(16 Feb 2021) France's lower house of parliament is voting Tuesday on a bill that would strengthen government oversight of mosques and religious schools and crack down on polygamy and forced marriage, among other measures aimed at rooting out Islamic radicalism.
The bill is part of broader French efforts to fight extremism in recent years that gained new urgency after a teacher was beheaded in October and other attacks.
President Emmanuel Macron says the efforts are also needed to protect French values like gender equality and secularism from encroaching fundamentalism in some communities.
But many French Muslims say the draft law limits religious freedom and unfairly targets them, and say France already has enough laws to fight violence.  
People of Muslim faith interviewed outside of the Paris Mosque and across Paris at an outdoor food market ahead of the vote had barely even heard of the law.
In France, as elsewhere, the complexities of legislation are often lost on the general population.
But on a general note, those willing to speak on the issue, took exception to what they deemed a conflation between the Islamic faith and its practice and radical extremism in the name of their religion.
"I don't believe that the Muslims here in France are troublemakers or revolutionaries against France," said Bahri Ayari, a taxi driver who spoke to AP after prayers inside Paris' Grand Mosque.
"I don't understand, when one talks about radicalism, what does that mean - radicalism? It's these people who go to jail, they find themselves with nothing to do, they discuss amongst themselves and they leave prison even more aggressive and then that gets put on the back of Islam. That's not what a Muslim is," he added.
At an outdoor food market in Belleville, a mixed neighborhood in eastern Paris, Abdellah who refused to give his last name, also knew scant details about the bill going before parliament. But he was nonetheless fairly convinced that it was going to be destructive generally and would ultimately "create many problems for Islam."
Critics call the bill a political maneuver by Macron to win support from conservative and far-right voters ahead of next year's presidential election.
The bill is expected to win approval in the National Assembly, which is dominated by Macron's centrist party, as well as the conservative-led Senate.

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