Macron's tough talk about 'reforming' Islam is misguided and doomed to fail | Arthur Goldhammer

The French president needed to stay calm in the face of terror attacks. Instead, he has bowed to patriotic passions

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, minced no words in his recent diatribe against his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. Macron needs mental treatment," Erdoan said. This blast from Ankara came in response to Macron's announcement of a series of measures intended to reform" the practice of Islam in France and end Islamic separatism" - proof, to Erdoan, that Macron had a problem with Islam".

Then, just five days later, on 29 October, a newly arrived Tunisian immigrant killed three Christians at prayer in Nice. France had yet again been the victim of an Islamist terrorist attack," Macron proclaimed. He did not need to remind his countrymen of the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by another immigrant, this one of Chechen descent, in broad daylight two weeks earlier, or of the prior stabbing of two people outside the former offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The execution of Paty, the murders in Nice, and the Paris stabbings are just the latest in a series of attacks that have claimed the lives of 260 French citizens since 2012. No one can deny that France has a terrorism problem.