Remember radical Islam or Islamism or Islamic terror or whatever you want to call it? In the welter of calamities (sometimes pseudo-calamities) that are occurring, or we are told are occurring, in this country on a daily basis, it seems to have been forgotten or ignored. This despite its civilizational implications. Even the near-defeat of ISIS as a state is met with a yawn. Nevertheless, it continues:
A gunman killed three people in southwestern France on Friday in a burst of violence that included hijacking a car, shooting at police officers and opening fire and taking hostages in a supermarket.
The gunman, who witnesses said claimed to be acting on behalf of the Islamic State, was later killed by police officers who stormed the market. An officer wounded after exchanging places with some hostages was “fighting against death” in the hospital on Friday night, President Emmanuel Macron said.
The attack rattled nerves in a country that has been hit hard by terrorism in recent years, and it underscored the threat posed by individuals inspired by terrorist propaganda but who act outside of any structured networks, making it difficult for intelligence services to monitor them.
“The level of the terrorist threat on our territory has not waned,” said François Molins, the Paris prosecutor, who handles terrorism investigations nationwide. “It is the result of radicalized individuals who are on our national territory.”
Monsieur Molins is undoubtedly correct, but the threat on their territory exists because French leadership lets it. You would think the horrific attacks at the Bataclan theatre, Charlie Hebdo offices and Hypercacher supermarket would have been sufficient, but no. Change has not occurred.
Finally, 100 diverse French intellectuals have had enough. This week they published a denunciation of Islamist totalitarianism in Le Figaro. (The translation is by Leslie Shaw of the invaluable Clarion Project.)
We are citizens of differing and often diametrically opposed views, who have found agreement in expressing our concern in the face of the rise of Islamism. We are united not by our affinities, but by the feeling of danger that threatens freedom in general and not just freedom of thought.
That which unites us today is more fundamental than that which will undoubtedly separate us tomorrow.
Islamist totalitarianism seeks to gain ground by every means possible and to represent itself as a victim of intolerance. This strategy was demonstrated some weeks ago when the SUD Education 93 teachers union proposed a training course that included workshops on state racism from which white people were barred.
Several of the facilitators were members or sympathizers of the CCIF (French Collective Against Islamophobia) or the Natives of the Republic party. Such examples have proliferated recently. We have thus learned that the best way to combat racism is to separate races. If this idea shocks us, it is because we are Republicans.
We also hear it said that because religions in France are trampled on by an institutionalized secularism, everything that is in a minority — in other words Islam — must be accorded a special place so that it can cease to be humiliated.
Sound familiar? Ce n’est pas seulement la France, mes amis. Islamism or Islam in general seeks to “represent itself as a victim of intolerance” not just in the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, but equally in the dining halls of Harvard and Yale and we don’t seem to be any more honest about it than the French.
The intellectuals’ statement goes on:
This same argument continues by asserting that in covering themselves with a hijab, women are protecting themselves from men and that keeping themselves apart is a means to emancipation.
What these proclamations have in common is the idea that the only way to defend the “dominated” (the term is that of SUD Education 93) is to set them apart and grant them privileges.
Not so long ago, apartheid reigned in South Africa. Based on the segregation of blacks, it sought to exonerate itself by creating bantustans (territories set aside for black South Africans) where blacks were granted false autonomy. Fortunately this system no longer exists.
Today, a new kind of apartheid is emerging in France, a segregation in reverse thanks to which the “dominated” seek to retain their dignity by sheltering themselves from the “dominators.”
This too seems not very far from what is going on on our college campuses today where the dreamed-of integrated society of MLK and others has been turned on its head with people of color banning whites from classrooms and self-segregating.
The results have not been quite as bad as in France — yet. But the warnings of these French intellectuals should be heeded. They are ominous.
The entire statement is available here.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already. He tweets – although his number of followers may have been suppressed – @rogerlsimon.
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