And promptly gets suspended from his political party:
A French mayor has been suspended from his party after calling for the country to ban Islam. Robert Chardon, the UMP mayor of Venelles in southern France, tweeted: “The Muslim religion must be banned in France” and added that anyone practising the religion must be “immediately escorted to the border”. He also claimed Islam will be banned in France by 2027.
The tweet was part of a discussion former president Nicolas Sarkozy began with the public, using the hashtag #NSDirect. Sarkozy, who is leader of the UMP party and is likely to run for president again in 2017, immediately distanced himself from the comments, writing: “I condemn this proposal even if secularism also means fixing limits. Rights and limits go together.”
Au contraire! Rights, by definition, have no limit; to limit a right is to make it subject to the whim of the state. But this is what passes for “conservatism” in French and mainstream European politics these days.
UMP Vice-president Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet announced the party was suspending Mr Chardon pending a procedure to remove him from the UMP. Recently the mayor has been treated for cancer of the mouth and came to his radical proposals during this period.
“During my treatment, I’ve been thinking and I came to this conclusion. Islam should be banned in France, but also a Marshall Plan should be established to allow those who want to practice the Muslim religion to do so in their home country,” he told Le Monde. Mr Chardon became mayor of the small town of Venelles in 2012 after the death of his predecessor.
He’s right of course — assuming that France wants to stay, in any meaningful sense, “French,” and not simply become the husk of a state with a passport but no civilization worth the name. But oo-la-la, those falafel stands!
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