I disagree with this, and I'll explain why. But first, just to get two basic things out of the way 1) terror has no justification 2) The French state is well within its rights to protect FOE, including the publication of offensive cartoons. Having got this out of the way, it is https://twitter.com/bmarshio/status/1321839432786448384

not just possible but necessary to critique the French model of integrating minorties right now, without equivocating on terror. For one thing, this is not mainly about terror, but the debate around secularism, a debate which is being promoted& led on one side by the French state

Macron has argued (and is following it up with policies) that France needs a new compact to integrate minorities. He has called for a new "French Islam" that is consonant with 'Enlightenment' because the current version is in crisis. On the immediate side, the French state has

taken actions like publishing the cartoons on govt buildings and broad crackdowns on Muslim civil society, to be followed by policies on schooling and the training of imams. To argue, that no one should critique these policies on terror attacks, and no one should question the

assumptions underlying these policies, because there have been terrorist attacks is to say terror attacks should chill public debate and only the most hardline voices should prevail. A parallel can be drawn from post 9/11 America and how policies passed in the immediate aftermath

of terror attacks undermined civil liberties for years to come. There is no time where public debates should be discouraged, and certainly not in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, because that is precisely the time when social norms around important subjects get formed. And you

simply can't critique the present response of the French State without brining in the history of the French state's failure of integrating minorities, and how that informs the present arguments. Even Macron himself had reacted to the post 2015 wave of attacks in France by saying

that socio-economic discrimination had created a "fertile ground" for radicalism in France. He was not "justifying terror" then, even if he now takes a hardline stance. Even on the narrow question of terror, Will McCants who researched European jihadists argued that French public

culture of strict laicite, ghettos and high unemployment create conditions appealing for radicalism. Oliver Roy, who is an authority on European jihadists, has argued that jihadists are young, alienated radicals that revolt not just against French ( or Western) society but also

the traditional Islam of their families and communities, and they are rarely recruited in mosques (the only exception he gave was Austria). So when Macron argues for a French Islam that will be regulated by the State, it is important that people add to this debate by airing

these perspectives rather than meekly condemning and backing the French state. And the history of Islamophobia in French society should be recounted now because it is central to understand these current policies, where Islam and Muslim communities are viewed as a problem, both

on the Left and Right of the spectrum, and hence the 'solution' involves things like cracking down on Muslim civil society orgs and calling calling 'Coalition against Islamophobia' an Enemy of the State (as the French interior minister did). This discourse is not emerging in a

vaccum. TLDR- Terror attacks lead to broad debates involving important topics like secularism and the place of minorities, and unless you want the debate to be monopolised by the State or the hard right, it is imperative that critiques from the Left/minorities also be aired.