Summer is just around the corner and the perennial question of the burkini is coming back like a yearly boomerang, just like the Latin beat that should accompany summer people on the beach. However, if musical successes are never predictable, the headlines, comments, condemnations and other resurgences on the legitimacy or banning of this “beachwear”, an extension of the hijab, will certainly be at the heart of the debate.

At a time when Afghan women are deprived of their faces, of work, of school, of going out, doomed by the Taliban to claustration from birth to death, Éric Piolle, the green mayor of Grenoble, has become famous for defending the burkini. A swimming pool chador that would be Islamo-compatible with the French way of life. The mayor brandished different models of the pious fabric before the Council of State, which on 14 June examined the appeal lodged by the municipality of Grenoble after the suspension of the right to burkini by the administrative court.

How can we explain that certain influential figures of the Muslim Brotherhood are constantly giving lessons in morality, while they lead a private life that is often totally dissolute? One immediately thinks of Tariq Ramadan, whose investigating judges recently announced the end of the investigations into the rape accusations, thus opening the way for a trial to be held soon. But it is also the case of Mohamed Karmous, in Switzerland, victim of blackmailers. He was recently filmed without his knowledge having sex with a girl he met the day before.

The perversion of the city, said Plato, begins with the fraud of words. In the case of Islam, we have reached the point in France where words are massacred. If this religion is at the heart of this French presidential election, it is not because of the importance of what Muslim votes could represent in the ballot box, but for other reasons, linked to explosive issues. Why has Islam become a major issue in the election campaign? It is only because of fear or the semblance of fear in the face of the “great replacement”, or in order to refute it. If the right in all its colours has found its Trojan horse in this “great replacement”, the political decline of the left is essentially due to the denial of this situation, which is now at the heart of the political debate in France.

When the people point out the real problems, the politicians blithely point their accusing finger! Thus, in a recent poll conducted during the presidential election campaign (Ifop for Global Watch Analysis), 85% of French people expressed the wish to see the “future president” tackle head-on the rise of Islamism and communitarianism by banning Islamist organisations in France linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafism, the Turkish Milli Görüs and other Tablighs.

Education of children, especially girls, is something that many developing countries are paying special attention to. This is in keeping with the international law obligation under Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 (CRC), which requires States Parties to “Make primary education compulsory and available free to all”. The same Article also obliges States Parties to make secondary and higher education accessible to all.

Beware of polls that seem bent in advance. If there is a lesson to be learned from this French singularity which consists in electing the President of the Republic by universal suffrage, it is this one. These dear ''refractory Gauls'' take malicious pleasure in denying predictions, refusing the idea that the media, analysts or polls - these tools for measuring democratic debate, which they moreover love - can ''impose' ' the fatality of an unavoidable electoral scenario.

For four decades, European governments have welcomed hundreds of Islamic leaders into their countries. Some do so for political and strategic reasons, others are motivated by the defence of human rights. One thing is certain, however: the intentions of these “unusual” arrivals have nothing to do with the expectations and motivations of European authorities. These Islamists slyly take advantage of the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the Western democracies that they viscerally detest. Worse still, they have no qualms about spreading a separatist discourse among Muslims living in the West, encouraging them to demand the application of specific rights. And ultimately aim at the application of Sharia law in their communities.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan arrived in Russia on a 2-day official visit the very same day that Vladimir Putin launched an attack on Ukraine. On his arrival at Moscow airport, the South Asian leader was caught on camera gleefully quipping "What a time I have come! so much excitement". This reaction from the leader of a so-called democratic nation immediately caught media attention and was largely interpreted as Pakistan having thrown its support in favour of Russia on the Ukraine issue. The other interpretation could be Imran Khan’s complete disregard for the international rule based order and a lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation where a sovereign nation’s territorial integrity had been unilaterally violated by Russia.

Here and there. From the world (still) at peace to the world at war. From our screens, our streets, our cafés, our subways, to their alerts, their fleeing, their shelters, their deaths. From our first flowering shrub to their snow, their mud, their terror and their resistance. Between Paris and Kiev, this European capital three hours away by plane, a chasm has opened up. We watch, stunned, as the missiles smash a beautiful and great city, filled with the sounds of life so short a time ago, night years away. Kiev. I was walking along its immense boulevards in January. Kreshatyk Avenue leading to the Maidan, the old streets of the Podol district tumbling down to the Dnieper.