By all means, go ahead and ban Muslims from entering!
It’s the US that loses.
Dangerous Muslims, carrying dangerous ideas, like hope …
(From Tunisia)
In France, after the initial shock is wearing off, a bit more reasonable thinking is coming to the surface again. Le Monde, standard bearer of enlightened humanity, has had a very fine interview recently with Olivier Roy, a politologist specialised in political Islam, (or Islamic politics?), working at the University of Florence. The interview is largely behind a paywall, thats sorry, but it is where I have the headline from. I-ll cite a bit from the interview, it is worth it.
“France at war?” he asks, but with who? Daesh didnt send fighters into France, as the al quaeda still effectively did with the US in 2001 — no, it let french and belgian youth attack their own countries.
Daech puise dans un réservoir de jeunes Français radicalisés qui, quoi qu’il arrive au Moyen-Orient, sont déjà entrés en dissidence et cherchent une cause, un label, un grand récit pour y
apposer la signature sanglante de leur révolte personnelle. L’écrasement de Daech ne changera rien à cette révolte.
Imagine the Daesh phenomenon in Syria is destroyed, he says, as it will be one way or another and vanish like a mirage of the desert — that would solve nothing of the french problem with this youth.
Deux lectures aujourd’hui dominent la scène et structurent les débats télévisés ou les pages opinions des journaux : en gros, l’explication culturaliste et l’explication tiers-mondiste. La première met en avant la récurrente et lancinante guerre des civilisations : la révolte de jeunes musulmans montre à quel point l’islam ne peut s’intégrer, du moins tant qu’une réforme théologique n’aura pas radié du Coran l’appel au djihad.
La seconde évoque avec constance la souffrance postcoloniale, l’identification des jeunes à la cause palestinienne, leur rejet des interventions occidentales au Moyen-Orient et leur exclusion d’une société française raciste et islamophobe ; bref, la vieille antienne : tant qu’on n’aura pas résolu le conflit israélo-palestinien, nous connaîtrons la révolte.
In short, there are two readings for why this is, this willingness of a small number of youth of (our own) countries to commit such attacks. One is “culturalist” saying that it is a feature of Islam and Islamic culture that cant integrate (i. e. The Bad Islam is at fault), the other says its a consequence of postcolonial injustice and of exclusion of muslims and similar groups from western society: « Because we mistreat them they turn on us» in gross simplification.
Neither is correct, he says. (He wouldnt be a good intellectual if he hadnt his own theory.) Both suggestions fail on the point that if either were true, the problem would have to be vastly larger and the multitudes of the well integrated muslims living here demonstrate that it isnt true. Look at all the actual actors of Daesh minded terrorism in France — they all had “their fiche S”, they all were actually known to security services. It is not that there is a vastly unsupervisable pool of potential recruits — it is a very small and well watched segment. In France specifically, all the actual actors of terrorist deeds come from two clearly circumscribed groups: they are either secoind generation immigrants (i. e. born in or arrived as child in France), or they are convertites — people actually not od islamic background who turned to Islam. Amongb the radicals ready for action, one doesnt find the “first generation” (direct arrivals), but also not the “third” generation — which, as he reminds his readers, actually by now exists.
That generation — the third — would have been found inside the Bataclan, not outside attacking it.
And the convertites, whose fraction of the terrorist reservoir he estimates at 25% and growing, they demonstrate anyhow that neither “culturalist” not “postimperialist” interpretation holds water.
Et pourquoi des convertis qui n’ont jamais souffert du racisme veulent-ils brusquement
venger l’humiliation subie par les musulmans ?
So what then do the second generation kids and the convertites have in common that makes them feed the recruit pool? It is a generational revolt, Olivier Roy says. Its a revolt against both their parents who can not seriously transmit a culture (that actual traditionalist islamic one) that is itself insecure of itself and under attack in France, and against the western culture, which all these youth have actually experienced — as shown by that “frivolous” Bataclan associate, Hasna. The recruits do not take up the Islam of their forefathers. They take up, and in common with the entirely fresh convertites, an Islam “of rupture” — they choose an Islam that does not follow a traditional culture but rejects even the idea of culture, as that violent interpretation of salafism does.
(Les convertis) … retrouvent ici la deuxième génération dans l’adhésion à un « islam de rupture », rupture générationnelle, rupture culturelle, et enfin rupture
politique. Bref, rien ne sert de leur
offrir un « islam modéré », c’est la radicalité qui les attire par définition.
It’s useless to offer them a “moderate” Islam since they are not interested in moderation. They are interested in radicality for its own sake. And that is also why their parents can not hold them back, as they have tried in case after case, without success.
They are in this respect entirely modern, and similar more to “born again” American christian mass killers, as Roy notes. They do not hide their new found Islam of revolt, which in actual fact puts them in sharp opposition to the traditional mosques all around the country. They do not learn their Islam of revolt from traditional imams but from self-appointed preachers over the net, as one finds with certain neochristian cults.
Leur radicalisation se fait autour d’un imaginaire du héros, de la violence et de la mort, pas de la charia ou de l’utopie. En
Syrie, ils ne font que la guerre : aucun ne s’intègre ou ne s’intéresse à la société civile.
Gonna translate this in full, “Their radicalisation takes place around the image of the hero, of (idolisation of) violence and of the death, not of sharia or utopia. In Syria they do nothing else than warfighting. None of them integrates into or even interests themselves for the local civil society.”
It’s nihilist rejection. They are not interested in theology. They do not practice, or have experience in, the upkeep of concrete religious traditions. They are interested in radicality, in reinventing themselves in opposition and in the hope of terrorizing. And what is there for the youth of todau on the “market of radicality” today, asks Roy, what is there for a young person to choose to securely terrorize their parents than Daesh style Islam? Andreas Baader (of my country) went into the RAF, young french went into the action directe, we do not have this anymore. Todays radicals choose the Islamist brand not because of any interest in Islam or religion but because this is the last thing remaining that can set them existentially apart from their origins.
And in so doing, they bring the worst out in us.
Which is, what they set out to demonstrate.
The last word back to Tunisians: Hard times …