It is better to fight those who want to deny us our freedom, than to allow those who govern us to take away our liberty, claiming it is to fight those who want to deny us our freedom.

Paris, Oct. 20: — The October 16 brutal beheading of a French school civics teacher by a Chechen migrant, on the heels of a cleaver-knife attack on September 25 against people working at the old Charlie Hebdo offices by a Pakistani migrant (he didn’t know Charlie was no longer there) has finally forced France to face its “Muslim Problem” head-on after 30 years of denial.

The explosive situation in France today could spell disaster for the vast majority of France’s law abiding Muslims. Islamist attacks are a real threat. They are also a pretext for repressive legislation.

European countries have passed more laws restricting our rights in order to “fight the rise Islamic terrorism, right wing extremism, populism ,” etc, than the UK and US.  With each new attack, more Bills are being proposed, laws passed, and liberties restricted in the name of defending our “values, freedoms and way of life.” One of the most controversial are attempts to restrict, limit, control and censor social media. (Click here)

There are laws that criminalize the public expression of certain thoughts such as racism, anti-semitism, hate, homophobia, sexism and so forth. 

“Islamists,” allied with many leftists, have been trying to get “Islamophobia” considered a form of racism. This raises a few problems. While in Germany a blanket rejection of a religion could be interpreted under the law as a form of racism, in France there are no Blasphemy laws, as long as it is the religion which is targeted and not the people who practice it. French Courts have said criticizing Islam is not a crime.

• Is Islam a community, race or ethnic group? (See note 1 for the Jewish precedent)
• Do we have the right to dislike a religion, or all religions (atheists) and to express that dislike without it being considered discrimination against a group of people punishable by the law?
• Does the rejection of a group based on their religion, as is the case for Jews, make them an identity?

President Emmanuel Macron, who likes to take on martial airs, pass troops in review, visit submarines and declare wars on things such as IS, al Qaeda in Maghreb, and Covid-19, has now declared war on “Political Islam in France.” This too raises several questions.

• The view of many Muslims is, The Book of Islam is a political doctrine or civilization project, with rules, laws and methods that Allah orders them to put into effect over the whole world known as the Ummah
• Polls show 75% of young French Muslims under 25 put Islam and its laws above those of the Republic (more than 40% of all French Muslims do) which demonstrates Islamism, or political Islam, is a growing tendency in the country (click here and here)
• 70% of French Muslims condemn the publishing of caricatures of Mohammed by the press

Looming Confrontation

The vast majority of non-Muslim French say Islam is “incompatible with the values of French society.” 30% of all French Muslims and half of those under 25 also agree Islam is incompatible. Many may not say it aloud as the Quran allows them to practice “Taqiyyah” or dissimilation. The French political class insist the vast majority of Muslims in France practice their religion privately and respect France’s secular nature. (Note 2)  What is notable is the absence of large contingents of Muslims in demonstrations condemning Islamist violence, although several leading Imams publicly denounced the teacher’s beheading.

Another problem facing the French is defining who the enemy is. Pundits are playing with different terms:

• Muslim Frenchman
• French Muslim
• French Muslim of ‘X’ origin
• Muslim
• And even Muslim Atheist

These last two pose a problem. It would imply an identity of some sort which must go beyond just the religion. In other words, the ‘Politically Correct’ vocabulary imposed these past 30 years to deny that Islamic identity has been on the rise in the country has gone out the window. Those of Muslim immigrant background are no longer just “Fellow Frenchmen” but have become something different, exterior, foreign.

Listening to the French politicians, pundits and experts in the media after the October 16 decapitation is like listening to the National Front in the 1980s-90s, practically word for word. The massive influx of Muslim migrants over the past 40 years has tipped a balance and created zones that have effectively “seceded” from the Republic, or left the Republic, or are lost to the Republic, or are abandoned by the Republic, depending on your political persuasion. Macron has now declared a war against “separatism.”

In 2017, Macron defended, even received at the Presidential Palace, some of the groups the Interior Minister is today seeking to ban. The French President has changed his tune.

There are some 12,000 people in France listed by the police as extremely dangerous Islamists: 3,000 of them are foreigners and thousands more are dual nationals. There are over 550 radicalized Mosques in France, linked to different Islamist tendencies, according to some sources.

Proposed War Strategies

Many proposals are being put forward and most come straight out of the age old far right play book.

• Expel all foreign radicalized Muslims listed as dangerous
• Stop massive immigration
• Loss of French citizenship for dual nationals
• Massive deportations
• Obligatory school from age three (the French believe school integrates people, so, the argument goes, starting earlier can reduce radicalization)
• End family regroupment policy
• Shut down all radical Mosques, clubs and sports associations (the latter have been used as Islamist indoctrination and training grounds) including those linked to the Muslim Brotherhood which puts France at odds with Qatar, a major buyer of French arms.
• Ban foreign financing for Islamic Centers and Mosques (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar etc.)
• Ban the Islamic veil in all public spaces

But most commentators, teachers and researchers agree that the real education of children, and therefore the source of the problem, is at home with the parents. It is hard to see how any of the above measures will reduce ‘at-home’ Islamist indoctrination. Schools are meant for “instruction” and have little influence compared to those in the family and immediate community.

Towards a system of ‘busing’?

Because of the growing “communitarianism” within the Muslim community, French non-Muslims have taken their children out of the public schools. There are areas where nearly every one of the pupils is of Muslim immigrant background.  

Some are suggesting forcing pupils to go to certain schools to create a mixing with the hopes of favoring integration by making French culture present and, hopefully, dominant. The theory is, because the French have fled Muslim areas, it is easy for Islamists to create a counterculture, an “Islamic civilization,” it what has become “no-go zones.”

The French have tried “La Mixité Sociale’ or housing poorer people of migrant background in social housing where mostly ethnic French live, and especially with those of the Middle Class. The results have not been successful. Most residents say that rather than “adapt to the French way of life,” these placements have generally lowered the quality of life and brought other problems with them such as incivility, gangs and drugs.

I fear “There will be blood!”

Notes

1. Many Jews challenge those who consider them a group due only to their affiliation to their religion and to hostility to them as a group of people, because they claim they are a “race.” Sephardi Jews, North Africa Berbers who converted shortly before the Moor invasion of Iberia (see Sand below), Falasha Jews, Ethiopian converts, are dark skinned, East European Jews are mostly of Khazar origin who converted between the V.th & VIII.th centuries, as the genetic study by Dr. Eran Elhaik demonstrated in a contested 2013 John Hopkins study. Yet, according to The Times of Israel newspaper, Israel secretly accepted the thesis in 2014. (Click Here and here). For more information on the history of Jewish conversions, see Professor Shlomo Sand, of Tel Aviv University, The Making of the Jewish People, 2009.

2. Ethnic and religious census is banned in France. The law says you are either French or Alien. So, the country doesn’t know how many Muslims there really are here. A 2017 estimate put their number as high as 8.5 million out of a total population 67 million or 12.5% (click here)