Calls for the boycott of French products are growing across the Muslim world, in response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s robust defence of the right to mock religion, Islam included. This follows the brutal murder of a schoolteacher who showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. The boycott is the latest twist in a years-long debate about the nature of French secularism. So what exactly does the idea mean and whom is it meant to protect? We speak to Rim-Sarah Alouane, a French legal scholar and PhD candidate researching religious freedom, human rights and civil liberties in France.
The ‘weaponisation’ of French secularism
