A recent incident at a council meeting in Ivry-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, provided a striking snapshot of the tensions surrounding secularism and the place of Islam in French society. In protest against the ubiquity of the Islamic veil, a Rassemblement National (RN) councillor brandished a cross and recited a Hail Mary—provoking a hysterical reaction from a Communist mayor who has made Islamist communitarianism his electoral stock-in-trade.
The town of Ivry, on the outskirts of Paris, is one of the last towns still run by Communists, emblematic of what was once known as the ‘red suburbs’ surrounding the capital.
