French cabinet backs law targeting radical Islam
The French cabinet has approved a bill aimed at tackling radical Islam after a recently available group of attacks by extremists.
The draft laws, part of a long-term drive by President Emmanuel Macron to uphold secular values, tightens rules on home-schooling and hate speech.
Some critics, both in France and abroad, possess accused his federal government using it to target religion.
But Primary Minister Jean Castex called it "a regulation of protection" that could no cost Muslims from the grip of radicals.
He insisted that the text had not been "aimed against religions or against the Muslim faith in particular".
The bill "supporting Republican principles" would tighten restrictions on online hate speech and ban the application of the web to maliciously reveal personal stats about other people.
This is regarded as a response to the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in October. Paty, 47, was killed by a lone attacker after demonstrating pupils cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The investigation has revealed an online campaign had been launched against him.
The law also bans "clandestine" schools which promote Islamist ideology and tightens rules on home-schooling.
It would also reinforce the ban on polygamy by refusing residency to polygamous candidates. Doctors could be fined or banned for carrying out virginity testing on girls.
There are new guidelines on the subject of financial transparency for Muslim associations and a requirement that they register with France's Republican values in substitution for funding.
A good ban on officials putting on religious attire at work is being extended to transport staff and staff at pools and markets.
The draft rules has been under consideration for quite a while but recent Islamist attacks pushed it up the agenda.
Paty's murder was among three attacks that outraged France. Three people had been killed in stabbings in a good church in October.
Two persons were stabbed and seriously hurt in September in Paris nearby the former offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, where Islamist militants completed a deadly attack in 2015.
