French President François Hollande reached out to France’s nervous religious minorities Thursday, vowing that any acts directed at Jews or Muslims would be “severely punished” but also insisting the country’s democratic traditions cannot be eroded, reports The Washington Post.
The comments by Hollande — the latest in a string of addresses following last week’s terrorist attacks — touched on some of the most sensitive self-examinations for the country in the wake of the bloodshed.
France’s Muslim community, the largest in Europe, fears increasing reprisals from the Islamist-inspired attacks. It also is left grappling over how to reconcile their role in a country that cherishes free expression with dismay over provocative images of Islam — such as caricatures of the prophet Muhammad in the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that appeared to touch off the attacks.
France’s much smaller Jewish community, meanwhile, faces deepening worries about anti-Semitic violence even as some groups in Israel and elsewhere urge French Jews to emigrate.
Muslims are the “first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism, intolerance,” Hollande said in a speech at Paris’s Institute of the Arab World. “French people of the Muslim religion have the same rights, the same duties, as all citizens. They must be protected.”
He went on to warn: “Anti-Muslim acts, like anti-Semitism, should not just be denounced but severely punished.”
But Hollande said his nation’s democratic principles could not be compromised.
“France is a friendly country, but France is a country of rules, of principles, of values, and among those values there is one that is not negotiable, that will never be, and that is liberty, democracy,” he said.
The traumatized French capital received another jolt after a car with four people inside ran straight into a policewoman guarding Hollande’s official residence, the Elysée Palace, late Wednesday. Two people were arrested and two others fled.
It was unclear, however, whether the incident was linked to last week’s deadly assault by Islamist militants, which left a total of 17 people dead. Raids by police on Friday also killed three gunmen.
Some 120,000 police and other forces have fanned across France after last week’s rampage at Charlie Hebdo and later at a kosher supermarket on the city’s eastern edge.