A salve, or a grenade? From AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
PARIS - Farida Verhaeghe-Amiri believes, with missionary zeal, that the Arabic version she has penned and recorded of France’s national anthem, La Marseillaise, will be a salve on the open wounds of French society.With dozens of ghetto-like enclaves in Paris’ suburbs — inhabited mainly by immigrants from Muslim north Africa — literally aflame with ethnic and class tension, the impulse to promote unifying civic values is surely welcome.
If for no other reason, the improbable fact that her Algerian grandfather carried to safety a wounded soldier in World War I named Charles de Gaulle — founder of France’s Fifth Republic — should earn her a hearing.
But Verhaeghe-Amiri’s dogged efforts to get an Arabic rendition of France’s Republican rallying cry officially recognized by various state ministries, while endorsed in some quarters, is seen in others as sheer provocation.
How fitting to translate the song into Arabic and coopt its lyrics. It calls upon French citizens to arms, to grab weapons and take up arms against those who have come to France to:
"Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Egorger vos fils et vos compagnes!"
Who came right here into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons, wives and kin.
Its immediate translation into Arabic may prevent it from becoming a French rallying cry among the nostalgic French.
Perhaps I'm merely common, but I prefer this song (to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies")
"Let me tell a little story 'bout a man named Mo,
Humble country merchant with some anger issues tho'
Had an epileptic vision of a Great Hypocrisy
Coupled to a theory of Oppressive Zealotry."
"Well some crazy folks said: 'This Mo's a visionnaire'
While his kin-folks said: 'Mo, move away from here'
But there's a lot of money in religious banditry
So he raised himself an army and a-conquered 1-2-3"
Tulwars, scimitars. Saudi-Arabia Style.
Y'all don't leave now, y'hear?
Country Geoff
In Arabic, Islamified...naturally. One should not be shocked nor dismayed. Inviting in Muslims is like picking up a live snake. One shouldn't be dismayed when bitten. Many living contemporaries are finding this out the hard way. Pity that we have disregarded the messages left in the chronicles of our ancestors which describe exactly the same process -- only the names and faces have changed...and the technology.
Le Rassemblement pour Rouget de l'Isle? A touching, but essentially pointless effort. For the handful of "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims there is no need -- they know about as much of the Marseillaise in French as do non-Muslims in France. For the rest, knowing the Marseillaise in Arabic will mean nothing. Why should it?
And one does not know if the suggestion is for a literal translation or for one that will simply offer an Arabic-language version which may endow with new meaning the old phrases. For what will young Muslim Arabs make of such phrases as "sang impur" and "bras vengeur" except, in their own minds, to apply them, not to the enemies of France, but to the French, those enemy Infidels, themselves?
Tampering with La Marseillaise is, possibly not in intent (which is hard to fathom from the story as given) of Farida Verhaeghe-Amiri, but in spirit, no different from all the other demands for changes in the teaching of French history, the insistence that exaggerated attention be given to the supposed "contributions" of Islam to European and to world civilization, and the equally careful attempts not only to rewrite European civilization so as to make Muslims appear to be not the natural enemy of Infidels, but rather, the insufficiently-appreciated, and therefore naturally deeply-wounded, bearers of a great civilization that, to hear some tell, was practically responsible for the Renaissance (well, in a way Islam was, because all those Byzantine scholars with their manuscripts, fleeing first the Seljuk and then the Ottoman Turks, did contribute mightily to that Revival of Learning which leads up to Marsilio Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola, and the whole shebang) and everything else that ever came out of that overrated, and ungrateful Europe that, if it knows what's good for it, will delightedly change not only the words and possibly the music (for something a little more beurishly hip-hop), but so much else as well.
Get cracking. There's a lot to change, and it has to be soon, otherwise a lot of people in those heated quarters will heat up some more. They become easily inflamed -- and so too, they have discovered, are cars and schools and synagogues and churches and Infidel institutions, all over urban France.
“Many North African youths here do have an identity crisis, and maybe this can help,” said Karim Chayeb, an official in the Muslim Scouts of France organization.
An identity crisis. No kidding.
They're so isolated from the rest of France, that they do not even belong to the same scouting organization as other French boys.
Can Mr. Chayeb really be that stupid?
Well,.....
I don't know how old she is, but if she's under 40 or 45 years old today, her dream of the Marseillaise being sung all over France in Arabic might just become a reality during her lifetime.
But then, Sharia forbids music.
I'd love to see them try to propose an official Arabic version of the Star-Spangled Banner.
"A salve, or a grenade?"
Interesting that salve is also a French word, meaning not a healing bandage, but rather an artillery volley indicating the opening of hostilities: a salvo.
Mark my words: the world is awakeing. In the past few days I have heard several people speaking the obvious: that Islam and Europe do no mix.
I have even heard - to my surprise - one of my friends speaking about a "certain" book called "Eurabia".
Trust me: the world is awakeing, and those bastards won't even know what is going to hit them.
I am waiting for Israel to advise France, Denmark and other European countries that it URGES RESTRAINT in dealing with their present situation.
chsw
chsw
I can't agree more. Today Europe is paying for years of support of Muslim terror.
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dolphin, CAGE co-founder.
http://www.acage.org
Does she translate the refrain in which Frenchmen are called upon to «Let (the) impure blood (of our enemies)
Soak the furrows (of our fields)»?
Singing the French national anthem in Arabic is not going to be a "salve on the open wound of French society". It's going to incite more acts of violence against the French people by the Mohammedans who will kill them without compunction.
And I have a dream that she will get to sing it in the Islamicized nation of her choice that she should be deported to.