advocacy groups, accusing them of being afraid to defend her right to criticize religions for fear of offending Muslims. For Mila’s defenders, the virulence directed against her shows that France’s model of secularism and freedom of expression are under attack. “We have gone mad,” President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview last year when asked about Mila. He has vowed to defeat what he has called Islamist “separatism” or the undermining of France’s values of secularism and freedom of expression. On that basis, prosecutors quickly dropped an investigation they had opened against Mila on suspicion of incitement of racial hatred.

Source: New York Times July 06, 2021 07:00 UTC