France. Big Dominique and his struggle against the Islamists

The French interior minister makes the case for being tough on Muslim extremists

IN AMERICAN minds, Dominique de Villepin once embodied French pacifist defiance and soft-on-terrorism Old Europe. As foreign minister, he was the most passionate opponent at the United Nations of the use of force in Iraq. So it may surprise many to find that, as France's interior minister, Mr de Villepin (in the middle of the picture above) is now waging a hardline battle on terror in France, with zero tolerance of radical Islam.

Liberal multiculturalists have long said that secular France is too intolerant to religious minorities, especially its 5m Muslims (the biggest Muslim population in Europe). It is accused of being too rigid in denying religious freedoms in public institutions, and too suspicious of goings-on in mosques. The French ban on the headscarf in state schools was widely condemned in America, Britain and the Netherlands. But since the grisly murder last month of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch film director, more Europeans have asked if there might be a link between laisser-faire multiculturalism and the radicalisation of Muslims. Could excessive tolerance be making it too easy for extremist Islam to organise?

Although he is careful not to criticise multiculturalism in the rest of Europe, Mr de Villepin is unapologetic about France's tough regime. “Terrorists are opportunists,” he says, sitting in his office beside a bust of Napoleon. “They strike where it is easiest.” In his view, Muslim extremism requires good policing and robust laws, but also a strategy. “We need a strong policy to combat radical Islam. It is used as a breeding-ground for terrorism. We cannot afford not to watch them very closely.”

There are two elements to Mr de Villepin's approach. The first is a rigid, even repressive, intolerance of incitement to violence. When he tried to expel Abdelkader Bouziane, an Algerian cleric in Lyons, who advocated the stoning of women, the decision was overturned by the courts. So Mr de Villepin changed the law - and the imam was on the next plane home. Religious-hatred laws were also behind this week's court decision to ban al-Manar, a Lebanese satellite-television station close to Hizbullah, Lebanon's Iranian-inspired “Party of God”.

To help his campaign, Mr de Villepin has an intelligence network, with Arabic expertise and a legal arsenal, that long predates September 11th 2001. France has two domestic intelligence agencies: the Renseignements Generaux, an intelligence-gathering service, and the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, a counter-intelligence agency. Agents keep a close eye on prayer places in France, which number 1,685, according to the RG. Of these, about 50 are considered “radical”. Mr Bouziane had long been tracked. Mr de Villepin is now setting up special cells around the country to monitor fast-food joints, halal butchers, specialist bookshops and telephone call-centres, any of which might be fronts or recruitment points. A pilot effort in Paris has led to the expulsion of 14 extremists, including seven imams.

The French criminal-justice system makes a crackdown easy. Terrorist suspects can be held for 96 hours without charge. Under a 1996 law, they can be detained by a judge for “association with wrongdoers involved in a terrorist enterprise”: this covers not just conspirators, but those in their circle. Since January 2004, several members of the Benchellali family have been held on such charges, linked to plans for a chemical bomb. All four French suspects released from Guantnamo Bay, one of them a Benchellali, were detained on their return home. “We have a particularly repressive criminal-justice regime,” deplores one of their lawyers. As many as 35% of prisoners in France are in “provisional detention” awaiting trial, a process that can take years.

In other countries, this might be a subject for liberal hand-wringing. But the detention of the Guantnamo Bay four provoked little comment in France. Most people in France see it as a price to pay to protect liberal society. “We must never find ourselves in a position of powerlessness,” insists Mr de Villepin. “Democratic governments must ensure order, as this is the guarantee of our freedoms.” Far from prompting debate on the balance between civil liberties and security, Mr de Villepin's approach has been applauded - and his popularity has risen, encouraging those who see him as the next prime minister.

The second part of Mr de Villepin's struggle is one that Liberation, a left-leaning newspaper, calls “drowning the beards”. His predecessor as interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, argued that radical Islam was best tamed by co-option. But Mr de Villepin wants to dilute this by promoting moderates. Mr Sarkozy created the French Council of the Muslim Faith, an official body now dominated by hardliners. Mr de Villepin prefers a “Muslim foundation”, in which mosque-based representatives are balanced by secular or moderate Muslims. Since less than 10% of French Muslims are practising, he argues, their representatives should reflect this. His foundation would aim to bring openness to the financing of mosques, much of which comes from Arabs abroad.

Mr de Villepin, a romantic neo-Gaullist, biographer of Napoleon and poetic defender of his country's gloire, is also keen to reaffirm French values. To this end, he wants France to train imams. Of the country's 1,200 or so Muslim clerics, he says, three-quarters are not French, and a third do not even speak French. From next September he plans to offer courses to imams in theology and “secularism”: law, civics and French institutions, as well as the French language. And Mr de Villepin hopes to supply more Muslim chaplains to prisons. It is illegal to collect official figures on religion in France, but it is reckoned that a majority of the country's prison population is Muslim. Recruitment to radical Islam behind bars is a growing worry.

Plenty of questions about these plans remain. Why would foreign financiers, from Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, pay cheques via a foundation? Since courses for imams cannot be compulsory, what is the incentive for them to learn about France's republican code? Given the popularity of Arabic classes at mosques, would imams want to learn French?

Nor does it follow that countries that favour multiculturalism, such as Britain, cannot also support rigorous policing and counter-intelligence work against radical Islam. France may have less compunction about asserting its values, but the trade-off between security and liberty is still a challenge. Yet at a time when all of Europe is grappling with Islamic radicalism, Mr de Villepin's approach will be studied with interest - even, perhaps, in America.

Feature looks at the policies of French Interior Minister, Dominique de Villepin, towards Muslim extremists.

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