From the New York Times:
After Teacher’s Decapitation, France Unleashes a Broad Crackdown on ‘the Enemy Within’
With dozens of raids against Muslim individuals and groups accused of radicalism, the fury of the response had France’s right wing speaking in terms of warfare.
By Adam Nossiter
Oct. 19, 2020PARIS — France on Monday unleashed a broad crackdown on Muslims accused of extremism, carrying out dozens of raids, vowing to shut down aid groups and threatening to expel foreigners as anger swept the country following the decapitation of a high school teacher for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
Many of those swept up in raids were already in police files for showing “signals” of potential radicalization, like preaching radicalized sermons or sharing hate messages on social networks, government officials said. More than 200 others — the bulk already in prison — were threatened with a rare mass expulsion.
But other groups targeted in the raids included Muslim associations previously given government subsidies for their work promoting better civic relations, and only 15 of the people arrested had any connection to the gruesome attack on Friday.
The scope of the response was a measure of how the killing of Samuel Paty, a teacher in a suburb north of Paris, had reopened old wounds in France. The nation remains traumatized by terrorists attacks by Muslim extremists that killed scores in 2015, starting with the editorial offices of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine — whose cartoons the teacher had shown.
As much as the Charlie Hebdo killings, the beheading of Mr. Paty has struck deep inside the French psyche as an assault on a principal pillar of the French republic — the secular public school system — as well as the nation’s devotion to freedom of speech.
Thousands of people took to the streets in cities around France over the weekend to demonstrate their horror at the killing on Friday. …
Some 51 Muslim aid organizations will also be targeted by the police this week, the interior minister said, some of which would be dissolved at Mr. Macron’s request. Mr. Darmanin called the most prominent of them, Collective Against Islamophobia, the C.C.I.F., which compiles a register of anti-Muslim acts, “an enemy of the republic.” …
Already, 15 people have been arrested, including family members of the suspect, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee named Abdullakh Anzorov, who was shot dead by the police Friday night after the killing. Also in custody is the father of a student at the school who had denounced Mr. Paty online for showing the caricatures and had demanded his dismissal. The video circulated widely on social media.
The interior minister announced that it would expel 231 foreign citizens identified for their radicalism, including 180 who were already in prison. Those not imprisoned would soon be arrested, officials said. At times, the French government has expelled foreign Muslims it accuses of being radicalized. But a mass expulsion like the one currently envisioned is unusual.
