rejoinder to daniel

Submitted by paul murphy (Ireland), Dec 7, 2006 at 07:27

Firstly, Thank you for the considerable time and trouble you went to to address my comments. I apologise that due to constraints of time my rejoinder will be somewhat briefer than your thoughtful commentary merits.

The first difficulty is that statistics on religious-observance in a nation that doesn't collect the relevant census-information will always be problematic.

I would suspect, that just like Catholic and Jewish French people, religious observance is complicated by the fact that it encompasses people whose involvement spans the spectrum of 'social' to 'strict'.

Christians and Jews who seldom darken the door of a church/synagogue get married confirmed/bar-mitzvah'd and buried within the rites of their respective religions - for social and family reasons (often to 'please the parents'). Ditto, many Moslems , I suspect.

By the way, no one knows exactly how many Moslems, Jews, or for that matter, Catholics there are in France. I suspect that if the people were formally asked to declare in their census-forms many would answer 'none' - even though they might have been raised as catholics, Jews or whatever. Illegal or undocumented immigration complicates the numbers-game. Leaving aside religion altogether, how many US citizens live, study, permanently 'holiday', and work in France? Nobody actually knows. It could be as high as a million. Who is a Jew? Both parents? Mother?, Late unlamented Uncle Adolf's definition of one grandparent? If it's the latter, there are by this stage probably more 'Jews' in France than 'Moslems', given their long head-start!

I have no doubt that most strict Moslems believe that violence and murder are wrong, and there is probably little co-realation between religiousity and extremism or fanaticism. However, people who would never lift a finger in anger themselves are likely to have political sympathies which reflect their background. French Moslems would see Palestinian violence as 'resistance'. French Jews see the actions of the IDF in the occupied-territories as 'defence'.

The bottom line is that there is little evidence of radicalism among French Moslems. The riots of last year (lots of car-burnings, but only one death during the entire fortnight) was a mini 'Watts' not 'Ramallah'. The veil-ban was accepted without a whimper (One suspects that most young Moslem women in France want to be 'French' and to 'fit in' , and were delighted to see their 'elders' sucessfully faced down).

France has its problems, but so long as it continues to pursue integration rather than multiculturalism, it will not go the way oof the UK. France needs to revamp and re-dedicate itself to integration. Integration is not a policy that has failed in its validity,but in its application. The extent of that failure can be seen in the contrast between the positions of French Jews and Moslems. One community is hugely over-represented in proportion to its numbers in the ranks of legislators, the executive, the media, and in intellectual and cultural institutions (such as the Academie Francais). The other hardly registers at all.

The days of mass Moslem immigration into France are long gone. New controls have slowed the flow to a trickle (Also the lack of jobs in an economy which protects the expectations of the haves at the expense of the growth that would produce new jobs for immigrants makes France an unattractive destination). Nowdays most Moslems coming into the EU go to the UK - which has a more vibrant economy - and no requirement to carry i.d.'s!). As I understand them, current population trends show the proportion of the French population comprised of the sons and daughters of the 'Maghreb' pretty much stabilizing at present, or very slightly higher, levels.

The solution to Moslem 'terror' is not 'war between cultures' nonsense promulgated by the neo-con extremists and their Mullah mirror-image, but in addressing causes and symptoms. In many ways the 'West' has done the exactly the opposite of what it should be doing. It has pursued 'multiculuralism' at home, and hypocritical foreign policies abroad which have often victimized Moslems. Instead, we should be insisting on our Western liberal-democratic values at home - with integration of immigrants into OUR norms, and we should cease pursuing policies abroad which has too often addressed Moslems with death from eight-miles high, stealing their land, and imposing vicious despots on them (like Saddam and teh Shah of Iran). Injustice abroad motivates ready recruits to fanaticism among alienated and unintegrated communities within Western nations. The poison needs to be drawn on both fronts.

best regards, paul

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