| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Paris When It Sizzles
Just how or why Paris was originally nicknamed the “City of
Light” is not agreed upon. Some say it was because it was the
first European city on the continent to install gas lamps on its
city streets. Others say it was a result of the way impressionist
painters captured the light of its landscapes on canvas. A first-
time visitor from another planet might easily be convinced that
it was because of the dancing, surreal flames of automobile
fires that were ignited by angry mobs of disgruntled Parisians.
There haven’t been many chamber-of-commerce moments
for the beleaguered city, nor even for the entire country of
France, in recent weeks. Things have simmered down
considerably since the peak of the unrest, but did you know
that during the course of an average 24-hour period in France,
even during relatively sanguine times when riots aren’t raging
unabated countrywide, that somewhere between 80 and 100
cars are torched? Sacre bleu! For the young and alienated
with their vichyssoise of grievances, whether real or imagined,
it is practically a rite of passage. So, even during the best of
times for la Republique Francaise as a whole, it is still the
worst of times as usual for some aggrieved group or other.
During the late unpleasantness, which was enough to make
even Johnny Depp reconsider his idyllic residence in France,
the media was loathe to label the primary aggrieved and rioting
group as Islamic, preferring instead the generic term “youths.”
You know, as if those “youths” were just as likely to be named
Pierre or Jean Baptiste as they were to be named Yousef or
Abdul Rahman bin Omar al-Mustafa.
And when their Islamicness was, on occasion, pointed out,
many were quick to say that they were mostly secularized
Muslims rather than fundamentalist, inferring that the riots
had nothing to do with Islamic extremism and there was no
call for all the cracking wise about a French intifada. One
might be able to grant that point since the youths have thus far
limited their wrath mostly to the torching of individual
automobiles and a few empty buildings rather than subway
trains full of infidel commuters. But it is hard to ignore the
fact that these “youths,” even if secularized, still identify more
with their Islamicness than their Frenchness and because of
that may be not only largely unassimilable, but vulnerable as
well to the insidious seductions of jihad.
So what exactly is the beef of the rioting French “youths?”
According to one young rioter named Bilal in the Parisian
suburb of Aubervilliers: “We don’t have a choice. We are ready
to sacrifice everything because we have nothing. We even
burned the car of a friend. He got angry, but he understood.”
Well, sure, what are friends for if not to be understanding and
to cheerfully accept being victimized by the self-defeating
destructiveness of their wayward but ethnically similar pals?
But Bilal’s point, presumably, had to do with the claim that
Muslims in France suffer inordinately from unemployment,
poor housing and discrimination. There’s no doubt some truth
to that, but the question is, whose fault is it, a blindly
prejudiced French society or a Muslim culture whose members
simply don’t want to assimilate to the degree necessary in
order to achieve success in French society?
In a recent interview, Islamic scholar and philosopher Tariq
Ramadan, who has an office in a riot-torn area of Paris, had
this to say about Islamic assimilation in Western countries and
France in particular:
“For Muslim immigrants, religion is inseparable from their
roots and identity. They feel that transforming themselves
from Moroccans and Algerians into Frenchmen makes them
bad Muslims. This makes integration more difficult because it
apparently forces Muslims to choose between two alternatives:
self-abandonment or self-isolation.”
If Monsieur Ramadan is correct, if being a good Muslim is
more important by leaps and bounds than being a good
Frenchman, then why emigrate in the first place? The reason,
of course, is to gain a higher degree of freedom and economic
prosperity than was possible in the country of origin.
But that begs the question: If the only way for Muslims to
have a better, freer, more prosperous life is to go someplace
where Islam doesn’t dominate, then how do Muslims avoid the
seemingly unalterable conclusion that perhaps Islam, at least
the way it is currently practiced, isn’t such a terrific bargain for
its adherents? Why not just jettison the Islamic baggage and
get on with life?
The short answer is that for human beings, belief systems
aren’t so cavalierly discarded. If they were, there would be no
such thing as suicide bombings since, logically speaking, it is
one of the most colossally immoral and purely stupid things a
human being could ever do.
Anyway, most Muslims simply can’t accept the idea that the
poverty and backwardness of the Islamic world in comparison
to the West is due to some inherent defect of Islamic culture.
They prefer to believe instead that it’s all the fault of Zionist
aggression, or neocon Texan fundamentalist crusaders, or
Halliburton, or anything other than Islam itself.
But what about those second and third generation French
Islamic “youths” who have purportedly been largely
secularized? If it’s not about religious fundamentalism, then
why aren’t they more able to assimilate? Probably because
while the religiosity of their fathers and grandfathers may have
faded, the ethnic and the Islamic cultural ties remain strong.
And, unfortunately, embedded in the Islamic identity is a
powerful inferiority complex due to the Islamic world’s poor
position vis-à-vis the West which breeds resentment, anger and
discontent.
So France has a serious problem with its Muslim masses, the
solution for which isn’t readily obvious. It will also likely be
exacerbated by the troublesome demographics of an increasing
-- and increasingly surly -- Islamic population and a declining
rate of population growth among ethnic French. If nothing
changes, one of these days, late in the century perhaps,
Frenchmen are going to wake up one day, check the latest
headlines in Le Monde and discover that . . . Voila! France has
become majority Muslim.
Whether part of a vast Islamic conspiracy or just pure
happenstance, that could be the fate of Europe as a whole. Of
course, if Islam does eventually take over, and if Islamic
culture doesn’t change in any appreciable way, then the
freedom and prosperity that drew Muslims to Europe in the
first place will simply give way to the same old
authoritarianism and intolerance that are the hallmarks of
Islam as we know it today. Then they might as well be back in
Damascus as Paris, Medina as Marseille.
It would be a Pyrrhic victory for Muslims, but that wouldn’t
be much consolation for the average Frenchman.
Just how or why Paris was originally nicknamed the “City of
Light” is not agreed upon. Some say it was because it was the
first European city on the continent to install gas lamps on its
city streets. Others say it was a result of the way impressionist
painters captured the light of its landscapes on canvas. A first-
time visitor from another planet might easily be convinced that
it was because of the dancing, surreal flames of automobile
fires that were ignited by angry mobs of disgruntled Parisians.
There haven’t been many chamber-of-commerce moments
for the beleaguered city, nor even for the entire country of
France, in recent weeks. Things have simmered down
considerably since the peak of the unrest, but did you know
that during the course of an average 24-hour period in France,
even during relatively sanguine times when riots aren’t raging
unabated countrywide, that somewhere between 80 and 100
cars are torched? Sacre bleu! For the young and alienated
with their vichyssoise of grievances, whether real or imagined,
it is practically a rite of passage. So, even during the best of
times for la Republique Francaise as a whole, it is still the
worst of times as usual for some aggrieved group or other.
During the late unpleasantness, which was enough to make
even Johnny Depp reconsider his idyllic residence in France,
the media was loathe to label the primary aggrieved and rioting
group as Islamic, preferring instead the generic term “youths.”
You know, as if those “youths” were just as likely to be named
Pierre or Jean Baptiste as they were to be named Yousef or
Abdul Rahman bin Omar al-Mustafa.
And when their Islamicness was, on occasion, pointed out,
many were quick to say that they were mostly secularized
Muslims rather than fundamentalist, inferring that the riots
had nothing to do with Islamic extremism and there was no
call for all the cracking wise about a French intifada. One
might be able to grant that point since the youths have thus far
limited their wrath mostly to the torching of individual
automobiles and a few empty buildings rather than subway
trains full of infidel commuters. But it is hard to ignore the
fact that these “youths,” even if secularized, still identify more
with their Islamicness than their Frenchness and because of
that may be not only largely unassimilable, but vulnerable as
well to the insidious seductions of jihad.
So what exactly is the beef of the rioting French “youths?”
According to one young rioter named Bilal in the Parisian
suburb of Aubervilliers: “We don’t have a choice. We are ready
to sacrifice everything because we have nothing. We even
burned the car of a friend. He got angry, but he understood.”
Well, sure, what are friends for if not to be understanding and
to cheerfully accept being victimized by the self-defeating
destructiveness of their wayward but ethnically similar pals?
But Bilal’s point, presumably, had to do with the claim that
Muslims in France suffer inordinately from unemployment,
poor housing and discrimination. There’s no doubt some truth
to that, but the question is, whose fault is it, a blindly
prejudiced French society or a Muslim culture whose members
simply don’t want to assimilate to the degree necessary in
order to achieve success in French society?
In a recent interview, Islamic scholar and philosopher Tariq
Ramadan, who has an office in a riot-torn area of Paris, had
this to say about Islamic assimilation in Western countries and
France in particular:
“For Muslim immigrants, religion is inseparable from their
roots and identity. They feel that transforming themselves
from Moroccans and Algerians into Frenchmen makes them
bad Muslims. This makes integration more difficult because it
apparently forces Muslims to choose between two alternatives:
self-abandonment or self-isolation.”
If Monsieur Ramadan is correct, if being a good Muslim is
more important by leaps and bounds than being a good
Frenchman, then why emigrate in the first place? The reason,
of course, is to gain a higher degree of freedom and economic
prosperity than was possible in the country of origin.
But that begs the question: If the only way for Muslims to
have a better, freer, more prosperous life is to go someplace
where Islam doesn’t dominate, then how do Muslims avoid the
seemingly unalterable conclusion that perhaps Islam, at least
the way it is currently practiced, isn’t such a terrific bargain for
its adherents? Why not just jettison the Islamic baggage and
get on with life?
The short answer is that for human beings, belief systems
aren’t so cavalierly discarded. If they were, there would be no
such thing as suicide bombings since, logically speaking, it is
one of the most colossally immoral and purely stupid things a
human being could ever do.
Anyway, most Muslims simply can’t accept the idea that the
poverty and backwardness of the Islamic world in comparison
to the West is due to some inherent defect of Islamic culture.
They prefer to believe instead that it’s all the fault of Zionist
aggression, or neocon Texan fundamentalist crusaders, or
Halliburton, or anything other than Islam itself.
But what about those second and third generation French
Islamic “youths” who have purportedly been largely
secularized? If it’s not about religious fundamentalism, then
why aren’t they more able to assimilate? Probably because
while the religiosity of their fathers and grandfathers may have
faded, the ethnic and the Islamic cultural ties remain strong.
And, unfortunately, embedded in the Islamic identity is a
powerful inferiority complex due to the Islamic world’s poor
position vis-à-vis the West which breeds resentment, anger and
discontent.
So France has a serious problem with its Muslim masses, the
solution for which isn’t readily obvious. It will also likely be
exacerbated by the troublesome demographics of an increasing
-- and increasingly surly -- Islamic population and a declining
rate of population growth among ethnic French. If nothing
changes, one of these days, late in the century perhaps,
Frenchmen are going to wake up one day, check the latest
headlines in Le Monde and discover that . . . Voila! France has
become majority Muslim.
Whether part of a vast Islamic conspiracy or just pure
happenstance, that could be the fate of Europe as a whole. Of
course, if Islam does eventually take over, and if Islamic
culture doesn’t change in any appreciable way, then the
freedom and prosperity that drew Muslims to Europe in the
first place will simply give way to the same old
authoritarianism and intolerance that are the hallmarks of
Islam as we know it today. Then they might as well be back in
Damascus as Paris, Medina as Marseille.
It would be a Pyrrhic victory for Muslims, but that wouldn’t
be much consolation for the average Frenchman.