Hugh Fitzgerald: The legacy of Algérie française: France algérienne

Fitzgerald: The legacy of Algérie française: France algérienne

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald considers the question of whether the rioting in France presents a problem that can really be solved by ameliorating the lot of Muslims there, by considering the case of Algeria:

From 1830 to 1962 the French ruled in Algeria. They had arrived to finally put paid to the attacks by Muslim corsairs on Christian shipping. In Algeria, they introduced modern agriculture. They allowed the humiliated and degraded Jews, through the loi Cremieux, to become French citizens and hence free from Muslim laws, humiliation, and degradation. They established schools and the French language and universities -- real universities. Some of the best French Orientalists lived in Algeria, and published their works in Algeria -- Emile Fagnan comes to mind. Whatever civilization Algeria came to possess, was the direct result of the French conquest and settlement and civilizing mission in Algeria.
What is Algeria like today? The last Christian religious, a group of Italian, and another group of French monks, exercising their vocation of charity and never attempting to be missionaries, all had their throats slit. The French cemeteries all over Algeria have been vandalized; the tombstones taken, the bones unearthed and thrown about -- they are, after all, merely the remains of Infidels, and deserve no respect. A succession of juntas, consisting of corrupt despots and their courtiers, with the odd supposed technocrat, continue to rule without end. Terrorism racks the country, terrorism and corruption and, despite the vast oil and gas deposits, poverty. Nor is there a single "Algerian" people, any more than there is a single "Iraqi" people. Arab cultural and linguistic oppression of the Berbers causes riots years ago in Tizi-Ouzou and elsewhere in the Kabyle, and finally, the continued unrest led the Arabs to grant one concession: no longer would speaking the Berber language, Tamizaght, be a punishable offense. But the forced arabization has not stopped. The Berber writer Kateb Yacine, who refused to write in Arabic but chose French, was not the only Berber intellectual who recognized that Islam was the vehicle for Arab supremacist ideology. The Berbers, like the Kurds, have learned that.

No one of sense visits Algeria; no one of sense, if forced to visit, wants to stay there. A few French born in Algeria may dare to cross the Mediterranean, la mer blanche du midi, nostalgic for a now non-existent civilization that they dimly or vividly remembered from their childhood, before 1962 and their hurried flight for France.
The French presence in Algeria, that past, that culture, that 132-year interregnum of civilization between two Muslim darknesses, need not be apologized for, and the amends the French may once have thought they needed to make, they've made. They owe the Algerians, the Moroccans, the Tunisians, the world of Islam, nothing further. And if their ruling elites contain many who have ignored, or pooh-poohed the menace of, or chosen to be apologists for, Islam, out of ignorance, stupidity (when you read Olivier Roy or Gilles Kepel you have the proof that la bêtise s'est mise à penser) -- if they continue to make amends by casually undoing the civilization of Chamfort and La Fontaine for beur hip-hop and the praise of Dalil Boubakeur, then something is very wrong. Amends that were never required in the first place have been made. It has been enough. It has been more than enough. Now essentially what is being asked of France is that it change its laws, its customs, its manners, its everything that Muslims do not like, that they find irksome or insulting or that frustrate them.
France is told it must become a new thing, no longer France but a place for a new "synthesis" of Islam and Europe. What this means is that Europe, and not-Europe, Europe and its negative, Europe whether Christian or freethinking, and its historic enemy and opposite, the belief-system that offers Believers a Complete Regulation of Daily Life and a Total Explanation of the Universe, all for the same spiritual price in the same handy book-shaped container -- are somehow to meld, and produce some strange amalgam that, of course, is completely impossible for Believers know that there is no such thing as "European" or "French" Islam but only Islam, and that Islam must dominate and is not to be dominated, and if they just wait, Da'wa and overbreeding at the expense of Infidel governments will do the rest.
Giving up Algerie française was not enough. Now France must become algerienne, maghrebine, islamique in pockets, and then finally, ultimately, everywhere. No, it doesn't. France owes the Arabs, and Islam, in and out of France, exactly nothing.
When Chirac visited Algeria, mobs besieged him chanting: "Visa, visa." It seems ironic now that the world has decided that the French have been beastly to their Muslim immigrants, but it’s true. Who, in his right mind, would not prefer to live in France rather than Algeria? Algeria is no longer Algerie française, as the car horns of its defenders used to toot in French cities during the days of General Salan, and that assassination attempt in Clamart, and the harkis, and Pontecorvo's absurd movie (a favorite of campuses) about the wonderful fight of the FLN against the bad bad French. See, if you can find, what the eminent anthropologist of Mexico, who worked for the French government in France, Jacques Soustelle, has written of that period.
Well, the "winds of change" blew through Algeria all right. The line of succession, from FLN to corrupt army leaders, continues to rule. And as always, the vehicle for extreme protest in any Muslim country will always be -- Islam. Nothing but Islam.
If Algeria did not have gas and oil deposits, it would sink into nothing. For even as one of the beneficiaries of the largest transfer of wealth in human history (8-10 trillion dollars to the Muslim oil states since 1973), Algeria, like Iran, like Saudi Arabia, like the sheikhdoms, is amazing not for what it has achieved with all that money, the result of no effort on the part of its people, but how little it has achieved.
It took a kind of genius in reverse to make a mess with all that money. But the Muslim states proved equal to the task. If you seek Islam's monument, look at Iran, look at "Saudi" Arabia, look especially at the once-civilized place that is now called Algeria.
And today, the most telling reply to those who wonder about the root causes of the low economic achievement by Muslims in Algeria and now in France, and indeed everywhere, is to ask what it is about Islam that might explain it. What blend of inculcated hostility toward Infidels and of inshallah-fatalism might be responsible for whatever supposed travails the Muslims in France, Muslims in Belgium, Muslims in Spain, Muslims in Italy, Muslims in the United Kingdom, Muslims in Germany all experience? (Of course, in the latter case, Turkish immigrants have had a life-saving early immersion program in Turkish secularism, so that even if they "return to Islam" they still have not lived under its full mental burden.) Might such hostility be ill-concealed, or not concealed at all, and therefore might Infidels not respond, after a while, in kind?
If even after the receipt of $8-10 trillion in OPEC money, umerited, unearned, sous-sol manna from Heaven, Arab and Muslim countries have nowhere managed to create modern economies, and still rely almost completely (as Saudi Arabia does), or nearly completely (as the sheikdoms do), or only partly (as Iraq does, and Iran did), on Western professionals, Western know-how, Western workers at the top and Asian workers at the bottom, then perhaps there is something about Islam itself that causes this. Perhaps there is something in the kinds of attitudes Islam fosters, the contempt for many kinds of work, that is simply beneath Muslims but not beneath Infidels, apparently, and then of course there is the habit of dsicouraging independent thought and free and skeptical inquiry that is essential to science, and ot more than science, and this kind of mental submission and lack of imagination and indifference and incuriosity about how things work, and how they are created and how they can be made better (though Muslims en masse display a willingness to accept, like the members of a cargo-cult, the technological fruits of Western science), so often (not always, but often) prevents the kind of entrepreneurial activity and industry that not only the West, but the entire Rest of the non-Islamic world, appears to have little difficulty engaging in, encouraging, appreciating.
Islam creates Believers who are the Odd Men Out of the world. Yet it is they, those Believers, who demand that clealy superior civilizations transform themselves to be more welcoming to Islam, to give up its own laws, customs, understandings, to transform themselves so as to become more welcoming of Islam and of Believers. It is they, the Muslims, and only they, who insist on their divine right to domination of the world and of all the Infidels in it, wherever they may live, and no matter what the particular brand of Infidels those Infidels might be. How silly, how stubborn, how unreasonable for all the rest of us to disagree.
Sorry, the Infidels in France and not only in France must sturdily insist -- sorry we can't be more accommodating. But that's the way it's going to be.

Posted by Robert at November 7, 2005 06:27 PM | Email this entry | Print this entry

The enemy within
People say that this is not the time or place for recrimination and accusation when the enemy is on the gates or have already stormed the battlements… However, we can not fight in our front and simultaneously watch our backs. As a descendent of a conquered subjected people who suffered as much and as long as any under Islam, and as one who is well versed in the history of the Islamic conquests, I know that the success of the Muslims owes as much or even more to the treachery of a few cowardly, vindictive, spiteful, conniving scum who sold their people out than to the military prowess and ruthlessness of the Arab conquest machine. A convenient traitor with a grudge or greed always shows up before battle to guide the Muslims, weaken the resolve of the defenders, spread panic, and consul capitulation.

The West does not have a few turncoat cowards with a grudge against the decedent West, it has millions of them, each with his/her own story. These are not desperate fringe individuals either, rather they are highly organized, well financed, powerful groups of the elites, the wealthiest, most educated, connected, and influential citizens presiding over hordes of disaffected minorities and the rebellious children of the Middle class.

Unless these destructive segments of our population are contained and rendered harmless, the Muslim conquest will proceed with outmost speed. The home front is the most important front, if we fail to secure it, all is lost. I really do not mind dying with a gun in my hand defending my family, my home, and my neighbors however, the defeatists liberal scum refuse to allow me to even die with dignity if that time comes. My contempt for the left is far more than mine for Muslims because that is the way that Muslims are, but what can be said in defense of the leftist Marxists turncoats who helped destroy mankind greatest civilization, prosperity, culture for the sake of a utopian dream that manifested itself as a nightmare after another in the last century.
Posted by: have_mercy at November 7, 2005 06:54 PM

The victorious army of the West.

A small unified dedicated Army is much more effective than a fractious uncommitted Army. All the leftist Marxists groups have such contempt for the West and its values, they have worked in tandem with Muslims to bring the West to this sorry state of affairs, they poisoned and weakened our culture. We must ignore the Marxist leftists, and if the 50% were worth anything they would not be still in the trenches with the enemy selling their countries down the river. The fact that they still have such an ideology is an indication of the unsoundness of their minds and their determined blindness to the evil of their ideology which plies their moral unfitness for this existential struggle.

The West needs to speak with one voice, but it needs to say the right things about itself and its enemies. The leftists Marxists are living in fantasy land, even if they recognized that the true threat is Islam and not America, Christianity, Patriotisms, and Family values, they still would be a hindrance, as they are now, to an unrelenting all-out cruel struggle for survival.

Since as citizens, the leftwing Marxists lack a truly essential element of citizenship, the willingness to die on behalf of their homeland, saddling the conservatives with the overwhelming responsibility for defense while ridiculing and undermining those who make that sacrifice as right-wing bible-crazy baby-killers, the 50% should not have as much of a say as those who lay down their lives so the Lefties can bitch and moan, accumulating wealth, benefiting from the thankless sacrifices of others.

Many would say that this is not democratic or fascist, but I say the Left wing has made its choice and it continuous to have and make this choice; unfortunately this choice conflicts with and curtails the survival of the entire population and civilization. In order to survive in the perilous fight, the Left needs the Right much more than the opposite. In a total war, the value, as far as survival is concerned, of a stock broker, a movie star, a psychiatrist, a fashion designer pales in comparison to a well trained brave and dedicated fighter charging to protect his/her homeland.Posted by: have_mercy at November 7, 2005 07:03 PM

Comments
(Note: Comments on articles are unmoderated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Jihad Watch or Robert Spencer. Comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Robert Spencer of the views expressed therein.)

The "defeatist liberal scum" were there with the Communists, too. And the Fabian socialists. And the European internecine wars, when you think about it.

The Muslims are such a mess because they haven't moved beyond their desert, Beduoin mentality. Bunch of cowboys in reality. Give billions to any 6th century ignorant sob and he'll make a mess and hire infidels to clean it...

...we could so easily do them in from within and we don't. Shame on us.Posted by: Dymphna at November 7, 2005 07:06 PM

What amazes me is how blind we are, in the name of political correctness, to all this. (That is, the net contents of this website.) It's enough to make this "secular humanist" believe in the Devil!
Posted by: Benjamin at November 7, 2005 07:09 PM

Human nature is essentially fallen - according to Christian dogma. Islam is institutionalized "fallen man".

Let's not forget that the first victim of Islam is the Muslim. In the end, the arsonists and thugs, the rapists and those who burn disabled women will pay a heavy karmic penalty for their crimes.

How horrible and evil to be raised a Muslim. Nobody wants to be poor and have no prospects for a decent future, but how much worse to serve a false god? A god that serves murder, denial of pleasure - of life?

I have to agree with Ann Coulter. Let's rescue the Muslim from his false religion - convert them to Christianity, Judaism or Buddism - anything but Islam. The death of Islam is the victory of Love. God is Love. God loves the Muslim as much as he loves the Christian, the Jew and the aetheist. We should double our efforts to convert the Muslim.Posted by: rafael699 at November 7, 2005 07:10 PM

But, have mercy it is the "conservative", right wing, Capitalists that have actually sold out the west, sold it out for profits, the bottom line, stock market prices, and those wonderful perks that Boards of Directors and CEO's bestow upon themselves.

And, Have mercy, not all on the "left" are the enemy or your enemy, but if you keep ramping up the rhetoric and making such turgid accusations.. they will be.. and if you think a handful of righteous can fend off a determined enemy from without, when they (the self righeous) have demonized and created enemies from within.. you delude yourself.

Perhaps you have a martyr's complex and wish to go down in flames, I don't. I have grandchildren and great grandchildren and want them to grow up in a world where Islam is confined, to the barren desert from which it was spawned.

Your rant, as is that of those who echo it, is suicidal.. don't think so then take a poll of the world, make sure it includes opinions and identities of your neighbors

Unless these destructive segments of our population are contained and rendered harmless,

How are you going to do that exactly, and what tool are you going to use to sort out who is and who is not acceptable to you?

I really do not mind dying with a gun in my hand defending my family, my home, and my neighbors

Says the chicken hawk who never fired a weapon, and has never experienced the joys of incoming rounds.

Brave talk, big talk, always emanates from little men.

Posted by: Nariz at November 7, 2005 07:32 PM

I was going to forward this link to some liberal/left sites, because of the common sense appeal of Hugh, but after reading the comments, I realize that doing such is counterproductive and would achieve the opposite results... you clowns are truly your own worst enemies, the worst of PR, and as arrogant, demanding, full of self and self righteous as the Muslim.

First you have a blindside ideological view of just who the enemy is, (you think or choose to believe it is solely the left, and thus actually support those on the right who are using you and selling you out), but then you go on to sound more like a Jihadi than you realize with your righteous venting, rants and threats.

Perhaps Hugh with his knowledge and recall, can correct me, but there is something about "becoming that which you hate" or the demon that you are fighting possesses you.

We need to build bridges and enlighten the left, bring them over to ourside and we can only do that with facts, logic and appeal to those values that the left holds dear...justice, equality, fraternity.

You all aren't building bridges, you have dug yourself on an island, threatening nihilistic self immolation, but in the end you are even too cowardly to go through with that, and pull down the Temple, Samsonlike, around you.

Keep it up, and WE will indeed lose, meanwhile if you really want to see the face of traitors, look at UNOCAL, Exxon, Haliburton, Boeing, Bechtel, Norquist, Rove and the Bush family dynasty not just at Clinton, Daschle, Kerry (whom most assuredly also deserve your criticism).

You are being played like a violin, by masters.Posted by: Nariz at November 7, 2005 07:44 PM

Explain how evil capitalists sold out the West. Explain how the left is not responsible for the crippling sickness know as multiculturalism that makes us even more vulnerable to Islam. If all those communists/socialists who have hated the West and always will are not giving the Barbarians ideological support and the oppurtunity to commit their horrific crimes then Mohammed was a sexualy healthy, rational man.Posted by: JadeDragoness at November 7, 2005 08:00 PM

“But, have mercy it is the "conservative", right wing, Capitalists that have actually sold out the west, sold it out for profits, the bottom line, stock market prices, and those wonderful perks that Boards of Directors and CEO's bestow upon themselves.”

These are not conservative, right wing, Capitalists these are elitists, antidemocratic, internationalist, valueless, greedy oligarchs who are pretending to be conservatives to garner support from those horrified by the Marxist destruction of Western culture and economic systems, and the unrelenting liberal assault on Western institutions, liberties, religion, and values. These fake-conservatives exist as a reaction to Marxist domination, which they failed to defend against because their hearts were not in the right places.

I do not have a Martyr complex, I love life and liberty, and I am welling to defend my countermen’s life and liberty if the need arises, and it very likely well. Ask yourself, do you value liberty enough to be welling to die defending it. That is the deference between a liberal and conservatives, the Liberals are quite content to live on the sacrifice of others.

Yes, I carried a Gun in a full fledged war to protect my solider friends traveling in daily convoys though I was not a solider, as they do not take overweight diabetics, I was shot at more times than I care to count, I lost friends, had mortars and RPGs fired over me while I slept. I am not even that brave… However, believing in something higher than yourself and in my friends gave this geek former Dhimmi the strength to endure. Something you probably know very little about and for your sake, I hope you never well.
Posted by: have_mercy at November 7, 2005 08:02 PM

Hugh,

I'm not sure if you have read this from The Daily Star out of Lebanon.

Thousands marched through Morocco's biggest city on Sunday to protest Al-Qaeda's decision to kill two Moroccan hostages in Iraq. Holding banners and chanting "Muslims are brothers. A Muslim does not kill his brother" and "'Yes' to freedom, 'No' to terrorism and barbarity," the protesters marched through Casablanca, a city of six million and Morocco's financial capital.

Posted by: Eschwapp

at November 7, 2005 08:03 PM

RE: "Muslims are brothers. A Muslim does not kill his brother"

Yeah but killing/crippling/maiming his sister because of some percieved threat to his worthless "honor" is just fine.Posted by: JadeDragoness at November 7, 2005 08:06 PM

Hugh wrote: "It took a kind of genius in reverse to make a mess with all that money. But the Muslim states proved equal to the task.

I think of it as the 'reverse Midas touch', where everything islam touches turns to shite. It stultifies all creative thought, and replaces any positive human energy with hatred, envy, and sloth.Posted by: Infidel33 at November 7, 2005 08:24 PM

No, your wrong!
I read the article, you blame Islam.

No, your wrong!
Because the problem is NOT ISLAM.

THE PROBLEM...
...is the arabs!

(this is why the Turks in German don't burn the country; to a degree Pakistan functions; Malaysia is even profitable; etc.)
Posted by: Michael-B at November 7, 2005 08:34 PM

NARIZ: "And, Have mercy, not all on the "left" are the enemy or your enemy, but if you keep ramping up the rhetoric and making such turgid accusations.. they will be.. and if you think a handful of righteous can fend off a determined enemy from without, when they (the self righeous) have demonized and created enemies from within.. you delude yourself."

CORNELIUS: From what little of this that is comprehensible, it appears he is saying that unless we mollify the Left, they will throw in their lot with the enemy just as we accuse them of doing now.

Reminds me of the Muslim mind-set: 'We are not terrorists, but if you treat us as such, we will become so.'

Nariz has just given us further confirmation of the fair-weather nature of the loyalty that the Left has for its own civilization.Posted by: Cornelius at November 7, 2005 08:35 PM

Hey Nariz,
You make the same argument the Muslims make: do not offend us or we will turn against you. Your variation is: insult us lefties and we might leave.

There's the door, here's your hat.

Your loss would not be a great one as the left are basically a fifth column of little help to the real fighters. The left is for accomodation and for appeasement.

Your threat is the same as the Islamic threat.What does that tell us.Posted by: dgene at November 7, 2005 08:42 PM

Along with coats and hats, and a straitjacket or two, could all those entering this site, whatever political tendentiousness or tendency he or she may possess or exhibit, of the praise-blame, left-right right-left skorym shagom forward march variety, please leave along with that hat, that coat, that straitjacket, all such reductive terms and reductive ways of looking at the universe. You may of course decide not to come in, given that requirement, but if you do, once you have had your articulate and thoughtful say on Islam, you may certainly pick up those words and ways of looking at things, along with your hat, your coat, and possibly that straitjacket, on your way out. And you may tip the comely hat check girl -- she's working her way through college.

The official motto of this site, I now realize, should always have been:

Lasciate ogni tendenza, voi ch'entrate.Posted by: Hugh at November 7, 2005 08:49 PM

Dragoness, keep doing what you're doing, exposing the billion contradictions within Islam. Don't let them get away with anything. Hate to sound melodramatic, but this is a life or death assignment.Posted by: ovidius_naso at November 7, 2005 10:14 PM

Of course I had to go look it up: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" from The Divine Comedy by Dante. Yeah. Addled by television, I was thinking, "DANGER, Will Robinson!, DANGER!" Similiar, but different, I guess.

C'mon Cornelius,

You can't really think that Nariz is threatening to throw in his lot with the jihadi-crazies. That is so clearly not what his posted comment is about.

Nariz,

Go back and reread your 2 comments. Your line, ""becoming that which you hate" or the demon that you are fighting possesses you" seems appropriate in reference to yourself. No?

But you do have a major point: The comments here can be off-putting to other people who might be helpful in opposing the jihadis. That has frustrated me (an anonymous commenter) as well, and my guess is partly what motivated Robert Spencer to suggest that he would turn off the comments a few months ago.

I hope he doesn't, since the comments often add rather than detract, but detract they sometimes do. They often seem to prod Hugh in welcome directions, and many other commenters provide insight as well. Maybe everyone could try to remember to use the preview button, take a deep breath, and count to 60 before posting excessive rants, including those aimed at (potential) allies against the worldwide jihad? Please? Ok. the Preview button is right here...Posted by: del at November 7, 2005 10:15 PM