Anglophones and Francophones Still Approach Islam Differently

IN BOTH internal and external affairs, every Western democracy is facing tricky questions over Islam. In this delicate area, domestic and foreign-policy questions can never be completely separated, given that nations in Islam's heartland have an interest in the welfare and orientation, both political and spiritual, of their co-religionists in the West.

And here is a paradox. In the United States and Britain, governments which hew to the political right have shown a spirit of pragmatism in their dealings with the world's second-largest religion. In France, meanwhile, an administration led by Emmanuel Macron, a radical centrist, sounds a note of ideological zeal as it pledges to refashion Islam and make it fully compatible with the ethos of a secular republic.