A few days after the horrific attacks that left seventeen dead in the offices of Charlie Hebdo, in a kosher supermarket, and in the streets of Paris, the prime minister of France, Manuel Valls, declared war on “terrorism, jihadism, and radical Islam.”

As he explained in an impassioned speech to the National Assembly on January 13, this was a war that would be fought on three fronts: internationally, by bolstering France’s participation in the “global war on terror,” especially in Mali and Iraq; nationally, by reinforcing the security and surveillance arsenals in an effort to track down potential radicals especially on the Internet, in schools, and in jails; and ideologically, by upholding, now more than ever, “the Republic and its values.”

“Laïcité, laïcité, laïcité,” repeated Valls as he praised the “spirit of the Enlightenment,” liberty, equality, fraternity, and “this mix of dignity, irreverence, and elegance” that characterize France, “the incarnation of the universal.”