France After Sept. 11: Tough Laws, Integration Challenge

France has one of Europe's harshest anti-terrorism policies and tough criminal justice systems, both long predating Sept. 11. The country's long-standing experience of Islamist terrorism -- in particular the 1995 Paris bombings by Algerian terrorists -- has meant that French intelligence agencies have for years monitored Islamist activity.

Sept. 11 led to a further tightening of anti-terrorism laws, including among other things, increased surveillance and gathering of communication data, surprise raids as well as speedy expulsion of radical clerics.

The measures have hardened ever since Nicolas Sarkozy of the center-right became French interior minister in 2004 and adopted an American-inspired "zero tolerance" policy. Opinion polls consistently show that the country's muscular legal armory is largely accepted by the French and has not prompted major protests over eroding civil liberties.

Integration biggest challenge

Though France has been spared a terrorist attack since Sept. 11, it's obvious that President Jacques Chirac's vehement opposition to the US-led war on Iraq, for which he was applauded in the Arab world, had little to do with it. A spate of arrests over the years linked to Islamic terror networks and messages from a shadowy terrorist outfit in 2004 explicitly threatening France for banning the Muslim headscarf in state schools have put Paris on edge.

But, winning the hearts and minds of its estimated 4.5-million-strong Muslim population -- Europe's largest -- remains one of France's biggest challenges since Sept. 11. Muslims in France have complained of feeling victimized and being singled out in the wake of harsher anti-terrorism laws.

To counter security concerns about the growth of radical Islamists, Sarkozy attempted to co-opt them when in 2003 he set up the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM). The idea was to give Islam an official voice and to temper it by offering recognition. However, the unrest that swept France's cities in 2005 -- where many of the rioters were of Muslim background -- drove home the fact that France still has a long way to go in integrating its disgruntled young Muslim immigrants.