France has been beset with some of the worst Islamic terrorist attacks in recent memory, but it apparently hasn’t been enough to actually get the government to DO anything about the problem.
According to a new statement from Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, radicalization inside France has gone up 60% over the last two years. As of this weekend, there are 18,550 people registered by the French authorities as potential radicals, compared to 11,400 in 2015. To determine who goes into the database, the government tracks suspects’ personal information and their ties to terrorist organizations.
The surge in radicalism isn’t the only warning sign of a changing French culture, of course. In a recent Gatestone Institute report, Il Folgio editor Giuliu Meotti said that the number of mosques going up in France had skyrocketed.
Over the last 30 years, he said, more Muslim mosques “have been built in France than all the Catholic churches built in the last century.
It has been less than a week since the last terror attack in the Paris suburbs. On Wednesday, an assailant ran down anti-terror soldiers in Lavellois-Perret in what officials are calling a “deliberate act.” Two of the soldiers were transported to the hospital in serious condition. The driver, identified as devout Muslim Hamou B., was subsequently arrested.
But as far as French terror attacks are concerned, that one was downright mild. No one will soon forget the infamous Charlie Hebdo attack of 2014, nor the brutal slaughter of 130 people that unfolded in November of 2015. There was also the heinous truck attack in Nice last summer, which took the lives of 86 Bastille Day revelers.
France has been in a declared “state of emergency” nonstop since the Charlie Hebdo attacks, but it hasn’t inspired the government to take drastic action when it comes to Muslims spilling across their borders. Earlier this month, Department of the North President Jean-Rene Lecerf said the problem of unaccompanied foreign minors coming into France was one of “colossal” implications. “At this rate,” he said, “we will never be able to endure this effort.”
Well, the people of France had a chance earlier this year to take control of their own borders and put a woman in charge who would have restored sanity to their ultra-liberal (read: naïve) immigration policies. They passed. Now they have another president who talks tough on terrorism but will not have the spine to do anything truly meaningful to stem the tide of destruction facing this once-great nation.
