There is concern that the country’s divisive anti-Muslim political discourse will seep into the union’s institutional policymaking, says Shada Islam in the Guardian. The French election campaign essentially means it is open season on Muslims in France, writes Islam. Many French politicians have adopted rampant Islamophobia as an electoral strategy. Toxic debates on Islam and Muslims, mixed with acrimonious intersectional swipes at race and migration, are becoming increasingly venomous. Alarmingly, Muslim-bashing is no longer the preserve of the far-right anti-immigration candidate Marine Le Pen. Macron’s hardline interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, accused Le Pen, during a recent television debate, of going “soft” on Islam. Macron himself, who is expected to seek re-election, is already enforcing a spate of anti-Muslim policies, including a bill supposedly aimed at preventing “separatism” and the emergence of a “counter society” among France’s six million Muslim citizens. Macron’s government is also under criticism for shutting down the […]