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L’ISLE-SUR-LA-SORGUE, France – Tucked between tributaries of rivers in southeastern France, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is known for its cobbled streets and sunny outdoor market.
But ahead of Sunday’s local elections, controversy in this small town, and elsewhere across France, has centered on the fallout from the beheading of a school teacher near Paris last fall by a Chechen refugee as well as the killing of churchgoers in Nice Weeks. Later by a Tunisian immigrant.
Across France, questions about Islam’s place in French society and tensions over immigration have preoccupied many French and pushed voters to the right.
In response, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government has moved toward more conservative policies, cracking down on mosques and other Muslim organizations that it says practice Islamic separatism, Macron’s term for what the government describes as a movement seeking to bypass civil laws. with the religious.
But the shift to the right in the electorate particularly favored Marine Le Pen, the leader of the anti-immigration National Rally party. Ms Le Pen has long blamed a series of attacks in recent years on what she sees as soft immigration policies that she says allow extremist strains of Islam to take root in the country and fuel violence – a link the Macron government rejects.
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