Philippe de Villiers does not believe in taking prisoners when it comes to relations between Islamic believers and French society. It is up to Islam to adapt to France, not France to Islam, he believes. There is a "progressive Islamisation of French society". A traditionalist French nationalist, he is running neck and neck with Jean-Marie Le Pen for the far right-wing vote in the 2007 presidential election, in which he will be a candidate.
His radio interview last Friday signals clearly that he intends to make the Islamic issue central in the campaign. "A multicultural society is a multi-conflictual society," he says.
He would refuse permission to build mosques unless accompanied by a charter guaranteeing equality between men and women, freedom to change religion, an acceptance that church and state should be separated and a rejection of polygamy and forced marriages.
These demands are carefully calculated to provoke. They take no account of the bitter alienation from French society felt by most of its five million Muslim citizens. The latter are systematically discriminated against in terms of housing and employment and many have worshipped in makeshift garages and industrial plants and feel they are not accepted as equal in religious terms.
Xenophobia is growing in French society after the riots last November and is reflected in support for Mr de Villiers and Mr Le Pen. Their intransigence will affect other presidential candidates, notably Nicholas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin on the centre right. There is little readiness to address the inequalities, much less to extend cultural recognition between different groups in French society; and nor are there signs of a willingness to do so on the left wing of French politics.
This means that more conflict about these issues is likely. Among the political class there is a failure to address them with the seriousness they deserve. France is no longer an old Catholic country. Nor is its republican political culture capable of adjusting to the clear failure to assimilate the post-war immigrants from former colonies in north Africa, who are all full French citizens.
It is not a question of substituting multicultural models of integration which have failed elsewhere but of finding alternative intercultural ones which can break down barriers, encourage dialogue and stimulate greater recognition of cultural difference. Quotas, positive discrimination and crash programmes to tackle disadvantage are also needed to head off conflict.
Mr de Villiers's provocative rejectionism is a recipe for deepening it.