Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How tolerant are the French expected to be towards Islamic extremism?

In Saturday’s Guardian, Natalie Nougayrède, the former managing editor of Le Monde, wrote that in the days following the slaughter of 84 people in Nice by an Islamic terrorist ‘incidents of open, blatant, anti-Muslim hatred have sparked a new, worrying phase’ in France.

She didn’t elaborate on what form this hatred took, nor come up with any examples, but Madame Nougayrède was adamant that intolerance among her compatriots was on the rise following four years of bloody religious mayhem that has left more than 200 dead in terrorist attacks on French soil. Then today comes a new attack, the brutal murder by two Islamic terrorists of an elderly priest as he conducted mass in his Normandy church. According to initial reports Father Jacques Hamel had his throat slit and a member of the congregation was seriously wounded.


Douglas Murray and Haras Rafiq discuss Europe’s summer of terror:

I take the opposite view to Nougayrède.

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