Far-right Catholics in France have been warned they will be disbanded if they show evidence of a “religious pathology” that could lead to violence.
The warning — which has been decried by religious freedom experts — came from Interior Minister Manuel Valls at a conference on the official state policy of secularism.
Valls said foreign-born Muslims imams would be deported and radical faith-based organisations would be disbanded if a new monitoring regime finds evidence they might become violent.
Under the latter grouping he referred specifically to a far-right traditionalist Catholic movement called Civitas, that protests aggressively against what it calls insults to Christianity.
Valls said police were already observing Civitas closely because its protest campaigns skirted “the limits of legality”. “All excesses are being minutely registered in case we have to consider dissolving it and defending this before a judge,” the minister said.
According to a Reuters report, the French Catholic Church has kept its distance from Civitas, which is close to the far-right National Front and the rebel traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X.
Once a Catholic country, France has been officially secular since 1905, pushing aside faith in the public square and prohibiting sects that are seen as a threat to the public order.
Education minister Vincent Peillon said that secularism “is not about simple tolerance” but is instead about “understanding what is right and being able to distinguish good from evil”.
Nina Shea, director of the Hudson’s Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, DC, denounced the new French policy as a “gross violation . . . of basic religious freedom”.
“Subjective terms such as ‘radical’ and ‘religious pathology’ open the door to the repression of beliefs and practices unpopular with the prevailing powers,” Shea said.
Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at the centre, said such policies could have far-reaching consequences.
“The result of these restrictions is that instead of enforcing restrictions on violence, the state starts seek[ing] to extend its controls on what religious beliefs people may hold,” he said.
Sources:
Image: Le Figaro
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News category: World.
