Emmanuel Macron Quotes
Our mission... it will be difficult, it will take time, it will be demanding for all men and women... will be to act in such a way that French people of the Muslim faith are always more proud of being French than of being Muslim.
Macron, Emmanuel. Speech on Secularism and Islam. 18 Oct. 2016, Montpellier, France.
For most Muslims, their religious identity supersedes their nationalistic identity. Sukarno’s quotation is famous because many ultraorthodox Muslims castigated him for putting nationalism before Islam. There is an orthodox Islamic concept of the Ulma—the community of all Muslims in the world, and this takes precedence over any nation or set of nations. In that sense, extreme Islamic fundamentalists have always opposed Sukarno claiming he was an enemy of Islam.
Before the French Revolution, Jews could freely practice their own religion in France but they could not hold citizenship, become professionals, or a host of other privileges of citizenship. Clermont-Tonnerre and other liberals argued that Jews should be given citizenship. The Jacobins--conservative Catholics close to the Papacy--opposed granting citizenship to Jews or Protestants. One argument that the Jacobins gave was that each of these sects would be separate nations within France and not necessarily have French national interest as a priority. Clermont-Tonnerre gave this response which has been the French philosophy about minority citizenship since then. Their thought was that anyone may become a French citizen as an individual but he or she should do so because he/she wants to accept French values and support the French nation. This view worked quite will over the years until the large immigration of Muslims starting in the 1960s where many new immigrants just wanted to live in France and earn a living there, but did not want to identify with French national aspirations or adopt French culture or values. America, had no such demands and those immigrants who tended to identify primarily with their country or culture of origin and not assimilate were allowed to do so, but the American way of life was so attractive that many immigrants did adopt it and even if they did not, their children almost inevitably did. That has not happened in France.
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron is a French politician who has been serving as the president of France and ex officio co-prince of Andorra since 14 May 2017.
