So, is it a "clash of civilizations?"
Yesterday, Clive Davis expanded on some comments he made earlier here, about blog response and press coverage (or lack thereof) of the riots in France, and added some interesting-looking links to some French blogs. He also provides a helpful translation of a few bits for the non-French-speaking among us, which includes me.
Clive wrote:
Religion complicates things enormously in Europe, yes, but we're not yet in a clash of civilisations. I don't want to sound Pollyanna-ish. At the same time, there's no point being apocalyptic either, even if it does give us a nice, warm glow inside.
Today, he adds further commentary on the question of whether this is indeed a "European intifada."
So, are we in a clash of civilizations, or aren't we? Clive is always worth reading and listening to, and I think he is correct to ask the question, and to say the answer is not a simple "either-or."
But sometimes the answer is "maybe," or "yes, and." Unfortunately, I don't think we are in any position to say for sure that we are not in such a clash, much as I would like this to be the case. The "fog of riots" has not lifted. And although there may be no point in being apocalyptic (not Now, at least), I don't think it's a good idea to dismiss the "clash" possibility out of hand.
Reasonable people may differ on this, of course. But I tend to think the evidence is quite strong that if we aren't in a clash of civilizations at the moment, we are at least teetering on the brink. Whether or not these particular riots fall into the category "clash of civilizations" remains to be seen. But pundits and bloggers and people in the street are going to rush in to fill the vacuum of knowledge with theories, and the idea that there are Islamic fundamentalist supremicists behind this, pulling at least some of the strings (directly or indirectly, intially or presently), is not an entirely unreasonable one.
Even without those puppeteers, fundamentalist Islamic tradition has a strain of intolerence, supercessionism, and violence that might be irrelevant were it not being revived today among some Moslems, both in Europe and elsewhere, permeating their worldview and informing their actions. On this topic, here's part of an interview conducted a year ago with Bat Ye'or, author of Eurabia:
Stephen Crittenden: The Muslim populations are here in Europe, in large numbers, particularly in France and Germany. I want to put it to you that there’s only one realistic political reaction to that for the future, and that is to learn to live together.
Bat Ye’or: Yes I agree totally with you. The problem is that Europe has tried to do that and this was in fact the basis of the dialogue, but the Europeans didn’t know how to proceed with the dialogue. They were not imposing their views, they were accepting always, but not imposing. They were apologetic and they didn’t say ‘Here we are, we are like this and you have to accept our mores and our laws’, because the dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslims is not symmetrical, it is not based on equality. The non-Muslims always have to adopt an attitude of passivity and acceptance and flattery in relation to the Muslim. This was how the dialogue developed. Now they didn’t foresee that they would be themselves victims of this policy with a recurrence of Islamic fundamentalism, the return of the 7th century mentality. They didn’t see in the long term the cultural revolution, that migration will bring also the intransigence of the Muslim fundamentalists.
Stephen Crittenden: Where do you think this is all going?
Bat Ye’or: It is going to disaster, because either Europe will become the new continent of dhimmitude or there will be a very savage xenophobic movement, because this immigration was not integrated properly, it happened too quickly. It is not only because the immigration was Muslim, because this would happen with any immigration, when you bring millions of people coming into a country in a very short term, they won’t integrate necessarily. But on top of it there is a refusal from the Muslim population often, not always, to integrate because they reject totally the Judaeo-Christian civilisation. I mean for 13 centuries they fought to destroy it, and if we are not aware - us non-Muslims and Muslims - of this past, we will not be able to come together, to bridge through our differences, and we have to recuperate this whole history that has been totally destroyed by the Janissary, Edward Said, in order to build with the Muslims a future of peace, not on dhimmitude because this will be our future, but on freedom and equal respect.
[ADDENDUM: Austin Bay adds all sorts of perspective, historical and otherwise, to the question of whether this might be jihad, or at least some sort of hybrid of jihad and a host of other things. He also sheds some rather fascinating light on the "Is Paris Burning?" quote from WWII that many bloggers are using in reference to the riots.]
posted by neo-neocon @ 2:18 PM
25 comments
25 Comments:
Isn't the key point that we just don't know? Nonetheless, a fair portion of the right half of the blogosphere have jumped the gun. I don't think it's time to be discussing mass deportation (when would that be the solution anyway??), and there is scant evidence that Islamists--or anyone for that matter--are directing the riots. The simplest explanation at this point is that the riots are a combination of violent, ignorant youths and lack of adult supervision and law enforcement. --timmah!
IMO the French have no balls
India was forced to cede territory within its own homeland by Islamic rampages and political tactics, and Pakistan was the result of its partitioning.
This site analyzes the strong similarities, posits that such may be the strategic objective, and suggest that we will see France partitioned within a few years.
http://frontpage.americandaughter.com/?p=85
Ladin says--
India was forced to cede territory within its own homeland by Islamic rampages and political tactics, and Pakistan was the result of its partitioning.
Yeah...and what a mess those Muslims made in Pakistan. They're a cultural sink hole.
France brought on some of this with its colonial history in No Africa, its cavalier use of immigrants when it had a manufacturign sector and needed cheap labor, and its general hauteur re America's problems with race and class differences. Remember those self-righteous lectures in 92, during the LA riots? Couldn't happen in la belle France because she was too "humane."
Sure. This is the country that invented the guillotine for use during its bloody Revolution. France "humane"? What a joke.
Vichy France.
France's anti-semitism.
France's refusal to allow the EU constitution to refer to Europe's historicallly Judeo-Christian roots.
France's bitter attempts to keep even foreign words out of its "pure" language.
France's too-kewl-for-the-rest-of-us nihilism...
...and the list goes on.
The mills of the God in which France is too intellectually superior to believe still grind exceedingly fine...
Neo,
If this is not the start of the true "clash of civilizations", it is a harbinger. There are two competing models that are completely incompatible and that is a prescription for a clash. Even if things quiet down, that will only delay the reckoning. The Muslims in France cannot assimilate and the French state is not ready to surrender. I have blogged about this extensively for the last couple of days and can see no way out.
The Islamists may not have been running the Intifada, but their ideology is going to ultimately be the organizing principle of the uprising; sadly, there are no competing ideas that can defuse the situation.
Looks like you may have a few trolls (pretend, or parodic, conservatives) in the anonymouses above.
Yes indeed, anonymous at 7:27 PM. But my guess is that it was actually all one troll.
No - not clash of civilizations, it's the lameness of the French state:
How come Arab/African frenchmen who acknowledge the contributions of Asterix, speak french exactly the same way that Jack Chiraq does, and embrace the ideals of the French republic/state, are not treated the same way as white frenchmen?
I thought France had always advertised itself as a non-racist state, that if you embraced the culture, you would be treated as an equal? At least this is what I was taught by a Spaniard high school French teacher. Isn't that statement all bullshit / french propaganda? Aren't many frenchmen actually quite racist? Even more so than the supposedly more "racist" Englishmen?
Why do Mexicans who work on my lawn and garden, and Chinese who clean my toilets in the United States seem somewhat content and not inclined to riot for 2 weeks (or perhaps longer)
So let's say someone took a poll today among the oh so rational and civilized French people, and the poll asked them if they'd rather have unassimilated, angry, arsonist North Africans among them--or Jews who'd work happily as assimilated French citizens in trades and professions and would hardly ever riot...
I'd bet those troublesome Jews wouldn't get 30% of the vote.
The more things change...
Why don't you guys get to the real issue. The issue is not assimilation, clash of civilizations, or Jihad. The issue is that France refuses to accept French born people as French because they look "foreign". There is widespread poverty and unemployement among their neighborhoods. That is the real issue
The Bunnies
Yes, what do the countries/cultures (and cultures were, once, repositories of national history, tradition, language, arts...)of the West have left to assimilate into? Dalrymple made the case v. England. You're echoing him on France.And what about the USA, and the now much-despised and derided melting pot?
You can't assimilate into a global culture. To cite Dorothy Parker:
"There's no there there."
Are you sure "Allahu Ackbar" isn't actually French for "we are protesting widespread poverty and unemployment among our neighborhoods"?
So...the French have created the equivalent of the old South African Bantu homelands for their muslim Africans. Since ethnic cleansing is not an option, the partition of France is inevitable, and in fact already well under way. Other Euro nations will follow the same path (Rotterdam is 50% non-Dutch, mostly muslim).
The lesson must not be lost on the US. Reform our immigration! And, though not p.c., exclude almost all muslims in future. But our fearless leaders of both parties will not heed this notion, nor act on it. Our State Dept is even now bringing over 50,000 shoeless Somalis from camps in Kenya. Now, there is social value added...they wash their feet in toilets, who knows where they poop.
Let's suppose there is some legitimacy to the complaint of "no jobs" and discrimination. Okay, fine. Are these youths working hard, double-time, to improve their skills. Are they laboring nightly (when not engaged in arson, mind you) to get their engineering, architecture, nursing, law, medical, business&mgmt, int'l banking, mathematics, physics, biochemical degrees? Or are they just sitting around smoking hash and bitching about racism?
Minorities get ahead in Western nations--whether the minority persons be Indian, Latin-American (such as myself), African or Asian--when they apply themselves to hard study and hard work at entry level positions ANYWHERE. You don't become a successful entrepreneur by complaining. You don't get a college degree by bewailing. You succeed by working your butt off, even in the face of institutional or individual racist obstacles. In fact, the smartest immigrants ignore the bigots and get their Master's and Ph.D's and laugh all the way to the bank.
France has liberal education. I suggest the "disaffected youths" polish up their shoes and their high-class French and buy pens and notebooks and hie their asses to school.
You want to be part of French society, do what successful French--orr Indian, or American, or Brazilian or Japanese--set goals and strive.
Stop smoking hash, stop screwing around, stop making babies before you're married, stop burning cars.
Offer to wash someone's car, mow someone's lawn, clean someone's house,and move on.And if you hate the country you're in, move.
God, I hate whiners.
Mir
Offhand, I'd be inclined to dismiss it as faux civilization vs. no civilization...but that's just moi.
The Left seems hell-bent on using a Marxist model to address the french jihad. Where else but in France would citizens stand by and let their neighborhoods go up in flames? I commented in another blog that with considerable trepidation many European cities are watching closely. Sweden could well be the next area of jihad. I would push it there if I were a jihadi commander. Sweden is a fat herring, ripe for major concessions.
The Left seems hell-bent on using a Marxist model to address the french jihad. Where else but in France would citizens stand by and let their neighborhoods go up in flames? I commented in another blog that with considerable trepidation many European cities are watching closely. Sweden could well be the next area of jihad. I would push it there if I were a jihadi commander. Sweden is a fat herring, ripe for major concessions.
One commenter thought there was scant evidence that jihadis were directing this french jihad. Talk about desperate pretensions! Don't hold your breath for reason and good faith and empathy and mutual understanding and civilized conduct to run its course. He has alcohol and pork on his breath and doesn't even know it, and the women in his family are exposing their ankles and don't have their heads covered either. Hey buddy! Pray they don't come to your neighborhood with their molotovs and shotguns, you're just another infidel to them.
Well now, I see the poor and disenfranchised and oppressed muslims in Austrailia, or at least 17 of them, were preparing to express their discontent with chemicals and other nasty things. Hmmm - if only Aussies would quit drinking grog and letting their women expose their ankles this wouldn't be happening you know.
Ironic how pro-Israeli as well as Saudi-controlled Islamic fundamentalist media are actually (for once) BOTH 100% aligned with the official Neocon talking points coming from Washington: I happen to know France fairly well and the truth is that the so-called “North-African riots all around the French capital” are just minor incidents involving a handful of disaffected Muslim teenagers…
This factual reality seems to have evaded the Jerusalem Post and Al-Arabbya’s highly imaginative journalists: why bother with boring facts when you can serve the colorful anti-Gallic clichés cooked by Dick Cheney and his Wahhabi friend/business partner-in-crime Prince Bandar Ibn-Saud?
First, one has to put things into perspective: in 12 days of so-called “massive Islamic rioting across France” we’ve had less material damage not to mention what US experts call “body counts” than say the 2001 Cincinnati riots (20 African Americans quickly terminated Schwarzenegger style) or the 1992 South Central LA uprising with more than 60 “niggers” executed on the spot- remember when President George H.W. Bush spoke to the nation, "denouncing random terror and lawlessness" as US Marines massacred their way into the remnants of the Black ghetto?
See Wikipedia article below for more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots
So why the double standard for France where we’ve had to deplore a single casualty in 12 days of so-called “North African revolt”?
At a time when the Washington Post, the Jerusalem Post and Al-'Arabbyia are all jumping on the anti-Gallic bandwagon, we have to keep in mind that the French government is currently confronted with a primarily social and economic malaise, NOT some kind of Apocalyptic Mohammedan “grand soir” as the likes of Dick Cheney, Usama Bin Laden and the unholy Neo-conservative cum old Islamic fundamentalist alliance would like us to believe.
In French, poor suburbs with Soviet-style housing for Moorish immigrants and their children are generically called “La Banlieue” a medieval Gallic word which literally means “the place where the banned and the untouchables dwell”. . .
Eternally yours in Liberty,
Dr Victorino de la Vega
Chair of the Thomas More Center for Middle East Studies
http://www.mideastmemo.blogspot.com/
It isn't a clash of civilizations for the simple reason that the original theory predicted that the civilization of Japan and the civilization of the West(America) would come in conflict. The theory itself is therefore not very relevant.
As to whether this can be called a clash of civilizations, first we must characterize Muslim antagonists as part of a civilization. Which is clearly false. Barbarianism and civilization are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Especially if the antagonists are anti-everything protagnist as a way of self-definition and identity.
It's definitely a clash, but you'll need a different wordto describe that clash than civilization.
Hey Vic - rioting in 300 communities is not "minor incidents involving a handful of muslim teenagers". 1173 cars burned in one night, Monday night according to MSN. Minor incidents you say? HA HA - you remind me of Baghdad Bob - surely you remember him. I think you have mistaken this blog for the al jazeera blog site. Eh? Such cheek to come here with such tripe about US Marines slaughtering Black Americans. You've been on the arab street too long waving your arms in the air chanting anti-American propoganda. Say! You ain't that guy in Pakistan a year or two ago that was burning the American flag in protest and caught himself on fire, are you? You remind me of him. Unless you change your screen name to Baghdad Bob, I will not read any more of your commentary!
FYI
Take the comments by Victorino de la Vega with a grain of salt.
A Google search for Thomas More Center for Middle East Studies only turns up his weblog and his rantings on other logs. I guess when one does not have much to say, one needs to feel important by adding a title to your name.
Perhaps Victorino is a doctor of this type of Vega.
Mike's onto something here! I'm getting reports that the impoverished youth were using a street gang code word, allah akbahr, designed soley to confuse french police. Keep us posted, Mike, and good work! Any clues as to who these unhappy fellows really are??
This factual reality seems to have evaded the Jerusalem Post and Al-Arabbya’s highly imaginative journalists:
I do believe it is safe to say now that America now has a pro-American channel in the Middle East. Al-Arabiya.
And that was all the result of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the preceding operations.
Always listen to the enemy, and hear who they complain about. Because those will be your strongest allies.
On another note. Historically ideological movements, fascism, communism, or jihadism have always started out at a grass roots level. Meaning they require power in the form of guerrila tactics, protests, disruptions, blackmail, assassinations, extortion, and all that good stuff. Once they acquire such a base of power, then you'll see the gays and the Jews being strung up.
Almost immediately upon assuming the Chancellorship of Germany, Hitler began promulgating legal actions against Germany's Jews. In 1933, he proclaimed a one-day boycott against Jewish shops, a law was passed against kosher butchering and Jewish children began experiencing restrictions in public schools. By 1935, the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship. By 1936, Jews were prohibited from participation in parliamentary elections and signs reading "Jews Not Welcome" appeared in many German cities. (Incidentally, these signs were taken down in the late summer in preparation for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin).
In the first half of 1938, numerous laws were passed restricting Jewish economic activity and occupational opportunities. In July, 1938, a law was passed (effective January 1, 1939) requiring all Jews to carry identification cards. On October 28, 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship, many of whom had been living in Germany for decades, were arrested and relocated across the Polish border. The Polish government refused to admit them so they were interned in "relocation camps" on the Polish frontier.
They need power before they string up the Jews, so don't think it isn't about Islam just cause they haven't acquired the power to do so yet.
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