Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Nine Podcast Three

  This reading continues to explore tensions and pathologies in Muslim-non-Muslim relations in Britain and Germany. We hear European girls and young women pleading to be heard.   The Caliphate Abroad, Part Two: The French Speakers   “It took Hitler 10 years to control France. But our state shook France in an hour from the north to south. May Allah bless you O soldiers of the Caliphate.” A Caliphate supporter’s tweet after a French priest was beheaded, July 2016   Introduction France and Belgium have proportionately large Muslim populations. They are also venues for Caliphate attacks and breeding grounds for Islamism. The Islamic State struck both countries in 2015 and 2016 and changed the lives of their citizens.   France   Muslim–Non-Muslim Tensions   In France, relations between Muslims and non-Muslims have long been strained. The French absorbed many French nationals who fled Algeria in the 1960s. Subsequently, waves of North Africans arrived in the following decades. Elites predicted assimilation on the basis of earlier successes. But relations, always tenuous, became tense by the twenty-first century, as discussed in chapter 2.   By the new millennium, many leaders and opinion-makers in Europe were nervous about growing Islamic communities. French intellectual Alain Finkielkraut coined the term “homesick at home.” He and his compatriot, Eric Zemmour, sometimes called the “Rush Limbaugh of France,” write wistfully of “les Trente Glorieuses,” the thirty years following liberation from the Nazis until the leftist cultural ascent of the mid-1970s. In 1965, few Europeans could have imagined that their compatriots would be too afraid to sketch religious cartoons a half-century later. Fewer still could have imagined that groups such as the Islamic State would appeal to European Muslims who were raised on the Continent and were often well educated.   Today, French intellectuals still speak in hushed tones about Islam, lest they offend the sensitivities of a watchful and politically active Islamic constituency. As mentioned in chapter 3, some critics are scared they could be harmed, fired, or taken to civil or criminal courts for making the wrong comment about Islam in France. Bridget Bardot was threatened with prison and fined for opining that France was “being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims.” Michel Houellebecq was tried for defaming Islam in 2001, when he called it “the most stupid religion.” These high-profile cases serve as warnings to critics of radical Islam.   In Britain, Germany, and the United States, ordinary people have become more alarmed by Islam than politicians or intellectuals. After two deadly attacks in 2015, the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan killings, the image of Muslims plummeted in the eyes of the French, even among socialists. The image would dive even further after the truck attack on the Riviera. By spring 2016, 47 percent of the French saw Islam as a threat to French identity, and many wanted to halt mosque construction. This has bolstered the fortunes of right-wing politicians in France, particularly Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Front (FN), who is expected to run for president in 2017. Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s general directorate for internal security, warned that his country was “on the verge of civil war” between Muslim communities and French nationalists. Gilles Kepel, a political scientist and specialist in Islam, also claimed that France is on the verge of a major social explosion because of Muslims’ failure to integrate into French society. Islamic fundamentalists despise social liberalism and sexual license, which helps explain honor killings and Sharia patrols. The Islamic State has called for attacks on symbols of Western sexual decadence, such as swinger clubs, but it finds any criticism of Muhammad even more offensive.   The killing in Nice was particularly explosive. Unlike cosmopolitan Paris, Nice is politically and culturally conservative. Many of the non-Muslims are descended from the white Algerian population, known as “pied noirs.” Nice also has a large Muslim population. Said one observer, “If you wanted to light the fuse of race war in France, Nice would be a clever choice.”