Assimilation, Islam, and France
Another reason to put American faith in French, not British, leadership in Europe? Read Gilles Kepel at The National Interest:
The imperial experience serves as a backdrop to the markedly contrasting ways that London and Paris have approached the immigration dilemma. France has created an intermingled culture, which is being forged on a daily basis between the native Gaul and the immigrant Arab and Berber. It revolves around two French obsessions: the bed and the dinner table. Your average young Muslim girl is interested in living and having children with a French gouer, a North-African colloquial term meaning “infidel”—i.e., non-Muslim. (Gouer is itself a corruption of the classical Arabic kuffar, used in immigrant slang to designate a French native. They are also known as fromage, or “cheese”—ironically the same synecdoche that was used in the neocon-coined “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”) These women would loathe the very idea of an arranged marriage to a fellah (peasant) cousin from the far away bled (North Africa) with his unrefined manners and pedestrian French.
Fun. Kepel goes off the rails resorting to the shopworn pomo-lite language of approaching "the other," but he underscores a point that cannot be overemphasized: "government support of domestic Islamist communalism" -- the British approach -- does not peace and harmony make.
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May '10
Re: Assimilation, Islam, and France
Pepe Le Pew saves Europe from the new Dark Ages. Whatever works. Just win, baby.
May '10
Re: Assimilation, Islam, and France
"The imperial experience serves as a backdrop to the markedly contrasting ways that London and Paris have approached the immigration dilemma. France has created an intermingled culture, which is being forged on a daily basis between the native Gaul and the immigrant Arab and Berber."
How did France achieve this? How did they create this intermingled culture? Was it by standing up to Islam? By encouraging or mandating assimilation?
I'm genuinely curious. It's interesting to read this given that when I think of Islam and France images of "youths" torching cars come to mind. I had no idea Muslims were assimilating much better in the land of de Gaulle than in the land of Churchill.
May '10
Re: Assimilation, Islam, and France
In France the state uses its powers to enforce a sort of hyper-secularization--banning the headscarf in schools, for instance. This saddens us when it comes to wiping out Catholicism, but maybe it's of use in blunting the more negative aspects of Islam.
May '10
Re: Assimilation, Islam, and France
Sadly, I think the French approach wins the battle, but loses the war: you get more assimilation, but the larger French society in question is so weak in so many ways, that the society isn't going to last.
Re: Assimilation, Islam, and France
One more point: the French "strategy," at least as it's described here, might have one Achilles' heel: a big remainder of not-very-marriageable, and persistently unmarried, immigrant men. Sounds like a recipe for radical losers. There might not, of course, be any better alternative out there.
May '10
Re: Assimilation, Islam, and France
I have to say I'm a bit skeptical in the long run. Keep in mind Europe isn't likely to become your average Muslim state, more so it'll be some Euro-Islam hybrid.That the French are managing this hybridization better sayings nothing of the long term consequences. Moreover, as the French become more confident they tend to find more motivation to become anti-American--usually using the US to try and boost their stature in European politics. For all their efforts on the domestic side now, if it came down to becoming the leader of an Islamified Europe or trying to stick it out to end with America, somehow I suspect they'd turn toward the former.
May '10
Re: Assimilation, Islam, and France
Interesting - I'm just getting started here, so I'm surfing around trying to get the lay of the land. I did a double take, though, when I read the title to this conversation and noticed that the web ad immediately to the right was for some matchmaking service called "International Muslim Matrimonials." Should that be filed under "Synchronicity," "Irony," or some other category?
Re: Assimilation, Islam, and France
Hi Matthew - We're still tweaking our ad servers in hopes that the occasional ad that we'd rather not host on our site no longer makes its way onto Ricochet.com.
May '10
Re: Assimilation, Islam, and France
That's funny. It seems the International Muslim Matrimonials would be better served to spend their ad dollars somewhere else, too.