Is
It Too Late to Learn?
By Jacob
Thomas
2005/11/10
When the troubles in
France
continued and spread, I decided to scan French newspapers that are available on
the Internet. I chose Le Figaro as my source, a right-of-center
daily. The editorial of
Monday, 7 November 2005
had this heading: “La
France
au pilori,” being paraphrased means: “
France
Held for Ridicule.”
The editor referred to two contrasting
attitudes manifesting themselves among foreign newspapers dealing with the
crisis. One attitude being sincere, while the other very critical and
unsympathetic. Without naming them, he said that several American newspapers
began to compare
Paris
with
Baghdad
, and the suburban area of Seine-Saint Denis with the
Gaza
strip. The critical attitude is the dominant one among foreign commentators,
with some claiming “that
France
is now paying for her arrogance.”
Articles dealing with the French
situation in the
US
papers and magazines are multiplying, and I don’t want to bore you with more
details. Sufficient to say that by late Monday afternoon, Le Figaro informed
its readers that Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, has announced that
with the approval of President Chirac, the 1955 law will be invoked. It would
allow the mayors in the affected areas to declare curfews “whenever
necessary.” Furthermore, 1,500 policemen will be added to the 8,000 force in
order to stop the violence and the terrible destruction of property around
Paris
.
What I would like to emphasize in these
lines is the fact that these events were predictable. The mayhem that is going
on not only in Paris, but all over the country, needed only one incident, such
as the death by electrocution of two young Muslims who were fleeing from the
scene of an attempted crime. While many point to the French crisis as a result
of a failure of integration, I would like to stress that ultimately Muslim
immigrants do not and cannot integrate into French society, or anywhere else.
These words may sound extremely pessimistic, but they have the weight of history
and the sacred Islamic texts to support them.
By the end of WWI,
Britain
,
France
, the
Netherlands
, and
Spain
controlled most of the Muslim world. They administered lands stretching from
the East Indies (
Indonesia
) in Asia to
Morocco
in
North Africa
. These areas, with the exception of
India
, were entirely Muslim. European administrators of these lands were assisted,
quite often, by scholarly men versed in Islamic history, and quite aware of the
unique nature of Islam.
Of all the Europeans, the French learned
first-hand in
Algeria
that Muslims will never adapt to European civilization. Beginning in 1830, and
especially after conquering all of
Algeria
in 1848,
France
tried hard to make the country truly French. In fact, the French annexed
Algeria
, and declared it to be part and parcel of
France
itself. But all that was to no avail. Soon after the end of WWII, the Algerian
uprising began, and it took the lives of around one million Algerians before
France
conceded its failure in its “civilizational enterprise” and decided to pull
out of the country. Around one million French and European settlers in
Algeria
had to leave and find a new home in
France
. That failure of
France
in
Algeria
should have served as an example of the impossibility of assimilating Muslim
immigrants into French society. But that lesson was not learned. The same may be
said about other European countries that invited Muslims from North Africa, the
Middle East
, and S.E. Asia. While other groups of African and Asian immigrants have done a
good job of integrating into the host countries, to date Muslims in
Europe
live in their own areas. Even those living in
France
and even after they acquire French citizenship, keep their final allegiance to
the Islamic Umma.
Several factors have been adduced for
the failure of Muslims to succeed in becoming normal parts of the host
countries, such as poverty, racism, lack of education; but none of these refer
to the basic reason for that failure. The basic reason is the very nature of
Islam. It is unlike all other major world religions; I’ll never tire saying
that Islam is much more than a religion. Islam is a unique complex of
religion plus state plus culture in an indivisible entity.
Furthermore, I would like to draw
attention to the classical Islamic worldview that divides the world into two
major camps: Daru’l Islam (the Household of Islam), and Daru’l
Harb (the Household of War.) From 632 to around 1950, Muslims lived
almost exclusively within their own realms. They did not immigrate. Where they
lived, they ruled. Their faith thrives only when enforced by the arm of the
state. Let’s never forget the historical fact that the founder of Islam began
by proclaiming his faith in his home city of
Mecca
, and got nowhere. It was only after migrating to
Medina
and joining his preaching with political and military action that he finally
gave birth to the Islamic Umma.
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