PARIS • France's hardline Interior Minister has vowed to root out extremists after a grisly murder in Paris.

In saying he wanted to preserve a distinctly French way of life, he risked the perception he is targeting not just Islamists, but all Muslims.

Almost six years after the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine was attacked for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, France is still looking at ways to fight extremism, and Mr Gerald Darmanin argues that minority groups who stay within their own communities are more vulnerable to radicalisation.

His vision for the country includes fewer halal butchers, ethnic clothing stores and even specialist supermarket aisles.

"It always shocked me to enter a supermarket and see a shelf devoted to the food of one community, and to another one next to it," Mr Darmanin told French television last Tuesday. "Some people need to understand that winning market share by appealing to basic instincts does not necessarily contribute to the common good."

As the country tries to come to terms with the beheading of a teacher in a leafy suburb of the capital, the 38-year-old minister has become the public face of a crackdown whipping up sentiment against the broader Muslim community.

"France is at war," Mr Darmanin said in the aftermath of the killing. "The question is not: Will we have another attack? The question is: When?"

With far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen preparing another fierce fight for the 2022 election, and the left wing looking for new alternatives, President Emmanuel Macron is trying to win over conservative voters.

In July, he handed the crucial security portfolio to Mr Darmanin, who has a working-class, North African background and an uncompromising commitment to France's secular values.

Those ideas were shaped by his grandfather, an Algerian Muslim he calls "a hero of the Republic", who fought alongside the French during the war of independence, and to whom he dedicated a 2016 essay on secularism and Islam.

In the essay, Mr Darmanin extols the particular French conception of religion - that its expression should be private and protected, kept out of the public sphere. He defends the idea of a state-sponsored Islam for the country's estimated five million Muslims and calls for a ban on clothing that "tends to discriminate against women".

It is not Islam that he cannot tolerate, he said, it is extremism.

His office points out that when he was mayor of Tourcoing, a town in northern France, he backed the construction of a new mosque and gave a speech at its opening.

Mr Darmanin emerged on the national stage as a protege of the right-wing former president Nicolas Sarkozy and lashed out at Mr Macron during his election campaign, saying he should be ashamed for describing France's colonialisation of Algeria as a crime against humanity and calling him "poison" for the country.

Instead of holding a grudge, Mr Macron rewarded Mr Darmanin with the Budget Ministry before elevating him to Interior Minister - despite rape allegations dating back to 2009. Mr Darmanin said the affair was consensual, and Mr Macron said he believes him.

French historian and sociologist Pierre Birnbaum said Mr Darmanin's approach towards radicalisation overlooks just how diverse the country is.

"There was the idea that France was a unified republic, much more so than the US or the UK, but in practice it actually accepts many compromises."

BLOOMBERG