Under that magnificent Burkean title, recalling an age of Frenchmen both more venal and more noble, Daniel Pipes provides a great deal of important information on the jihad in France in FrontPage (many good links in the original):
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.”
There is a solution for the Paristinian uprising:
Give them a state!
After all, if it's good for Israel, then why not for France?
Seriously, it seems that everyone has forgotten that the major, mob-scale anti-social violence of Arab/Muslim youth in France started back in 2000 with attacks on Jews. These attacks on Jews were encouraged by the French media [TV, press, radio]--as well as by some politicians-- that at that time were presenting a very one-sided, pro-Arab view of events in Israel, going so far as to collaborate in the invention of the alleged death of an Arab boy, Muhammad al-Dura at the hands of Israeli troops.
One year ago, Pres. Chirac fawned over yasser arafat, a notorious murderer of Jews.
For a long time, this anti-Jewish violence was overlooked or minimized by official France. Now the violence is striking at the French state itself, at French sovereignty in France. It was said years ago that outbursts of barbarism and brutality start by attacking Jews, then move on to others. This was put in another way by saying that Jews are like the canary in the coal mine. The canary is affected by the fumes before the miners are, hence, the canary is their early warning system. But France didn't learn that.
Now, France should be encouraged to quell the violence which is so often falsely interpreted by the media. BBC world affairs editor, John Simpson, went so far as to incite violence against France in an editorial on the bbc website.
http://telchaination.blogspot.com/2005/11/bbcs-anti-french-bias.html
This mad statement by Simpson should not merely be criticized but condemned. The man ought to be dismissed, if only in the name of EU solidarity. The madness of the bbc is fully the equal of anything on France2.
That borrowing for a brisk website summary of a "magnificent Burkean title" naturally invites comparison, and thereby suffers from that very comparison. For Burke's prose was one thing, and this another. The staccato no-nonsense is necessarily directed at a wide and thoroughly modern audience, an audience that wants things summed up ASAP, an audience guided by the same tutelary spirit that can be found in businesses or lives or societies whose ruling passion is that everything -- packages, true love, knowledge about complicated things -- has to absolutely, positively be there, received or imparted, overnight. Or quicker, if possible. It may be the way to go -- it is certainly the way things are going.
Eliyahu:
Steven Plaut wrote a "land for peace" article for yesterday's frontpagemag.com that you and other bloggers here might enjoy. Here's a sampler. URL below:
"First, until this plan is implemented in full, we must insist that the French government acknowledge that there is no military or police solution to the problems of violence in its suburbs and only through recognizing the legitimacy of the demands of the murderers and rioters outside Paris can the problems be resolved.
"Second, we all agree that territory must not be annexed by force. Therefore, we can also agree that Germany has a moral right to demand the return of Alsace-Lorraine, for the French aggression in 1945 and its consequent occupation must not be rewarded. ''A full withdrawal for full peace'' should operate here. Further, France must agree to the return and rehabilitation of all ethnic Germans expelled from Alsace-Lorraine after World Wars I and II, as well as all those they define as their descendents.
The French Solution:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20086
A Tale of Two Cities.(Is Paris Burning ?).
Les Miserables. (Les Mis).
Hugh, its the style of the age, not the modern immediacy of death, viz. the effective but circumlocutionary letters of Nelson or Wellington.
Unfortunately it can paper over subtlety and perhaps some forms of discovery. But like Islamism, it is right in your face and one ignores it at one's peril.
There is much talk--Mr Pipes's article being a recent example--about how social welfarism, moral equivalency, unfettered immigration and multiculturalism feed the hungry jihad.
We must all take a deep breath and remember that the Left--Labour, the Democrats, the Greens and the Socialists (pay no attention to their pet causes, which strangely mirror the preceding paragraph)--are our staunch allies in the defense of civilization.
Just like they were against Communism.
It all comes down to "Where God retreats, Allah advances"
"France itself has a history of Muslim violence going back to 1979."
Was there not a spate of what were called "cafe bombings" throughout southern France in the 1960s, perpetrated by Muslims?
Eliyahu said: Jews are like the canary in the coal mine. The canary is affected by the fumes before the miners are, hence, the canary is their early warning system
As I see it jews in France have two choices: 1)form organized militias
2)come to Israel
"Or quicker, if possible. It may be the way to go -- it is certainly the way things are going...."
But I have been saying that this has to be simple for the masses to understand -- you will never see the great swath of the majority boning up on Suras or Hadiths or the Koran itself -- In fact there is some danger that educating indiscriminating Westerners will just add more kindling wood to the flames being stoked by the Muslim insurgents...
So far, the naive and the nefarious have held sway in Western power centers. There are, of course, sinister figures such as Ibrahim Hooper and Adel Al-Jubeir from the Wahhabi Association of Concocted Knowlege and Obfuscation -- I think the average American is suitably suspicious about the motives of these evil characters, and it's sad that they have ANY platform in America to spread their lies and sedition.... Less obiviouslyl evil, but insidious nevertheless, you have the nuanced pedants such as Pipes and Reuel Marc Gerecht, both of whom are encouraging engagement with the "moderates" and the "radicals" respectively in Islam -- On the one hand, Pipes holds out the false promise of moderation in Islam -- on the other hand, Gerecht promotes the disastrous canard that we must 'help Islam through this violent patch' by encouraging the fervent pious fascists in every way possible -- even if this means assisting them into positions of power -- Both are totally false prospects and both have wasted precious time and obscured the real Muslim menace...
This has got to be a bite sized morsel for society to grasp what's at hand -- it's sad but true -- I sometimes despair that those who know how dangerous this threat really is find the realities of what it takes to get a mass message out there so distasteful...
I think France has already surrendered,
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=18161_De_Villepin_Springs_Into_Action&only
Read the comments....they are priceless. We (the regular people get it, when will the fearless leaders get it?
Chirac coming under fire for do nothing attitude...
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=58&story_id=25152&name=Chirac+under+fire+for+abdicating+role+during+crisis
"As I see it jews in France have two choices: 1)form organized militias
2)come to Israel "
3) Come to America. Jews have faced enormous ghettoization and ostricization in this country, however they have managed to become productive, respected members of it. Any enemy of Islam is a friend of mine, I would welcome European Jews with open arms.
Also let's not make the same mistake we made in the 30's...