A thread on @EmmanuelMacron & Islam, given I'm a Muslim & cover France for @EurasiaGroup . It's ENRAGED a segment on Twitter. But I think it was a very good and balanced speech. Short thread 1/

So @EmmanuelMacron has angered some Muslim activists, annoyed the French far right & outraged the hard Left with his much awaited speech yesterday on defending the French secular state from “separatism” and radical Islam. Did he get it about right then? Yes, mostly he did 2/

Macron is often accused of “ontheotherhandism” –a sterile determination to see all sides of every argument. In his speech yest, he attempted a balance between a frontal assault on radical “political Islam” & a recognition many of France’s 5m Muslims have been let down by state 3/

He set out plans to combat extremist Islamist teaching – by forbidding home teaching of children beyond the age of three and ending the “importation” of non-French imams financed from abroad 4/

But he also admitted – in strikingly strong terms – that France had created its own social and economic “separatism” for half a century by dumping poorer people in suburban ghettoes with poor housing and few jobs 5/

Macron promised measures in the next few weeks to address housing and jobs in the multi-racial inner suburbs. A “profound change” is needed, he said. “We cannot keep adding poverty to poverty.” 6/

His speech foreshadows a draft law on “secularity and liberty” to be presented in December, which will place mosques under greater control and insist that imams are trained in France. State funding will be given in return for signing a charter on secularism and democracy 7/

But – correctly & courageously - Macron rejected calls from the Right and part of the Left to restrict muslim women from wearing headscarves in public 8/

No law, he said, could distinguish between “women who wear headscarves for cultural/religious reasons and those who want “to undermine the Republic”. ENDS