The Islamist beheading in Paris should be a wake-up to the rest of Europe – Telegraph.co.uk

Timing counts for a great deal in politics and last Fridays gruesome Islamist terrorist attack in the north-western suburbs of Paris was no different. On October 3, President Emmanuel Macron delivered a hard-hitting speech where he vowed to fight Islamist separatism and combat the threat it posed to the core values of the secular French Republic libert, galit, fraternit.

Offering a robust defence of the constitutional secular principle of lacit, Macron warned that a minority of Frances estimated six million Muslims were in danger of establishing a counter-society. Fast forward to October 16: an Islamist terrorist decapitated schoolteacher Samuel Paty on the street, before being shot dead by the French police.

Paty had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad considered an act of blasphemy under Islam - during a civics class on freedom of expression. The perpetrator who brought on Patys gruesome demise is reported to be an 18-year-old Chechen-origin refugee who was unknown to Frances intelligence services.

Counter-society arguments are not without credibility when examining public attitudes within Europes Muslim communities. A 2016 IFOP poll commissioned by the think-tank Institut Montaigne found that 29 per cent of French Muslims felt the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia was more important than French secular law. A quarter of the French Muslims polled were classified as hardliners usually being young, low-skilled people, poorly integrated into the labour market and living in the outskirts of cities. This hardliner group approved of the burka, polygamy, and the general supremacy of Islamic law.

There are similarly worrying patterns on the integration front in Germany especially within the countrys sizeable Turkish-origin population. A migrant group, according to German sociologist Claus Mueller, separated from the mainstream by cultural and religious lifestyles.

A 2016 German study on integration and religion produced by the University of Mnster exposed the popularity of controversial and regressive attitudes held among some ethnic Turks living in Germany. Out of the ethnic Turks interviewed in the study, 47 per cent agreed that following the core tenets of Islam was more important to them than abiding by the laws of Germany.

This view was shared by 36 per cent of second and third generation respondents. Nearly a third of the ethnic Turkish respondents (32 per cent) supported the statement that Muslims should strive to return to a societal order like that in the time of the Prophet Muhammad. 7 per cent of the Turkish-origin respondents agreed with the view that violence can be justified as a means to spread and enforce Islam.

Britain is by no means in the clear when it comes to problematic attitudes within its Muslim population. An early-2015 ComRes survey of British Muslims, commissioned by BBC Radio 4, found that 27 per cent of the respondents had some sympathy for the motives behind the January 2015 Islamist terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices, which saw 12 people killed. Following the attack on the satirical magazine (which is known for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad), 24 per cent of the British Muslim respondents disagreed with the statement that such acts of violence can never be justified.

Last Fridays beheading was not simply a gruesome murder of a teacher it was a vicious attack on the integrity of the French secular republic. It also speaks to the broader matter of sovereignty in the West. Who decides what is acceptable when it comes to mocking religions? Which authority should be in control of what kind of materials are used in schools? And to what extent should religious sensitivities be respected in the public sphere?

The attack will reignite debates over whether or not the political classes of Western Europe have overindulged in pursuing social liberal policies which have failed to understand the potential social risks of poor integration outcomes for migrants and refugees especially those who originate from religio-political contexts which vastly differ from conventional liberal democratic society.

It will also shape discussions on social cohesion and how certain religio-political ideologies - with their totalitarian and separatist impulses - have been allowed to spread in Europes post- Enlightenment democracies. In the post-Covid world, one of the greatest challenges for Western Europe is how to create high- trust, cohesive societies where support for aggressively anti-democratic ideologies is significantly reduced. Building local communities which are resilient to the advances of religio-political separatist ideologies, should be at the heart of social policy across the Western world.

Dr Rakib Ehsan is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society

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The Islamist beheading in Paris should be a wake-up to the rest of Europe - Telegraph.co.uk