I don't usually find much that is useful in the writings of Thomas L. Friedman, but here he seems to be getting an inkling of what is happening in Europe. From "Divided We Stand" in the New York Times, with thanks to Nicolei:
I spent Friday morning interviewing two 18-year-old French Muslim girls in the Paris immigrant district of St.-Ouen. (It is about a mile from the school where in March 2003 a French Muslim girl, who had refused the veil and rebuffed the advances of a Muslim boy, was thrown into a garbage can by three Muslim teenagers, who then tossed lighted cigarette butts into the can and closed the lid.)Both girls I interviewed wore veils and one also wore a full Afghan-like head-to-toe covering; one was of Egyptian parents, the other of Tunisian parents, but both were born and raised in France. What did I learn from them? That they got all their news from Al Jazeera TV, because they did not believe French TV, that the person they admired most in the world was Osama bin Laden, because he was defending Islam, that suicide "martyrdom" was justified because there was no greater glory than dying in defense of Islam, that they saw themselves as Muslims first and French citizens last, and that all their friends felt pretty much the same.
We were not in Kabul. We were standing outside their French public high school - a short ride from the Eiffel Tower.
Wow. Is Friedman finally obtaining an inkling of comprehension, a whiff of understanding, a smidgin of intelligence? What is it "intellectuals" like him? He writes book after book, article after article but when I read his stuff it is like reading the views of a blind man on the color of commonplace objects. The legions of the wilfully blind will lead us, like hordes of warm and fuzzy lemmings, off a cliff into the freezing chill waters of Islamization where freedom of conscience no longer exists, where freedom of thought no longer exists, where terror greets believer and unbeliever alike when one dares to lift a head up and ask why or what or how or when. Wake up people. As Hugh says, the civilization that you save may be your own.
Europe doesn't have a Plan B, either
Thomas L. Friedman says crunch time has come in Iraq, but Europeans don't seem to realize how much they have at stake there
PARIS
There's only one thing you can say about the elections in Iraq: They are either going to be the end of the beginning there or the beginning of the end.
Either Iraqis turn out in large numbers to take control of their own future and write their own constitution — and I think they will — or the fascist insurgents there prevent them from doing so, in which case the Bush team will have to move to Plan B.
What's sad is that right when we have reached crunch time in Iraq, the West is totally divided.
All the Europeans care about is being able to say to George W. Bush: "We told you so."
What happens the morning after "We told you so"?
Well, the Europeans don't have a Plan B, either.
Ever since 9/11, I've argued that the war on terrorism is really a war of ideas within the Muslim world — a war between those who want to wall Islam off from modernity, and defend it with a suicide cult, and those who want to bring Islam into the 21st century and preserve it as a compassionate faith.
This war of ideas is not one the West can fight, only promote. Muslims have to fight it from within. That is what is at stake in the Iraqi elections. This is the first great battle in the post-9/11 war of ideas.
This war also can't be won with troops — only with voter turnout in the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. This is a war between Iraqi voters and insurgents — ballots versus bullets. And the people who understand that best are the fascist insurgents.
That is why they are not focusing their attacks on U.S. troops but on Iraqi election workers, candidates, local officials and police.
The insurgents have one credo: "Iraqis must not vote — there must be no authentic expression of the people's will for a modern, decent Iraq.
"Because, if there is, the world will see that this is not a war between Muslims and infidel occupiers, but between Muslims with bad ideas and Muslims with progressive ideas."
And at this key juncture the West stands disunited.
Secretary of state nominee Condoleezza Rice told a Senate committee last week that the "time for diplomacy is now."
Give me a break. The time for diplomacy was two years ago.
We would be so much better off now if the entire European Union was actively urging Iraqis to vote, and using its own moral legitimacy in the Arab world to delegitimize the insurgents.
The divided West is a real liability.
"The most important threat (to the West) is Islamic terrorism," said Bernard Kouchner, founder of Doctors Without Borders and one of the few French intellectuals to support the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
This is not a war with the Muslim religion, he stressed, but with a violent "fascist" Muslim minority.
"We (in the West) have always been allied against fascism since the Second World War," Kouchner said. "We have to be together, America and Europe, because our enemies are the same, Muslim extremism and fascism." But right now, unlike in Bosnia, "we are apart."
Kouchner blames Paris for having been too quick to threaten a U.N. veto and blames even more the Bush team for having been too quick to go to war without a real U.N. alliance, and for mismanaging post-war Iraq.
At least he cares. Most of his countrymen, I sense, are hoping Bush will fail in Iraq so the ends will never justify his unilateral means.
It's quite amazing, when you consider that Europe, with its large Muslim minorities, needs the moderates to win the war of ideas within Islam so much more than America does.
I spent Friday morning interviewing two 18-year-old French Muslim girls in the Paris immigrant district of St.-Ouen, not far from the school where, in March 2003, a French Muslim girl, who had refused the veil and rebuffed the advances of a Muslim boy, was thrown into a garbage can by three Muslim teenagers, who then tossed lighted cigarette butts into the can and closed the lid.
Both girls I interviewed wore veils and one also wore a full Afghan-like head-to-toe covering.
One was of Egyptian parents, the other of Tunisian parents, but both were born and raised in France.
What did I learn from them?
That they got all their news from Al-Jazeera TV, because they did not believe French TV; that the person they admired most in the world was Osama bin Laden, because he was defending Islam; that suicide "martyrdom" was justified because there was no greater glory than dying in defence of Islam; that they saw themselves as Muslims first and French citizens last; and that all their friends felt pretty much the same.
We were not in Kabul. We were standing outside their French public high school — a short ride from the Eiffel Tower.
Thomas L. Friedman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times.
I fear like Savage says that Mr. Thomas L. Friedman
suffers from a brain disease. I am sure this brief exposure to reality will quickly disappear when surrounded in short order by others suffering the same affliction.
But we can always hope he stays awake but he could lose his job so its doubtful therefore he will likely return to his sleepy comfortable false view of reality. I have seen it before in friends how mommontarily awake to view reality before being so fearful that they quickly go back to there previous state.
The problem that columnists like Tom Friedman have is that they can’t accept that Radical Islam presents a problem that the multi-cultural mindset can’t solve or even speak to. These Islamic girls in France that he talks to are not going to become moderate Muslims by changing the curriculum at their school to include appreciation of other cultures or because of any foreign policy appeasement of the Islamic world. This is hard to accept for anyone who believes that education and appreciation of other cultures will lead to world peace and understanding.
Wait a sec...I thought it was only a "tiny number of muslims" that felt that way...gee I wonder how the media always manages to find that "tiny number" of muslims that "give islam a bad name"
The French are doomed, but who will save the Louvre?
The French are doomed, but who will save the Louvre?
Posted by: Hulegu Khan at January 23, 2005 06:57 PM
Yeah, who, indeed? They'll probably start with the Victory of Samothrace. I mean, it's a woman, she's got a nice rack, and her whole body shows through her clothing.
VERY offensive to Islam!
Yeah, who, indeed? They'll probably start with the Victory of Samothrace. I mean, it's a woman, she's got a nice rack, and her whole body shows through her clothing.
VERY offensive to Islam!
Posted by: cubed at January 23, 2005 07:56 PM
What isn't offensive to Islam?! This provacative piece of Hellenistic antiquity would be as offensive to the savages as the Buddhas in Afghanistan, which survived for centuries in spite of the barbaric muslims. They probably tried to stone them to pieces before the Taliban blew them up. Of course, like all present day "Islamic" countries, Afghanistan was overrun and conquered by demonic Islamic heathens, who butchered millions of innocent, peaceful, indigenous people in their bloody rampage across Asia.
The Victory of Samothrace is a remnant of the pagan era of the Great Gods, so it would be one of the first treasures to be decimated. There is nothing these primitive iconoclasts enjoy any more than the total eradication of ancient (and modern) civilizations, except maybe the genocide of their indigenous people.
Muhammad and his alter ego allah didn't approve of polytheism, he wanted all the attention.
I'm in agreement with Pippi, the scholarship of Bat Ye'or et al notwithstanding, who is rightly sounding the alarm now.
Muslims still only 20% of the world's population and a much smaller proportion of its GDP. And they are alienating far more people than they are hoodwinking.
It took time for the world to wake up to the horrors of Nazism, Fascism and Communism, but slowly, slowly, the same will dawn on 80% of the world that there's no hegemony quite like Muslim hegemony and it will be once again laid to rest as was the last caliphate of the Ottomans.
Just let them try banning nudes in Italy, France,Spain etc. Now that would be the straw that would break the camel's back alright.