[Editor’s note: The following is a translation by Ibn Warraq and Robert Kerr of Michel Onfray’s L’Art d’Etre Francais (The Art of Being French, Bouquins, 2021), published here for the first time. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here. Part 6 is here.]
Those who are afraid of Islam – that’s the etymology of Islamophobic (because, among the other vilenesses with which it is replete, it is intrinsically anti-Semitic) – are therefore the very ones who are responsible for anti-Semitism. This ideological pirouette turns out to be a bland and flat rehash of the Sartrean thesis according to which the anti-Semite invents the Jew, but this is sheer stupidity! It is enough to read the Qur’an, the sacred word of God himself, to see that anti-Semitism is one of the very foundations of Islam. But since Emmanuel Todd states that the Muslims have no interest in the Qur’an, everything becomes possible. Anti-Semites can therefore be excused, because the only culprit is the Islamophobe … who refutes anti-Semitic Islam!
Last but certainly not least, Emmanuel Todd sees in the explosion of mixed marriages in France the proof of… racism! Anyone else would think the contrary, but not our sociologist! Why is that? The juggler’s answer is that such marriages encourage assimilation, and assimilation in turn implies the negation of diversity in the name of a neo-republicanism that is called all sorts of names and accused of all sorts of evils – neo-Vichyism, nationalism, neo-fascism, and of course the extreme right is also invoked… A white man who marries a black woman, or vice versa, becomes a fellow traveler of Maréchal Pétain[13]. One has to appreciate the scientific rigor of such a sociological analysis.
Finally, Emmanuel Todd coins some ideas that are not lacking in pungency: according to him, there are indeed “several universalisms”, including “a universalism restricted to men”! Therefore, the universalism of the Enlightenment, which is addressed to both men and women without distinction of color, religion, wealth or condition, is one of many, and is just as commendable as Muslim universalism that excludes women, Jews, Christians, miscreants, atheists and agnostics.
What to do?
Emmanuel Todd answers simply: communitarianism. “In the end, it is a matter of realism and necessity of freely, joyfully admitting, that there is now, in French culture, a Muslim province.” He is not so much inviting the Muslims (who do not exist, lest we forget…) to become French (which would be fascism and racism…) as he is inviting the French to become Islamic. Islam already has a word for this: dhimmitude,[14] which is another name for submission.
The Islamo-leftist rhetoric equates the present day Muslims to the Jews during the Interwar period of the 20th century. Emmanuel Todd is no exception. This is also the thesis of a book by the journalist Edwy Plenel entitled Pour les musulmans.
What does this book say?
In this book, strangely enough, we do not find the words Qur’an, Mohammed, hadith, sharia, or even Prophet! There is even no reference to a quranic surah or verse, two other words that do not appear in the book either. Jihad and jihadism are also nowhere to be found. A rather strange opus…
What is this book about? Colonialism as the original sin of our culture and about the inequality of civilizations, the loss of nationality and intolerant secularism, the wearing of the veil and the refusal to assimilate, the praise of communitarianism and the denial of the very possibility of speaking of Judeo-Christian civilization, of Jews and the Dreyfus affair, of Émile Zola and state racism, and of the opium of the people. It is a journalist’s book that obeys the rules of the profession.
What are they? I can think of six: essentializing [scil. oversimplification], godwining, if I may use this neologism which I will explain, verbigerate,[15] exaggeration, denial and amalgamation. This sketch of a discourse on the journalistic method allows us to see how this profession has largely overflowed beyond its world to proliferate just about everywhere – notably in philosophy, which Gilles Deleuze had perfectly analyzed during the emergence of the New Philosophers…
First: essentializing [oversimplification]. Although Edwy Pleyel defends himself against it and denounces this way of doing things, but it nevertheless his own methodology! The proof? We don’t even need to read his entire book: the title is enough: For the Muslims. For what does “the” in the formula “The Muslims” mean? There is no need for further clarification other than that they are one and the same entity. Or are there contemporary Muslims of the Prophet or Muslims of the French suburbs, erudite Muslims and uneducated Muslims, pacifist Muslims and terrorist Muslims, literate Muslims and frustrated Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims, North African Muslims and Asian Muslims, Muslims in Muslim countries and Muslims in Christian countries, bellicose Muslims and tolerant Muslims, fundamentalist and enlightened Muslims, white Muslims and black Muslims, born Muslims and converted Muslims, Muslims who have read the Koran several times and know it by heart and Muslims who have never read a line, practising Muslims and beer-drinking Muslims, homophobic Muslims and homosexual Muslims? It doesn’t matter. All these people constitute “the Muslims” who can be talked about as if they were one and the same!
Edwy Plenel castigates “the xenophobic essentialization [which] justifies identity-based essentialization” (p. 57) in the name of an Islamophile essentialization. He doesn’t like it when we talk about Muslims as if they were a single homogeneous community if we want to criticize them, but he himself talks about Muslims as if they were a homogeneous community in order to praise them as the damned of the Earth.
So would the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who runs his oil-rich monarchy as a dictator with no regard for democracy, with total disregard for human rights (and who deserves the wrath of all the organizations that oversee respect for these rights) – because he is a Muslim, also qualify as belonging to the damned of the earth? He and all his family, and even all of his entourage? Likewise the tyrants of Qatar? Or the rulers of Iran? Who can possibly believe such a thing?
———-
[13] Vichy France is the common name of the French State (État français) headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. The regime was authoritarian, xenophobic, antisemitic and traditionalist in nature. Officially independent, it adopted a policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany, which occupied its northern and western portions before occupying the remainder of Metropolitan France in November 1942.
[14] Dhimmitude is the status of non-Muslims under Muslim rule, term coined by the Egyptian-born British writer Bat Ye’or in the 1980s and 1990s. It is a portmanteau word constructed from the Arabic dhimmi ‘non-Muslim’ and the French (serv)itude ‘subjection’. It is a permanent status of subjection in which Jews and Christians have been held under Islamic rule since the eighth century, and that forces them to accept discrimination.
[15] O.E.D. To go on repeating the same word or phrase in a meaningless fashion, as a symptom of mental disease.
mortimer says
Emmanuel Todd and Leftards like him hate French nationalism because it is not communism. In this, he is a follower of the vicious Jean-Paul Sartre who wanted to burn everything down that did not build communism. Emmanuel Todd is a termite burrowing into the essence of the stability of French. He wants to create internecine hatreds that will cause wars between groups that will allow the communists to impose their brutal will and permanently make France into a soviet-style or CPC-style state.
Leftards like Emmanuel Todd use verbose convoluted reasonings, but simultaneously conceal their actual goal of imposing communist totalitarianism.
mortimer says
correction: a termite burrowing into the essence of the stability of FRANCE …
Doomer says
At least France has MICHEL ONFRAY, whose lucidity and sagacity is known by millions there.
He is also known by educated people in AFRICA: 21 countries there have French as the official language,
in another 3 ( Morocco,Algeria,Tunisia), it is the de facto cultural and scientific language.
He is also known in Quebec,Belgium,Luxembourg and Francophone Switzerland.
Doomer says
My view of EDWY PLENEL is that he wants to use Muslims and their vote as a way for the Left to gain power in France.
For that he uses any and all pseudo-arguments against critics of Islam and Muslims.
1) Plenel is a fanatical hater of capitalism. Leftists equate capitalism with SAVAGE capitalism.
Sun Tzu:”Know your enemy and know yourself”
2) HISTORICALLY, capitalism=savage capitalism, were One and the Same.
3) Examples:
a) In the name of the FREE MARKET ( based on “Laissez-faire”, “allow it to be done”) the UNITED KINGDOM laws permitted CHILDREN as young as 8 YEARS old to work,
not 8 hrs/day in the COAL MINES and FACTORIES, but 12 hrs/day.
Research has shown that the AVERAGE age at which children started work in early 19th-century Britain was TEN years old
b) Later in 1833: Legal curtailment of child labor first took place in Great Britain in 1833;
a law was passed limiting
1. The working day for children aged nine through 13 to EIGHT hours
2. And for adolescents aged 13 to 18, to TWELVE hours;
nighttime labor was forbidden for children and adolescents of nine to 18.
c) Later on, the MINES ACT (1842 ) raised the starting age of workers to TEN years.
d) Child labor in the UK lasted a LONG time(until 1880) : The Factory Act of 1878 prohibited work before the age of 10 and applied to all trades.
d) It was bolstered by the Education Act of 1880, which introduced
COMPULSORY SCHOOLING up to the age of 10.
e) Each case is DIFFERENT: you can’t just “the West” or “whites” and lump all countries together, that is a Leftist tactic.
Historically, the first nation to created the 8 HOUR Maximum Work Shift for all ( and SEVEN hour work shift for MINERS)
was SPAIN,in the 1590s.
Under Philip II, who decreed it was for all the people in the different kingdoms he rules in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Also,under that king: working in the MINES was PROHIBITED for WOMEN and CHILDREN, while in the savage capitalism of the UK: All, men and women and children
worked 12 hrs/day in factories and mines.
Two sources:
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/child-labour
https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Child+labour+in+britain+in+the+1800s
gravenimage says
Most children worked in the 19th century–and before. It is still common in much of the third world. The idea that Capitalism invented child labor is utterly mistaken, It was the Capitalist West that, beginning in the 19th century, finally *ended* child labor.
gravenimage says
You are right that Plenel is a nasty piece of work.
Walter Sieruk says
Yes ,the influences and powers of Islamo-leftism have been around for some time. Then came the Red/Green alliance, they are like two different but close branches of the same tree.
The terrible fruits of those movement are seen in that horrendous set up against the American patriots occurred in Washington DC on 1/6/21.
For on Newsmax on 1/9/22 a program revealed the terrible human rights abuses and US Constitutional rights violations and additional information about of the two patriots’ murder by the leftist appointed Capital police on January 6th 2021.
The viewers were informed that the pro-Trump patriots had not engaged in an “insurrection” in an actual, real, valid sense of the word.
Those patriots were totally unarmed and they didn’t even attempt to overthrow the government, they only came to voice and concern and objection to the voter fraud which occurred in the in the November national election of 2020.
As for the murdered patriot Ashi Babbatt she was unarmed no violent and it was discovered the Capital police officer who had obviously intentionally murdered her had a personal history of disciplinary problems. Nevertheless that Capital police officer got any with the murder that he committed “Home free.”
That shows in hideous corrupt influence of the politically correct movement and likewise the power of those despicable Marxists in in power in the US government. Also that vicious, evil and murderous Capital “police officer” is a criminal affront to all good genuine real police officer in America.
The news program explained that the patriots who were arrested were non-violent, they don’t harm anyone of break anything.
After the patriots was unjustly arrest and put in Federal prison have been and still are brutally beaten and even tortured by the guards and kept in solitary confinement in filthy moldy cell sand they don’t have working toilets , they even have been tortured , with is completely unconstitutional , no cruel punishment, on top of that of that they hadn’t even been found “guilty” yet.
They pro-Trump patriots are actual literal political prisoners and that liar fiend posing as a real US President, Joe Biden has the unconscionable slanderous lying call to them “Insurrectionists.”
Likewise other leftists keep on calling them that by that awful and inappropriate word.
That’s like the old Hitler saying ‘”if you speak the same lie again and again people will start to believe that lie.
As Dr. Sabastian Gorka had commented about all those terrible heinous affronts “This is an attempt to criminalize Conservatives.”
For this and other sources of valid information it’s very tragic and evident that January 6 th. . 2021 is the beginning of the end of true American Republic and the start of some kind of freedom-less Communist tyranny which persecutes, imprisons and then tortures people who only gather together to peacefully let their views be known.
gravenimage says
Islamo-Leftism (Part 7)
…………….
Emmanuel Todd is a moron if he thinks that Muslims do not take the Qur’an and other texts of Islam seriously. So what does he think about Jihad terror?
He blames the French, of course:
“Emmanuel Todd: the French thinker who won’t toe the Charlie Hebdo line”
After the horror of the Paris attacks, everyone agreed that the ensuing street rallies were the best of France. Then a leftwing historian called them a totalitarian sham – and his critique of ‘zombie Catholicism’ has outraged a nation
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/28/emmanuel-todd-the-french-thinker-who-wont-toe-the-charlie-hebdo-line
So standing up for freedom of speech against mass murder is–somehow–“totalitarian”. He claims that opposing this atrocity was spitting on Islam–is he admitting that this is what Islam teaches?–and that Muslims are a “weak minority”–not so the dead cartoonists and journalists, apparently…
In fact, he wrote a book titled “Who is Charlie”–where he decides that the irreverent and sometimes profane cartoonists and humorists of Charlie Hebdo–who in fact often target Catholicism and the French middle class–are instead somehow the epitome of the bourgeoisie. He says that being opposed to their massacre is “xenophobic” and–unbelievably–“selfish”. Utter perverse madness.