Posted on 11/08/2005 1:06:06 AM PST by goldstategop
The rioting by Muslim youth that began Oct. 27 in France to calls of “Allahu Akbar” may be a turning point in European history.
What started in Clichy-sous-Bois, on the outskirts of Paris, by its eleventh night had spread to 300 French cities and towns, as well as to Belgium and Germany. The violence, which has already been called some evocative names – intifada, jihad, guerilla war, insurrection, rebellion, and civil war – prompts several reflections:
End of an era: The time of cultural innocence and political naïveté, when the French could blunder without seeing or feeling the consequences, is closing. As in other European countries (notably Denmark and Spain), a bundle of related issues, all touching on the Muslim presence, has now moved to the top of the policy agenda in France, where it will likely remain for decades.
These issues include a decline of Christian faith and the attendant demographic collapse; a cradle-to-grave welfare system that lures immigrants even as it saps long-term economic viability; an alienation from historic customs in favor of lifestyle experimentation and vapid multiculturalism; an inability to control borders or assimilate immigrants; a pattern of criminality that finds European cities far more violent than American ones; and a surge in Islam and radical Islam.
Not a first: The French insurrection are by no means the first instance of a semi-organized Muslim insurgency in Europe – it was preceded days earlier by one riot in Birmingham, England and was accompanied by another one in Århus, Denmark. France itself has a history of Muslim violence going back to 1979. What is different in the current round is its duration, magnitude, planning, and ferocity.
Media denial: The French press delicately refers to the “urban violence” and presents the rioters as victims of the system. Mainstream media deny that it has to do with Islam and ignore the permeating Islamist ideology, with its vicious anti-French attitudes and its raw ambition to dominate the country and replace its civilization with Islam’s.
Another method of jihad: Indigenous Muslims of northwestern Europe have in the past year deployed three distinct forms of jihad: the crude variety deployed in the United Kingdom, killing random passengers moving around London; the targeted variety in the Netherlands, where individual political and cultural leaders are singled out, threatened, and in some cases attacked; and now the more diffuse violence in France, less specifically murderous but also politically less dismissible. Which of these or other methods will prove most efficacious is yet unclear, but the British variant is clearly counterproductive, so the Dutch and French strategies will probably recur.
Sarkozy vs. Villepin: Two leading French politicians and probable candidates for president in 2007, Nicholas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin, have responded to the riots in starkly contrasting ways, with the former adopting a hard line (proclaiming “tolérance zéro” for urban crime) and the latter a soft one (promising an “action plan” to improve urban conditions).
Anti-state: The riots started eight days after Sarkozy declared a new policy of “war without mercy” on urban violence and two days after he called violent youth “scum.” Many rioters see themselves in a power struggle with the state and so focus their attacks on its symbols. A typical report quotes Mohamed, 20, the son of a Moroccan immigrant, asserting that a “Sarko has declared war…so it’s war he’s going to get.” Representatives of the rioters have demanded that the French police leave the “occupied territories”; in turn, Sarkozy partially blamed the riots on “fundamentalists.”
The French can respond in three ways. They can feel guilty and appease the rioters with prerogatives and the “massive investment plan” some are demanding. Or they can heave a sigh of relief when it ends and, as they did after earlier crises, return to business as usual. Or they can understand this as the opening salvo in a would-be revolution and take the difficult steps to undo the negligence and indulgence of past decades.
I expect a blend of the first two reactions and that, despite Sarkozy’s surge in the polls, Villepin’s appeasing approach will prevail. France must await something larger and more awful to awake it from its somnolence. The long-term prognosis, however, is inescapable: “the sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced,” as Theodore Dalrymple puts it, “by the nightmare of permanent conflict.”
"Okay, you FR geniuses ... Let's hear you define exactly what Pearl's third response is suppose to mean, and just how it differs from his first."
To me it means (a) drastically slashing welfare; (b) elimination of immigration of mooselimbs; (c) mass deportations; and (d) a shoot-to-kill policy WRT rioters, combined with international cooperation on finding and killing terrorists and especially ringleaders.
Wow, thanks for posting that. Where are you, in England? My great-grandfather was born in Tunbridge Wells. Like that is relevant here, but ....
Funny how things work out innit?
Not sure he had the Frogs in mind, but he was pretty prescient about the UK's own junior jihadis too.
That's a good one.
"means France suddenly becoming like the 1940's Soviets, or Mao's Chicoms?"
There's a real problem with your position.
The barbarians are not "at" the gates, they are inside the gates. There ain't but one way known to man to get them back outside the gates again.
Just as there is a difference between pushing a little old lady out of the path of a speeding bus and pushing a little old lady in front of a speeding bus, taking the measures necessary to defeat this latest mooselimb attack on Christendom is hardly the the equivalent of "the 1940's Soviets, or Mao's Chicoms."
We must not let the fear of becoming like the enemy prevent us from doing what is necessary to defeat him.
Do you think the old Stalin Soviets, or China's Mao, wouldn't have killed this Islamic vermin? Inside the gates or outside the gates. They would have been slaughtered.
Odd that even now we don't hear of any of that scum migrating to China. Hmmm?
Also, I believe this is the theme of one of Pat Buchanan's book, The Death of the West.
Okay, I realize that I am probably putting my foot in it, but I must point out that Catholicism (at least theoretically) is a universalist religion that doesn't really recognize national distinctions (in fact, this is one reason for its supposed superiority to Judaism). That being the case, this "we" vs. "they" talk sounds somewhat heretical. Do Mexicans have a different "gxd" than white American Catholics? Aren't Mexican Catholics the co-religionists or American White Catholics? Why do palaeo American Catholics therefore treat them like an alien enemy with an alien "gxd?"
In practice palaeo Catholics are actually more sympathetic to moslems than to Mexican Catholics since they blame American multiculturalism on "Zionism." But if Mexican and American Catholics have the same religion, how can they have different cultures?
Ultra-right American Catholics, like Black and Hispanic leftists, seem to consider race and ethnicity as the highest bond. The implication is that Catholics of different colors are basically different tribes with different religions and different "gxds," despite the official teaching of the Church. Otherwise the putting of Catholic Mexicans in the same category as moslem Algerians doesn't make sense.
Actually, third generation Mexican Americans have a high rate of intermarriage. The problem is that, due to uncontrolled illegal immigration, we have so many first generation in our midst (the first generation of any ethnic group never assimilates).
That's precisely the point I was making, though I believe one can replace the world "suspects" with the words "can be sure of."
Modern palaeoconservatism owes as much to modern racialism as it does to ancient or even medieval ecclesiology (witness Joe Sobran's defense of Instauration, a blatantly racialist publication).
The implication is that Catholics of different colors are basically different tribes with different religions and different "gxds," despite the official teaching of the Church. Otherwise the putting of Catholic Mexicans in the same category as moslem Algerians doesn't make sense.
Good point.
Thank you.
I hope my point is not misunderstood. I am not defending Mexicans or open borders. I am saying that I can understand Catholicism and I can understand nationalism, but I cannot understand he bizarre mixture of both that palaeocon Catholicism has become.
Hello to you big guy; hope that all is well with you.
Big Regards,
"Do you think the old Stalin Soviets, or China's Mao, wouldn't have killed this Islamic vermin? Inside the gates or outside the gates. They would have been slaughtered."
Yes, that's true. However, suppressing the "insurgents" in France with live ammunition and deporting the rest wouldn't make France their moral equivalent.
"Ultra-right American Catholics, like Black and Hispanic leftists, seem to consider race and ethnicity as the highest bond."
We live in different universes.
Over here in mine, nothing in your note matches up with reality in any particular.
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