Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin’s anxious push to get Turkey into the European Union:
News item: “Paris, France (AHN) – French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is calling once more for Turkey’s European Union (EU) membership bid to be approved by national referendum in France. During his monthly news conference, Villepin took the time to point out that he is “In favor of a process of engagement as long as the conditions are properly fulfilled so that (Turkish) membership can take place. That is why we have insisted … that the process be clearly controlled and that the French can take the decision by referendum.”
Not long ago Pope Benedict delivered, to an audience of Turkish Muslims, a remark that deserves to be noted:
“Respect for minorities is a clear sign of true civilization.”
The truth may be suppressed within totalitarian Islam, but it cannot be suppressed outside. And the Internet may help to bring it, in the manner of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, deep within dar al-Islam, and to Muslims even more accessible in the Bilad al-kufr. Most will reject that truth, but not all — and those defectors, one by one, will lend authenticity and legitimacy to those Infidels who from the start were clear-sighted about Islam.
Of course the Muslims in attendance all focused on the need for more “dialogue.” They seem not to realize, or preferred to pretend, that the days of that phony “dialogue” are over. The Pope was speaking to Muslims about what they, Muslims, have to do — if they can. He spoke of the Muslims’ “great responsibility.” He spoke of terrorism as “the darkness of a new barbarism” — and it was clear that he did not think that terrorism was an equal-opportunity tactic, but rather a specifically Muslim one.
The phoniness, the willful misreading, of the presumably “moderate” Muslims in attendance was telling.
Ridvan Cakir, president of the Turkish Islamic Committee in Europe, said, rather bizarrely, that “Terrorism is not only a problem that comes up in countries where there are Christians.” This presumably is one way of saying “well, Muslims suffer too from terrorism, just like people in Christian countries.” Yes, they do. But in both cases the terrorism is by Muslims pursuing aims prompted by and taught by Islam. So the remark is pointless except as a way to deflect attention, just as in London the fact that some Muslims were killed in the subway bombing somehow is used to suggest that terrorism is not just a “Muslim thang.” But it is, save for the odd Tamil Tiger or ETA member, whose goals are most limited, whose means tiny, and who, in any case, cannot be said to be prompted by any sacred text or texts.
Cakir, speaking before the Pope’s address, gave us more of that “need for dialogue” nonsense that the Pope simply ignored:
“If we can continue to coexist in dialogue, it will send a signal that the theory of a ‘clash of cultures’ is baseless,” he said. “The more religious and cultural communities can learn about one another, the more they will realize that there is no reason for hostility.”
This is taqiyya. He cannot be serious. He cannot believe that if non-Muslims really become thoroughly acquainted with the contents of Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, that they will discover that there is “no reason for hostility.” The more they learn about Islam — unmediated and undistorted by apologists, whether Muslim or non-Muslim — the more Infidels will be horrified by what they learn. The more they study the history of Islamic conquest, and of the subsequent subjugation of non-Muslims, the more horrified they will become. The more they study, even, the Islam-prompted attacks on minorities — such as the Armenians — in the Ottoman Empire, the more horrified they will become.
Yet this Turkish Muslim, Mr. Cakir, dared to add a special plea for the admission of Muslim Turkey into the E.U. as part of his little homily before the Pope spoke:
“The process of Turkey’s accession to the European Union is also an important occasion, one that should be judged in this context.”
A little geopolitical blackmail, anyone? Let Turkey in, show your trust in Islam. Otherwise, who knows what will happen, how Muslims will react?
And the foremost and most enthusiastic victim of this blackmail is, of course, French PM Dominique de Villepin.
One cannot say enough bad things about Dominique de Villepin. The formula I have attempted to suggest repeatedly is “preening poseur.” He is the diplomat-poet who will read you his verses whether you asked to hear them or not. Don’t forget that DdeV won’t let you forget that he was born in Sale, hard by Rabat, in 1953, and so — having spent those important years 0-3 or so in Morocco, he “understands” the Arab and Muslim world. Right. And if he doesn’t “understand” everything, except how pretty the Centre du monde arabe is (oh, and it is, lots of curlicues and calligraphy and a real hammam), then there are so many “experts” around to fill him in: Tahar Ben Jelloun and the silly Gilles Kepel, or the pretend-serious Olivier Roy (imagine Gilles Kepel crossed with, say, Anthony Cordesman, so there’s a bit more portentousness and grownupnesss in the delivery of the obvious than you find in Gilles “Wrong Again” Kepel).
Perish the thought that he could take time from his busy schedule to read the late Kateb Yacine on Berbers and Arabs, much less on that little matter of Islam. Say, does that Paris-Amsterdam train still go aller-retour from the Gare du Nord? No time to consult with the maghrebins laiques organization in France, or to read Kateb Yacine on the Arab treatment of Berbers and Berber culture, much less to read Ibn Warraq, or Ali Sina, or Azam Kamguian, or Anwar Shaikh on Islam as Arab Imperialism, or a thousand others who might just set some Infidels straight. But DdeV is one of the ruling elite who permitted, to France’s great and permanent damage, the migration into France, and the taking root in France, and the failure to contain or constrain, in France, millions of Muslims who, now that they are there, have made life less interesting, more inhibited, more unpleasant, much more expensive, much more agitated, and far more dangerous, to Infidels.
France should be referred to, formulaically, as Occupied France. But the Free French, from Brazzaville to Boston to Buenos Aires to Beijing, can start having mini-demonstrations outside the French embassies from far Ouagadougou to near Brussels. It will begin to get attention. Make the signs, get them ready. This will put before the world’s media and the French themselves (and make an end-run around Megret and Le Pen, of course), the theme of liberation from this cult that thinks it has come to stay — and is aided by the silly likes of Dominique de Villepin.
For those who remember their zero-de-conduite schooldays, and who now appreciate that greatest of French contributions to world civilization, the dictee:
More Montaigne, Less Muhammad
For those who had the misfortune to study after things eased up, and who failed at the time to appreciate the dictee, and perhaps appreciated just a bit too much the que scais-je? theme, and for whom the world is not quite as world-centered as for their parents or grandparents:
More Mistinguett, Less Muhammad
Or, to remind us that long before there was the cheap crook Chirac, or the poseur D.de V., there were other kinds of people in power who might best be evoked by the smiling, clever, relaxed, bemused, cultivated face of French tolerance, and que-scais-je, mixing Montaigne and Mistinguett, French governments at their short-lived best (from 1945 to 1958). These are derided because of the rapid succession of leaders, but in light of the corruption, the torpor, and the presumption of the Chirac regime or the Mitterand regime or the De Gaulle regime, were all those post-war leaders really to be deplored? Here is the final slogan:
More Mendes-France, Less Muhammad
“La France a perdu une bataille. La France n’a pas perdu la guerre. Elle n’est pas seule. Elle a un grand empire derrière elle! cette guerre ne prendra pas fin avec la bataille de France car c’est une guerre mondiale”.
The “empire” referred to her must be that “mighty empire” of L”Amerique septentrionale. Otherwise, the text needs no emendation and no gloss.
Français, I speak to you from Brazzaville.