Emmanuel Macron recently announced that he wanted to end ‘Islamic separatism’ in France. A minority of the country’s estimated six million Muslims risk forming a ‘counter-society’, he said. It is tough talk from the President, but Macron is keen to position himself as the defender of French values, and he has form: when statues were being pulled down across the western world, Macron proclaimed that ‘the Republic won’t erase any name from its history.