Does France's proud slogan stand up to scrutiny?

The three words that France is synonymous with have fallen under a new light after the Nice attack, writes Colin Randall

Police officers, firefighters and rescue workers at the site of an attack on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France on July 15, 2016. Valery Hache / AFP

So many words, which ones to choose?

All the languages we use possess the richness of expression needed to convey the grief and anger aroused by such grosteque events as the carnage of Bastille night in Nice.

Yet three French words evoked by this man-made disaster seem especially potent: liberté, égalité, fraternité, a high-minded national motto that requires no translation.

As was seen by motorists on the A8 motorway leading from the Riviera resort on the day after the attack, the phrase appeared on every overhead electronic sign, replacing customary warnings about speeding, fatigue, underinflated tyres and traffic conditions. It shone as a beacon of solidarity and defiance.

Many countries nominally support the principles embraced in the motto without, in all cases or at all times, matching words with actions. They represent, all the same, qualities to which decent nations – and people – should aspire.

Liberté: everyone, whether in Nice or Munich, Orlando or Baghdad deserves the freedom to pursue lawful everyday activities without being shot, bombed or mown down by some politically motivated or deranged individual or group.

All, too, have the right to practise their chosen faith at liberty, and to live free of discrimination arising from that faith, their places of origin or the colours of their skin.

Egalité: the anguish of a bereaved Muslim family merits equality of sympathy and respect with the grief of the relatives of all other victims. The family of Fatima Charrihi, 62, believe she was the first to die on the Promenade des Anglais on the night of July 14.

Like her killer, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, she was born in the Maghreb – Morocco as opposed to his Tunisia. Unlike the wife-beating psychopath who committed mass murder at the wheel of a 19-tonne lorry, she was a devout, practising Muslim. She was also a mother of seven sons and daughters (an eighth child died in infancy) and grandmother to seven more. She had lived in Nice for 40 years and was, according to her son Hamza, “an extraordinary mother” who loathed terrorism.

Fraternité: the dignified fraternity, or spirit of national unity, that was present after last year’s ISIL outrages in Paris disintegrated with the slaughter of Nice. It has been replaced by unseemly political point-scoring and bile. This has not been France at its best.

And nor was there much fraternité to be seen in the shameful way a young Muslim woman was treated when she joined others paying respects on the Promenade des Anglais. A short report, buried away in page after page of (exemplary) coverage by the local newspaper, Nice-Matin, told of the hostility her presence – and her "delicate pink veil" – caused, admittedly to just a handful of misguided individuals.

Let us keep the discussion to France while recognising the suffering experienced in so many other parts of the world afflicted by terrorism. We were, of course, reminded of this terrible fact in Munich on Friday. There are lessons for all following the Nice tragedy, which reduced the Baie des Anges, of which the seven-kilometre promenade is the outstanding feature, to a hell on earth.

French Muslims are entitled to share this beautiful country in peace, free of persecution or guilt by association with supposed co-religionists who debase a noble faith and have nothing of value to offer. French non-Muslims are entitled to rage, but the objects of their anger must be chosen with care and propriety. True adherence to the national motto demands no less.

And as a chilling afterthought, the three small children of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had the right, implied by the motto’s sentiments but lost to them for ever, of growing up free of the knowledge that their father was a monster.

Colin Randall is a former executive editor of The National