Ali al-Qaradaghi, the secretary-general of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) certainly doesn’t see that Islam is in a crisis: “The future is for the religion of Islam and we are in fear for the future of societies that make other people's religions and sanctities legitimate targets … if there is a real crisis, it is due to the double standards of some western politicians.” (dailysabah.com)
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/europe/top-muslim-scholar-slams-macrons-remarks-on-islam
Is Macron’s long speech not in itself a demonstration of the strength of an Islam not in crisis but on the contrary, constantly expanding its sphere of influence? A religion that has exploited hard won Western values, rules and institutions: Openness, tolerance, liberalism, human rights, equality, freedom of religion, protection of minority rights, welfare and support systems.
The speech is an admission that the West has been too lenient with religious demands. Out of misunderstood tolerance, with slogans about religious freedom, or perhaps out of fear of what might happen if one did not give in. Both reasons are problematic. Both a tolerance that is so open that it accepts its own doom, and indulgence that undermines what we seek to defend and preserve. Why should we accept a highly demonstrative religious ideology? An ideology that manifests itself by invoking the right to "in your face" religious characteristics and forms of behavior. And despite this, insist on the right to be treated on equal footing with everyone else. Which is unreasonable, because the adherents of this ideology demanding to be accepted, are doing everything they can to stand out from everyone else, by distancing themselves from the majority of the population.
Why should we accept this? If a young man applied for a job at the checkout in a supermarket, wearing a t-shirt with the inscription "white pride," he would probably be rejected. A Muslim woman, on the other hand, demands to be hired even if she wants to wear a headscarf that just as clearly demonstrates a particular religious observance. She demands more than the man with the t-shirt can demand. She demands a kind of positive discrimination.
The same applies to other examples such as laboratory technicians who do not want to work with short sleeves, or male censors who do not want to shake hands with female students, or demands for prayer rooms at universities (rather blandly called rooms for "interfaith devotion") and in other institutions such as for example police stations. Instead, we may need to demand that there be no special treatment in any area of ​​public life on religious grounds. Perhaps we need to interpret Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights more narrowly. It states: "Freedom to practice one's religion or belief shall be subject only to such restrictions as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society for reasons of public security, in order to protect public order, health or morality. or to protect the rights and freedoms of others. " But dare we start making demands?
Has terrorist attacks in the name of religion not created a general anxiety? Where one is anxious of what may happen if one does not give in, while giving a more idealistic and humane sounding pseudo justification for giving in to Islamist demands.
Acting on the basis of anxiety is doubly negative. One may give in to more demands than absolutely necessary and reasonable, and one may contribute to the further erosion of fundamental liberties and values in Western societies. For Muslims as a group, it is a plus-minus game. In the first instance, they can exult over the fact that the anxiety of the majority give them more rights, which will further the agenda of all Muslims. In the second instance it is negative, because a larger and larger part of the population may come to look with distrust on all Muslims, even the majority of those who do not make demands. What do we do, however, if the religious ideology is contrary to the general order of society, our basis of society, our laws, our hard-fought values, e.g. our gender equality, our legal norms, our culture, our manners, our mutual relations, our freedom to have our own opinions and express them, our reason, our critique of religion, etc.? Will we give up large parts of our beliefs to avoid conflict, or will we reject the religious demands?
Is the attempt to accept all possible and impossible demands of a fundamentalist religious ideology not as hopelessly naive as the attempt to knock the triangular block through the round hole, like in children’s pound-a-peg toy? If it were to succeed, it would shatter our own culture, and behead not only a teacher, but the whole Republic.
We must therefore insist that a fundamentalist religion conforms to all the essential elements of our society and culture, plus all the elements we may have forgotten and which are only found in behavioural attitudes that we cannot really explain explicitly.
In Macron’s words: “We must regain everything that the Republic has allowed to happen and which has led part of our youth or our citizens to be attracted by this radical Islam… What we need to tackle is Islamist separatism.”

Emmanuel Macron's speech:  DISCOURS DU PRÉSIDENT DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE SUR LE THÈME DE LA LUTTE CONTRE LESSÉPARATISMES,  2 OCTOBRE 2020

Social coherence through diversity?
"'Cultural diversity' raises the issue of national identity" states the British Crick report on "citizenship" of 1998. Therefore, efforts must be made to find or restore "a sense of common citizenship, including a national identity that is secure enough to find a place for the plurality of nations, cultures, ethnices and religions long found in the United Kingdom. Citizenship education creates common ground between different ethnic and religious identities."
The majority must respect, understand and tolerate minorities and minorities must learn and respect the laws, norms and conventions as much as the majority, because it will contribute to the creation of a common citizenship.
What, however, constitutes the common identity of a society like the British with a plurality of groups with different ethnic identities, cultural background, religion, norms etc.
A publication entitled "The Future of Multi-ethnic Britain: the Parekh Report" from 2000 outlines the dilemma.
On the one page it is stated "Since citizens have different needs, equal treatment requires full account to be taken of their differences. When equality ignores relevant differences and insists on uniformity of treatment, it leads to injustice and inequality; when differences ignore the demands of equality, they result in discrimination. Equality must be defined in a culturally sensitive way and applied in a discriminating but not discriminatory manner." (The Runnymede Trust, 2000: Preface)
On the other hand, it is acknowledged that there must be something that creates some kind of coherence or community for the many identity groups in the still existing nation states. "Every society needs a broadly shared body of values, including human rights, ethical norms which respect human dignity, the equal worth of all, equal opportunity for self-development, and equal life chances, as well as procedural values such as tolerance, mutual respect, dialogue and the peaceful resolution of conflict."
The Parekh report attempts to square the circle: It is argued that it is necessary both theoretically and in practice to treat people equally and with respect for their differences, to value the freedoms and rights of the individual, while at the same time demanding that the different groups should appreciate that they to belong to a community, by contributing to social cohesion and showing solidarity.
"Neither equality nor respect for difference is a sufficient value in itself. The two must be held together, mutually challenging and supportive. Similarly, neither personal liberty nor social cohesion is sufficient on its own. They too must be held together, qualifying and challenging each other, yet also mutually informing and enriching. " This is the impossible vision in the report.
Let us look at an example that may show the impossibility of squaring the circle, or the utopia of the creation of social cohesion, despite strongly diverging cultural perceptions.
 In the UK, the "Casey Review" with the subtitle "A review into opportunity and integration." The review looked attitudes towards important British values among the population as a whole and among Muslims. "During the review, we found mixed views on the notion of promoting British values. It was supported and rejected by many."
The study shows that there are highly divergent views on the importance of these

Different cultures cannot be squeezed into a shared form
A 2015 YouGov opinion poll found that a majority of the population believes there is a fundamental conflict between Islam and the values of British society.
On paper, one might imagine a solution to such conflicts. The Parekh report envisioned a rethink of “both the national story and national identity" by assuming "the transitional nature of all identities."
Rethink identity and, so to speak, remodel it. This is where they are are wrong. Culture is so deeply entrenched that you can't simply rethink and remodel it in an arbitrary way from the top down.
Some of our fundamental cultural perceptions have origins hidden so deeply in our development that we can only pass them on from generation to generation as habits and inclinations we are not even aware of, and if we are, then we cannot give any explanation for them. We can, of course, speculate about their purpose and function, but in reality, it might be more difficult to explain why we have certain cultural inclinations than to explain why we have the morphology that people have today.
These patterns, furrows or imprints are indescribable and silent, just as part of our knowledge is. We only experience the imprints, not the reasons, not the explanations. These imprints are perhaps such an important part of what it means to be human that we do not really think about them or question them. These elements of culture may be considered immutable and natural.
It is therefore to be expected that there will be fundamental conflicts between different cultures. Conflicts that cannot simply be erased by considering culture to be transient and able to be remodeled.
This means that there is a fundamental problem with cohesion and we are left with the question of what an existing dominant culture should give up and what it should accept from new minorities in order to create a notion of social cohesion. In the blog post "Disintegrating societies?" from May 20, 2016, we looked at the problematic consequences of such societal attempts to square of the circle.
In the publication "Race and Faith – The deafening silence," Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission, puts an end to a liberal elite's misguided belief in a kind of organic integration through acceptance of multiculturalism. For too long, inconvenient facts have been ignored, which show that we are not on the road to more integration and social cohesion, but rather a kind of super-diversity, with increased segregation and disintegration.
"Squeamishness about addressing diversity and its discontents risks allowing our country to sleepwalk to a catastrophe that will set community against community, endorse sexist aggression, suppress freedom of expression, reverse hard-won civil liberties, and undermine the liberal democracy that has served this country so well for so long.” (The Telegraph)
Rhetorically, Trevor Phillips asks whether we dare to stand by our fundamental values at the risk of offending others, or whether we are willing to put these values at risk and abandon much of the social progress achieved over the last half-century.
We must ask ourselves whether we are not doing both ourselves and migrants with a completely different cultural background, non-Western or third country migration, a disservice by not openly acknowledging, that this migration threatens the implicit and tacit coherence in our societies and lead to disastrous disintegration.
Probably from the best of intentions we have been complacent and tacitly accepted that basic Western notions and values, large and small have been worn down and become frayed and fuzzy at the edges.
The left and the “liberals” have become obsessed with the idea that problems with other cultures are due to our own lack of tolerance and our discrimination against other cultures.
That’s why the solution to integration problems has been to demand more tolerance for the intolerants, to give in to large and small demands from Muslim minorities in particular, to attempt to practice positive discrimination of minorities and demand proportional quotas of minorities in everywhere, film and TV productions, the workplace, the police and the military, and of course political parties and institutions.

Loathing our own culture while patronizing others
In angry response to such efforts we have seen the emergence of political movements that more or less inarticulately protest against at what they see as a misguided tolerance of minorities, whose values, culture and religious beliefs simply threaten the tacit norms, values, behaviour and way of life that has hitherto been regarded as self-evident.
For a self-proclaimed cultural elite and left-wing parties, the murmuring protest from sections of the indigenous population is viewed with disgust and distancing. For the self-proclaimed cultural elite the protest is scorned as primitive, intolerant, as expression of right-wing populism, while they themselves enjoy exotic food in ethnic restaurants, listening to rappers from a different ethnic background. Enjoying, light, diverse, but superficial part of the multicultural pop culture.
The very same elite who in their loathing of right-wing populist movements, in a strangely self-contradictory way embrace minorities, whose cultural attitudes and values are much further away from themselves. The reality is that at least some minority groups hold very different values and ambitions than those commonly held by the dominant liberal elites. “Values and ambitions are even further away from liberal ideals than the average; and that because they are sincerely held by those groups, they aren’t going to change any time soon."
It is among the self-defined cultural elite and the left that we most distinctly see a kind of loathing with the society of which they themselves are part. Their view is that it is our own fault if integration fails. We have not been tolerant enough, we have not shown enough consideration, or been too discriminatory, too racist, not supportive enough, not had enough special arrangements for different cultural minorities. Patronizing minorities by seeing them as victims of our wrong attitudes and our ugly past.
These are attitudes may eventually become self-destructive, in the sense that they lead to abandonment of the values that allow us to have such attitudes. They do not lead to more integration, but to the acceptance of segregation and thus to disintegration.