What does or should it mean to be a “true Frenchman”? It isn’t any one thing, but it’s a constellation of things, beliefs, and attitudes, certainties and uncertainties, born of knowledge of and intelligent affection for a particular place called France, and a particular people called French. There are no bright lines to define the “True Frenchman.” One needs to know a certain amount of French history. How much? That’s not possible to say. But if someone lives in France, but knows nothing of, and takes no interest in, and may even be irremediably hostile to, that country’s political and intellectual history, knows nothing or very little about Catholicism and the Gallican Church, about the Huguenots and the Wars of Religion, about the Divine Right of Kings, about the Court of Louis XIV, about the 18th century Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, Louis Philippe, the Paris Commune, about France in the two World Wars, the German Occupation, the Resistance, about French Colonialism and de-colonialism, about France as a member of the E.U. — then can that person be considered “a true Frenchman”? Probably not, even though we have not and can not specify any particular amount of knowledge that would qualify someone to be considered a “Frenchman.”
But what would one think of someone who, though he had spent his life in France, spoke and read only Arabic, knew nothing of French history and had no desire to learn about it, despised and dismissed French culture as “decadent,” rejected the French political system as elevating man-made laws over the Sharia, and believed, as the Qur’an teaches, that the French people among whom he lived were “the most vile of creatures,” while Muslims like himself were “the best of peoples”? Such a person is “French” only in a formal sense: he lives in France, and may even have obtained a French passport. But is he “French” in any larger and more meaningful sense?
A “true Frenchman” needs to know the French language, at least enough to understand and be understood in that tongue. He cannot exist stranded on a linguistic island. Some familiarity with French literature, French art, French music, French philosophy and political theory — these are the main components of a French cultural identity. A “true Frenchman” ought to possess some knowledge of the main currents of French intellectual life. The rights of the individual, including those of freedom of speech (as the criticism of Muhammad) and freedom of conscience (which protects those who want to change their religion either for another, or for no faith at all) must be both understood and accepted by the “true Frenchman.”
There is no particular amount of such knowledge that makes one a “true Frenchman,” but a complete absence of such knowledge makes it harder for someone to claim to be “French” in any meaningful sense. A person who lives in France but takes no interest in, or is hostile to, French history and French culture, who has no interest in the art, music, literature, history, religious beliefs, or politics of France, even while living on French soil, is not a “true Frenchman,” while someone who takes some interest in at least some aspects of French civilization, and is not irremediably hostile to France and the indigenous French, has that possibility.
Macron has chosen not to discuss, much less to offer tentative guidelines, as I’ve just done, as to what would adequately define a “true Frenchman.” He simply wants to avoid the issue altogether, in the most simple-minded of ways: by denying the possible existence of a “true Frenchman.” If there is no such thing as a “true Frenchmen,” then everyone in France can be French, and there is no need to wonder about how to “integrate” Muslims into a French identity that no longer exists. Muslims in France are already almost as French as they need to be, in Macron’s rosy view, and the only problem, for Macron, is making sure that “foreign states” do not build and maintain mosques in France, or train and pay for French imams. He does not see the problem as one of an ideology, Islam, irredeemably hostile to what makes France France. Instead, he sees a problem only of foreign states paying for mosques and imams in France, and thereby encouraging “extremism” — an “extremism” which Emmanuel Macron has never dared to define, much less try to distinguish from orthodox Islam. His focus, as stated months ago, is on building French Muslim organizations that will train imams inside France, and on mosques that will be built and maintained by the French state, and imams paid government salaries, using revenues from taxes on halal products and on pilgrimages to Mecca.
Macron’s attempt to deny a “French identity” and the possibly of a “true Frenchman” has not won him any friends in France. Many French intellectuals — including large numbers on the left — have denounced this absurd claim. The French — if not Macron himself — are proud of being French. They do not dismiss this identity, but glory in it. Nor did Muslims in France express any particular satisfaction in Macron’s claim that a “true Frenchman” does not exist. They will pocket any concession or surrender, but offer nothing in return.
Macron might have simply said something much more interesting and provoking of thought: a tentative discussion of what kinds of knowledge and affection (linguistic, cultural, historical, political) contribute to the creation of a “French identity” — never mind a “true Frenchman.” He could have wondered aloud if there was any irreducible pemmican of knowledge that should be considered essential to such a definition. That would further discussion, rather than shut it down. And he could have asked, too, if those who are taught to despise the Infidels (“vile creatures”) and all their works, who don’t know and don’t want to find out about, and are irremediably hostile to, French history and French culture, are for those very reasons not likely to attain a “French identity,” much less become “true Frenchmen,” under any definition. That, of course, is something Macron, and all the little macrons of this world, cannot possibly allow themselves to recognize.