"The country also has the largest population of Muslims in Western Europe. Many complain the authorities use secularism to specifically target them, for instance in banning the hijab.
Speaking outside Paris on Friday, Mr Macron said radical Islam was a danger to France because it held its own laws above all others and "often results in the creation of a counter-society".
He said this form of sectarianism often translated into children being kept out of school, and the use of sporting, cultural and other community activities as a "pretext to teach principles that do not conform to the laws of the republic".
"Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country."
The measures announced by the president will form legislation that will go to parliament before the end of the year.
They include:
- stricter monitoring of sports organisations and other associations so that they do not become a front for Islamist teaching
- an end to the system of imams being sent to France from abroad
- improved oversight of the financing of mosques
- home-schooling restricted
Mr Macron also said France must do more to offer economic and social mobility to immigrant communities, adding that radicals had often filled the vacuum." BBC
—————
SWMBO and I watch A LOT of French TV on TV 5 Monde. The aspirational goals of French society are made clear there. The assimilation and integration of North Africans and Sub-Saharan immigrants from the former French Union, or empire if you prefer, are a high priority for the French. The depiction of assimilated Muslims is generally friendly so long as the persons depicted appear to consider themselves to be French before all else.
The French have a long history of this kind of behavior. There are many, many French people of Polish or Portuguese descent distributed throughout French society who are the evidence of a long term immigration from those countries to France.
In addition to these people, the descendants of those Algerians who more or else voluntarily left what had formerly been an integral part of France to re-locate to mainland France appear to be completely integrated into French society. Their names are conspicuous in the "crawl" that accompanies just about every French film or TeeVee production.
These people are not the targets of Macron's virtual declaration of war against Islamism. What he is concerned about is the mentality evident in many of the newly arrived people of Muslim identity who seek and wish to replace traditional French culture and hard won ideals of governance with a Sharia State ruled by the whims of people like Turkey's neo-Ottoman Sultan, Erdogan.
All Europeans should fear such a possibility and should decide whether or not they have the will and determination needed to preserve their own ancients ways of life.
I applaud Macron's promise of action. pl
At one time France thought their biggest problem was guarding against Fran-glais.
Islam needs reformation to ensure its survival in civilized society. Every Abrahamic religion has undergone this important process and Islam should not be excluded. However the ‘West’ cannot do it for them, I’m sure there are a lot of reform-minded muslims who see this challenge and want to bring it into modernity organically and properly. However, there are clowns such as Reza Aslan of CNN (an Iranian-American self-described Shiite and observing muslim), or Tariq Ali, or Hossein Nasr or Abdalkarim Soroosh who are known as the ‘reformers’ of Islam and whose works focus upon making the religion ‘reasonable’, palatable and more tolerant tot he western intellectual digestion. Nevertheless, the absolutism of shri’a law and the political(and transnational) nature of Umma, especially Seyyed Qutb’s vision of proper islamic society is the underlying spirit of islamism, without which the religion is no more.
‘Woke’ Western sympathizers of Islamism in the Democratic Party and the Left in general are either ignorant of the inseparability of state and religious law of the land (shari’a law) or especially encourage and feed it to destroy Western culture and its institutions.
Shame on them
China’s treatment of its vastly larger, more murderous, Islamic population seems positively liberal compared to France’s.
Polish Janitor
macron is not seeking to reform Islam. He is seeking to save French society from alienation.
Je crois que la France est disfuguree maintenat.
babak
Oui, par une population integriste.
How do you put “Diversity is our Strength” on a Renault bumper sticker or a 15th Arrondissement lawn sign? Does La Belle Diane now include Diversité with Liberté, Egaliié and Fraternité – or is that redundant. If Colonialism was so unforgivingly bad, why did so many of the formerly oppressed want to flock to the Mother Country?
deap You mean “Marianne?”
Plish Janitor
“Shame on” who exactly?
Dr. Nasr is a traditionalist Apologist for Islam and Dr. Soroosh is groping for a Naturalistic understanding of Islam.
They are not clowns by any stretch of imagination; however much I would or could disagree with their ideas and approaches.
I am not familiar with the works of Reza Aslan or Tariq Ali.
Of the 5 men you have mentioned with derision, 3 have been Shia Muslim Iranians, i.e. hailing from the only Thinking part of Islamdom.
The fifth man, Seyyed Qutb, was a non-Seljuk Sunni Muslim whose ideas were discussed among the reli3-oriented people in Iran. However, his ideas and ideals, have been, both in theory and in practice, discarded in Iran in favor of the revolutionary ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini who broke with 1400 years of Islamic Tradition and it malpractices.
The Western Diocletian civilization is primarily dealing with its own “good-Muslims”. Those a
are, for the most part, Sunni Muslims who suffer a triple jeopardy: that of not hailing from Seljuk Culture Continent, of being breft of the intellectual developments of the Shia World, and of being under ideological hegemony of Salafi Islam – which seeks to excise Beauty, Reason, and Tradition from Islam (your chief friends).
Twice the Vali Faqih of Iran tried to help France, each after a terrorist attack against France – by issuing open letters to European youth, urging them to discover Islam on their own. France was not interested, may be just like DC, France also hated Shia Islam.
The denigration of Sharia, another legal system, is not productive since its replacement is impossible as well impractical in the Muslim World. It has been in the process of change in the Shia World due tothe 200-year old Doctrine of Ijtihad, and later by the radical ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini for suspension of secondary rulings of Islamic Law in the interests of expediency.
But Heaven-Forbid that one favors the ideas of the Catholics of Islam to those of the extreme Calvinists.
Deap
Diversity of talent, opinion, and approaches is defintely a strength.
Civilizational diversity, not so much. Like Indian Union, or USSR.
There are a lot of assimilated Muslims among the professionals in France.
babak
I said that.
Great minds think alike, Col. Lang.
Babak
I note that someone claiming to be you attempted to send TTG a comment on SST that made reference to Rockefeller Republican and was clearly meant to mock me. That is troll behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican
I addressed that remark to TTG since I wanted to know what was meant by Rockefeller Republicans since tgat particukar Rockefeller was treated shabbily by US Congress.
Babak, in the US, as I assume you are familiar, the term “diversity” means a box of crayons with appropriate skin colors in proportional numbers and boxes where one can check their genitalia preferences, ; but not much more.
Yes, I long for ideological diversity, in academia at least. But that is not to be. Yet. Thank goodness Trump has been able to install jurisprudence diversity within our federal courts – it is starting to resonate. Even the infamous 9th Circuit Court is not 100% cray-cray any longer.
babak
I had mentioned the Rockefeller Republicans, not he.
Escarlata
Can you read? It does not seem so. What is clear is that you are incredibly lazy kid who wants me to do all your work. My normal position with regard to you is to delete your comments. You are a nuisance.
PS – yes, of course it was La Belle Marianne – but all I can think of now is La Belle Catherine Deneuve. Diane? Brain glitch.
Miss Mendel – HS French teacher will be very disappointed if she learns about my failed memory, since she taught us love France, and especially Paris, as well as the French language. Way back when K-12 in the US was worth the tax dollar investment. And when spinsters still found a noble calling in their lives -sharing their own love of the topics they were imparting to us.
Col. Lang:
Here is what TTG wrote and I posed my question:
” …She could be characterized as a Rockefeller Republican. That would leave her far outside the current GOP ….”
Posted by: The Twisted Genius | 04 October 2020 at 10:39 AM
Babak
that was in response to my mention of the RRs..
Deap
Catherine Deneuve’s middle name is Fabienne.
Escarlata
Do your own research. don’t expect me to do it for you.
Babak,
I assure you that the individuals I mentioned as ‘clowns’ had nothing to do any type of discrimination against Persians. I’m Polish-as the name suggests- and my wife is of Persian descent and I do take personal offense if anyone online or in person ever tries to utter anything foul about Iranians and the Persian civilization in general. So nice try Babak!
And now the meat of the matter,
With my limited (but developing) knowledge of the ME’s political, cultural and religious landscape, and my understanding of the question of Islam, modernity, reformation and topics of the same vein, the real ‘thinking’ component or the intellectual light bulb comes NOT from Qom, but Najaf which is far more significant and historically has had more intellectual forte than those in Qom. Grand Ayatollah Sistani is widely (and correctly) known as the authoritative figure here and to the best of my knowledge nothing really bright in religious philosophy terms comes out Qom compared to Najaf. And, yes I agree that Shiism is intellectually superior and more ‘reasonable’ compared to Sunni Islam and emphasizes on ‘manteq’ or logic and is very dynamic, especially the concept of Marjaiyah. To put it simply the brain part of Islam today is Shiism, while the tradition or “sunnah” and the not-so-reasonable part of Islamic thought belongs to Sunni islam.
I mentioned Seyyed Qutb because of two things: 1. he was probably the most influential 20th century Sunni scholars on the development of the idea of political Islam and the trans-nationalization and revolution for the installation of Ummah and shari’a law in Muslim societies which he considered as a logical solution to problems in Muslim societies. Think Troskyism in a Sunni Islamic package. 2. Ayatollah Khamanei- the current leader of Iran translated Seyyed Qutb’s “Social Justice in Islam” (1949) to Persian in his youth and there are very interesting similarities between Qutb’s ideas and the ideological underpinnings of the Islamic revolution in Iran. For example, during the Arab Spring Ayataollah Khamanei not only supported the movement but if I’m correctly recalling, gave it his own spin, as the “Islamic Awakening”. Iran then supported ‘Islamic Awakening’ in Bahrain, Yemen, Libya (despite Ghddafi’s extensive military support of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war) and maybe Egypt, but opposed Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Lebanon which is matter outside of the focus of the topic, but still interesting…
However, my issue (based on my current understanding of the topic) is with the idea of the separation of church and state, and I would like to know where you stand on it especially from a Shiism pov. The individuals I mentioned, in my view, belong to the western bloc of reformists who want to make Islam palatable for the western consumption. It is brewed in the Western universities and brain centers and their reformist prescriptions seem insincere, non-organic and misleading. Note that Nasr and his son Vali Nasr- a close Hilary Clinton advisor on Middle East matters- are knee-deep in the Democratic Party politics and trust me they are pushing hard for their own agenda than anything else.
This is why I said shame on them.
Polish Janitor
I completely disagree with your assessment of the importance of Najaf as compared to Qum: at one time Najaf enjoyed scholarly pre-eminence – I do not think that has been the case for at least 60 years.
I do not disagree with your assessment of Ayatollah Sistani – another Iranian – enjoying significant authority there in Iraq (I presume).
However, I disagree with your estimation of Ayatollah Khomeini – by not mentioning him as the most significant political philosopher as well as statesman of the Muslim World of the last 1200 years after Al Farabi. He broke in Islamic Tradition on 6 important steps and set the course of Muslim history on a different path.
Everyone else are just minor figures compared to him; in my opinion – including Qutb, the so-called Quietists, the Akhbaris, the Usulis and all such others. Excepting another man that you did not mention: Allameh Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai.
But to think that he is against the concept of Velayat Faqih from a theoretical level is a stretch; in my opinion. I have heard, through the grape vine, a comment attributed to him – to the effect that Velayat Faqih is not applicable to Iraq’s situation since so many Kurds are Ahl Tariqat – or so they claim.
My position on the separation of Church and State in the Western Diocletian Civilization has been quite clear; that it has had many roots but the most important one goes back to the famous hadith of Issa Masih: “Render unto Caesar…”.
(That hadiths has no counterpart in the histories of the Prophet or the First 4 Khalifs.)
I go further and state that the Muslim-majority societies cannot be secular as it is understood in places like France or Denmark – the only “secularism” I have seen in Muslim societies has been “Garrison Secularism” – enforced by the military.
Ayatollah Khamenei is a statesman and his comments and positions must be understood as such. What was he to say about Arab Spring?
That they were not going to succeed in ushering a new era of Liberty and Prosperity for everyone? After having seen how Democracy in Syria degenerated into a campaign of mutual assassinations by the political formation there?
Further that there had never been a theory of Freedom (i.e. Absence of Fear) in Islam as compared to the works of Western Thinkers of the Western Tradition?
Escarlata
“el mundo que viene.” Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds? You are 16? You sound 16. Every generation of teenagers says the same mierda to their elders. You should watch a production of “Hair.” Yes. Those children changed the world. Not.
Babak
I had no idea that Qutb was known in Iran, been reading about this all evening, apparently Khamenei even translated his works from Arabic. Puts my whole recollection of the Iranian pro-Arab Spring stance in 2011-2012(before syria AND iraq really heated up(the latter is often forgotten as being part of the same conflict)) into perspective, I now see what they were trying to do there.
” … the will and determination needed to preserve their own ancients ways of life.”
I’m afraid our progs make short work of that, Colonel, or indeed of anything that indicates respect or liking for conserving what is valuable.
In the crude terms we are accustomed to in Europe that’s straight “populism” at best and “Fascism” at worst. Though the two terms are more or less interchangeable in prog polemic.
English Outsider
The ancient ways were garbage.