This is the Kato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 29, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

France's response to Islamist killings in that country may make the problems of violence inspired by radical Islam

worse.

Mustafa Aquiol is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of the book

Islam Without Extremes, we spoke this week.

What do you make of this attack in France, the response to it, and Macron's response more generally

to violence in France by stating that he wants to reform the practice of Islam within France.

First of all, I should say the event that initiated this latest controversy was appalling.

I mean a high school teacher Samuel Petty was killed in France while he was leaving his school by this Russian-born Chechen person,

18-year-old who was living in France for a long time,

because he showed the cartoons of Charley Hebdo in class.

He asked actually Muslim students to leave the classroom in case they would be disturbed and many of them did.

But you know this became an issue in school. Some parents campaigned against him not to kill him but you know as a protest and

maybe get him fired but then this more radical guy took you took a mission out of this and he went there and he killed him and he beheaded him.

And I understand how this is shocking to France,

that more than 200 people have been killed in France, French people, in the past decade

because of these controversies over cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, Charlie Abdo.

So there is a clear

theuristic threat.

However, how do you handle this is really important?

And I think there are two sides here.

...