'In France, they would like very much to reduce these riots to their social dimension, to see them as a revolt of youths from the suburbs against their situation, against the discrimination they suffer from, against the unemployment. The problem is that most of these youths are blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity. Look, in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is difficult - Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese - and they're not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character… directed against France as a former colonial power, against France as a European country. Against France, with its Christian or Judeo-Christian tradition...
'We are witness to an Islamic radicalization that must be explained in its entirety before we get to the French case, to a culture that, instead of dealing with its problems, searches for an external guilty party. It's easier to find an external guilty party. It's tempting to tell yourself that in France you're neglected, and to say, “Gimme, gimme.” It hasn't worked like that for anyone. It can't work.’
To me it seems the degree to which Islam and Islamism figured into the rioting is still a controversial and unsettled question. But Finkielkraut's conclusion, for the French, and perhaps particularly for the French Jews, is frightening, and saddening:
‘But there's something in France - a kind of denial ... in the sociologists and social workers - and no one dares say anything else. This struggle is lost. I've been left behind.’
16 comments:
Jamie, I wrote a long comment on this great Finkielkraut article on the first post of the day, when Rick mentioned it, via David, in his update. I hope it is not out of place to reproduce it, slightly edited, here:
Thanks David, I really like that Finkielkraut interview. His notion of this rioting being fundamentally anti-Republican, strikes me as just right. It is anti-Republican because it is rooted in a hatred of those confident westerners who have gone first in various political, cultural, and scientific endeavors, those who have led their brothers and sisters in humanity in the name of glorious France, instead of deferring to more democratic, more strictly egalitarian, sensibilities. The Republic relies on someone breaking ranks and going first; but the utopias the anti-Republicans desire are essentially dreams of some steady-state equality. So, as Finkielkraut notes, many French Muslims and their liberal sympathizers are destroying the educational standards and hierarchies of the country in a fit, attempting to serve the downtrodden from the colonies in overcoming the history of white-led crimes and injustices. What is at the root of this is a religion of guilt.
Self-destructive behaviour, all-consuming desire, is rooted in a resentful relationship to the sacred. He who resents the sacred center, misreading it as the source or cause of injustice and inequality, and consequent guilt, cannot see the sacred for what it truly is: something to love because it creates for us the possibility of deferring our conflict over common objects of desire, through a common worship of sacred signs that we substitute for the material things that cause us conflict.
In other words, the sacred allows us to set up communal standards that must be achieved as a precondition for any distribution and access to the material things we desire and must first produce before desire can be satisfied. Instead of love for the sacred sign, what is going on in France right now is promotion of the utopian lie that you can have all the cool things you want and deserve, without first particpating in the (formerly) sacralized communal standards by which productivity is maintained. This utopianism is on a self-destructive path, one that may entail the Islamist and liberal taking many others with them to their inevitable deaths. The utopian lie privileges consuming desires at the expense of productivity. One ends up burning objects of desire - e.g. cars - because if I can't have one, no one can.
Love God, or secular equivalents, or die. It comes down to this. And too many in France cannot love God or France anymore. But what about the Muslims you say? They love Allah, or so they say, and yet many are now self-destructive (and acting in ways, notes Finkielkraut, that Jews caught in poverty, or in a much more righteous anger for what France did to its Jews during the Holocaust, never would).
The most hopeful (yet unproven) answer is that many of these kids are not yet serious and skilled Muslims and so don't know what it means to love God. But some of their elders who should know better seem to be abetting this rioting. Here we have to turn to consider the nature of Islam's catholic, and one might say, democratic, submission to the word of god. Perhaps Islam is a democracy, at least in its utopian vision for the next world; and hence it cannot easily adapt to a worldly Republic that allows for much meritocratic or political asymmetry on top of the fundamental symmetry of all members in the national brother and sisterhood. One can't help but note that so many Muslim fundamentalists and even ordinary Muslim brothers, not to mention their western leftist sympathizers, have a rather hysterical nature, arguably rooted in an overvaluation of equality and a consequent sense of injustice at worldly differences, those practical differences that are necessary to our productive life.
Many people call Islam a patriarchal culture. But it still retains much of the matriarchal impulse to defend all the children as equals before their creator. The polygamy that is apparently common among French immigrants may reflect a dubious male privilege built on top of a culture in which women traditionally do most of the work and raise the children, at least until the young men reject the mother and get in the game of fighting other men for the right to live (and die) as beastly pseudo-patriarchs. The universal submission of the faithful in Islam may be some kind of half-way house between a matriarchal and patriarchal culture as Salman Rushdie suggests:
The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system. Muhammad, as an orphan, personally suffered the difficulties of this transformation, and it is possible to read the Koran as a plea for the old matriarchal values in the new patriarchal world, a conservative plea that became revolutionary because of its appeal to all those whom the new system disenfranchised, the poor, the powerless and, yes, the orphans.
The true patriarch is someone who can maintain (or, more to the point, who is imagined by his followers as the source of) order and productivity among his children, even amidst the most trying circumstances of poverty, war, inequality, etc. This argument is in no way an attempt to deny the fundamental equality of men and women. It is rather to argue that this equality is best served by our common rejection of a utopian democracy and religion, which, I hypothesize, are rooted in ancient matriarchal sensibilities. Equality and republican democracy does much better with a respect for the asymmetry within symmetry that is the hallmark of a free and open politics and meritocracy, and of a religious love for the father.
Kudos for giving Melanie Phillips a boost. She is wonderful and should be read by more Americans.
truepeers - "Love God, or secular equivalents, or die. It comes down to this."
I find among my liberal friends and acquaintances a strong antipathy towards religion of any kind. To hear them speak, then, the existential threat posed by jihadis is simply the threat posed by religious extremism of any kind. Although I, like them, was raised without religion (pretty normal in the UK), I do not share this antipathy.
It's remarkable how often a conversation that begins with the latest developments in the WOT ends with me asking them what they do believe in and why?
Melanie Phillips is always a joy to read. So is Dr. Dalrymple. THey are so clear thinking and such beautiful writers. C
It's easier to find an external guilty party. It's tempting to tell yourself that in France you're neglected, and to say, “Gimme, gimme.” It hasn't worked like that for anyone. It can't work.’
Why does this remind me of Democrats discussing Republicans?
I think it is true that Islam, at least as we seem to know it, does rely on outside enemies to explain away its own failures.
Islam is more than a religion to most of its adherents, it is a way of life. And it has lagged behind the west and been dependent on the infidels and that is hurtful to their pride and their self image. So many of them attack. [instead of using that damn oil money to improve their societies]. This is an oversimplifaction and needless to say it does not apply to everyone in the Middle East.
The whole concept of jihad is struggle and of course there must be someone to struggle against.
In France I am afraid that much of traditional Islam has been lost but the jihad continues.
I remember years ago reading a book of poems called "Sand and Stars" [I think] by a French pilot who had fought the Algerians. I can not remember his name right now. But it got me interested in the subject and it is true, there is much bad blood here.
The Algerians used to castrate the Frenchmen just to make a point.
And now of course they are in their midst and they are very unhappy.
not good.
Re Terrye's ..."(use) that damn oil money to improve their societies...."
Whoopee, there's a mouthful! The Big Simple that GWB has been trying to point out, all along.
But, Teddy, Kerry, Ms Sheehan, et al, "It takes an OIF!"
Dave, French--and European--cash has been cascading into our markets since the riots began. I'm sure the numbers are somewhere--Bloomberg, maybe--but anecdotally, it's been much remarked in the last month (I keep CNBC on all thru mkt hours).
Terry,
I remember years ago reading a book of poems called "Sand and Stars" [I think] by a French pilot who had fought the Algerians...
Wasn't that Antoine de St. Exupery, also the author of "Le Petit Prince"?
J.
Socialism=Bad
Republic=Good
Islam=Evil
Multiculture=Bad
Intergation=Good
Education=Good
Welfare=Bad
Secular=Good
Utopianism=Bad
Democracy=Good
France actually won the Algerian War, and then De Gaulle, in trying to make a better peace, gave in to the original demands of the by-then vanquished enemy.
Time's passage--as well as much testimony--has proven that to've been the exact wrong thing to have done, setting the precedent of the extremists' win-by-losing strategy to wear down the western enemy, always safely inside the limits of the westerner's predictably measured response to any outrage.
papa ray, if you're a lefty, you can save ink with
good=bad
bad=good
Le Enterprise Zone?
Skookumchuk,
Thank you. I hadn't seen that before.
I wonder if part of the French problem in not identifying a problem is the same the Netherlands has now? I mean, I think there is a real fear about speaking out at all.
Silent too long, and they've lost their chance at saying anything at all.
I really can't imagine the elites are that blind. I really can't.
There's a fear there and they are afraid to speak of it.
That culture is strong only because it IS aggressive. Cut off the lines of attack, and what does it offer the western sensibility?
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