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Dilbert’s Perspective on the Muslim Invasion By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on May 20th, 2017

In 1963, President Kennedy spoke to members of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Kennedy asserted that “what makes editorial cartooning such a wonder” is the ability to “entertain and instruct us … and … place in one picture a story and a message and do it with impact and conviction and humor and passion – all that … makes [editorial cartoonists] the most exceptional commentators on the American scene.”

According to Randall P. Harrison, “there are a handful of basic techniques which the cartoonist manipulates to create a symbolic world of make-believe.” The first process, known as leveling, is when “the cartoonist radically ‘levels’ what we usually see in our perceptual field thus creating a cartoon which is 2-dimensional rather than 3-dimensional.” Then there is “sharpening,” where “some items drop out so that the remaining items gather in importance.” Thus, “[a]s a cartoon body shrinks, the head expands. As wrinkles and minor features drop out, the expressive features of eyes, mouth and brows (features that move and are therefore the most informative in the human face) become more prominent.” And, finally, “the cartoonist assimilates through exaggeration and interpolation so that the fantasy, while still make-believe, ‘makes sense’ for the reader.”

But the true art of the cartoon figure is centered on the “thought balloon and the speech balloon.”

This is why Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams, is a refreshing rebuke to those who cannot abide common sense and logic. James Delingpole explains how the latest Dilbert strip is “causing liberal heads to explode.” Concerning global warming, Adams “invites a climate scientist to explain the risk of climate change to the company.” The expert (in a white coat, of course) patiently explains how scientists “put that data into dozens of different climate models and ignore the ones that look wrong[.]” And “then [the scientists] take that output and run it through long-term economic models of the sort that have never been right.” Dilbert innocently asks, “What if I don’t trust the economic models” and is instantly reproached with “[w]ho hired the science denier?”

At his own blog, Adams asks, “[I]f scientists can make climate prediction models that are reliable (or so they tell us), why can’t they do the same with Muslim immigration predictions?” Thus:

Predicting the average temperature on Earth ten years from now is hard. There are too many variables. But predicting the outcome of immigration policies probably involves far fewer variables. All we need to do is look at other countries that experienced lots of Muslim immigration and subtract out the countries that reversed the trend with military force[.]

A good immigration prediction model would find the ‘tipping point’ where the percentage of Islamic population nearly guarantees the entire country will become Muslim in the long run. Is that 10% or 65%? I have no idea.

Suppose I said to you that 20% Islamic population will guarantee that eventually – perhaps in a hundred years or more – the country will have a dominant Islamic culture, with all that implies for women and the LGBTQ community.

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Germany: Should Migrants Integrate? “We are an open society. We show our face. We do not wear burkas.” by Soeren Kern

By on May 19th, 2017

The list makes no mention of German culture as being the guiding or core culture (Leitkultur), nor does the task force explicitly demand that migrants assimilate to the German way of life. Rather, the guiding principles appear to be aimed at encouraging Germans to embrace the foreign cultural norms that migrants bring to Germany.

“We cannot ask anyone to respect our customs if we are not ready to articulate them…. Our country is shaped by Christianity…. Germany is part of the West, culturally, spiritually and politically speaking.” — German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.

Proponents of a Leitkultur argue that it necessary to prevent the establishment of parallel societies, including those governed by Islamic sharia law.

A government task force created to promote the integration of migrants into German society has published a list of the core features of German culture.

The list studiously omits politically incorrect terms such as “patriotism” and “leading culture” (Leitkultur), and effectively reduces German traditions and values to the lowest common denominator. The task force, in fact, implicitly establishes multiculturalism as the most complete expression of German culture.

The so-called Cultural Integration Initiative (Initiative kulturelle Integration) was created by the German government in December 2016 to promote “social cohesion” after Chancellor Angela Merkel opened German borders to more than a million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The task force — led by the German Cultural Council (Deutscher Kulturrat) in close cooperation with the German Interior Ministry and two dozen media, religious and other interest groups — was charged with reaching a consensus on what constitutes German culture. The original aim was to facilitate “cultural integration” by encouraging migrants to assimilate to a shared set of cultural values.

After five months of deliberation, the task force on May 16 presented a list of what it considers to be the top 15 guiding principles of German culture. Encapsulated in the catchphrase “Cohesion in Diversity,” the list consists of mostly generic ideas about German culture — gender equality, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, pluralism and democracy — that are not at all unique to Germany.

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The Islam In Islamic Terrorism Ibn Warraq’s new book unveils what really motivates Islamic terrorists today. Hugh Fitzgerald

By on May 19th, 2017

Ibn Warraq, the celebrated apostate, author of Why I Am Not A Muslim and of scholarly works on the Koran, Muhammad, and early Islam, as well as polemical works in defense of the West, has now written The Islam in Islamic Terrorism, showing, in the words of the Islamic fundamentalists (or, more exactly, revivalists) themselves, what really motivates Islamic terrorists today, and what has motivated them since the time of the Kharijites in the first century of Islam: the belief in the need to recover the pristine Islam of the time of Muhammad, by removing all innovations (bid’a), the further belief that it is the duty of Muslims to wage Jihad against all Unbelievers until Islam everywhere dominates, and to bring about the resurrection of the caliphate, and the imposition of Islamic Law, or Sharia, all over the globe.

Ibn Warraq’s The Islam In Islamic Terrorism is a brilliant series of reported echoes down the corridors of Islam, where the same complaints about bid’a, the same insistence on regulating every area of a Believer’s life, the same refusal to allow freedom of religion or thought, the same duties of violent Jihad and Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong, the same demands for a return to the same pristine Islam of Muhammad, the same virulent antisemitism, the same quotes from the Koran and Hadith, the same hatred of Infidels, the same insistence that “we love death more than you love life,” the same call for bloodshed and Muslim martyrdom, the same dreary fanaticism, are thoroughly described and dissected, and above all the various violent manifestations of this revivalism over the centuries are linked to one another, as Ibn Warraq brings to bear the massive research he has been conducting over many years, in primary and secondary sources, and here deploys to splendid effect.

Ibn Warraq has performed a service for all those who are at last ready to look beyond the present platitudes about socioeconomic and other putative “root causes” of Islamic terrorism — Israel, the Crusades, European colonialism, American foreign policy, all held up for dissection and dismissal one after the other. He cites the studies that reveal Muslim terrorists to be both better off economically, and better educated, than the average Muslim. Most of the terrorist leaders have received solid educations in Islam, giving the lie to those apologists who claim that only those “ignorant of the true Islam” become terrorists.

He notes that Jihad against the Infidels started more than 1300 years before Israel came into existence, that the Muslims paid little attention to the Crusades until very recently, and that American foreign policy has often favored the Muslim side, rescuing Arafat from Beirut when he was besieged by the Israelis, supporting Pakistan despite its collusion with terrorists, looking away when Turkey invaded Cyprus, putting troops in Saudi Arabia to protect that kleptocracy from Saddam Hussein, and lavishing hundreds of billions in foreign aid on Muslim countries, and more than four trillion dollars on military interventions and “reconstruction” in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the hope, likely forlorn, that those countries could be made less barbarous than before.

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How to Solve the Palestinian Problem …and bring peace to the Middle East. Daniel Greenfield

By on May 19th, 2017

In 1990, there were half as many Palestinians as Kuwaitis in Kuwait. Two years later there were almost none.

With the support of the international community, some 700,000 Kuwaitis expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their country. If they had not done it, basic arithmetic shows that the Palestinians would have outnumbered Kuwaitis in Kuwait in a generation.

The Palestinians of Kuwait were kidnapped, tortured and killed. “Kill a Palestinian and Go to Heaven,” became the slogan. When Kuwait was “liberated”, tanks and armored vehicles were sent into the Hawally suburb of Kuwait City known as Little Palestine. Half the buildings were knocked down by bulldozers. Some detained Palestinians were buried in mass graves. The vast majority, including those who had been born in Kuwait, were deported or forced to flee a land they had lived in for a generation.

The violent ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians went mostly unremarked. While the Kuwaitis were ethnically cleansing their Palestinians, they continued to fund Palestinian terror against Israel and condemn Israel for violating the human rights of those they were deporting.

And the world shrugged.

President George H.W. Bush defended Kuwait’s actions. “I think we’re expecting a little much if we’re asking the people in Kuwait to take kindly to those that had spied on their countrymen that were left there,” he said. This was in the same press conference in which he condemned Israeli “settlements.”

A year later, Israel expelled 400 Hamas members. Every human rights organization was outraged. The State Department “strongly” condemned Israel. And Israel was forced to take them back.

The Kuwaiti Nakba isn’t much remembered. There are no rallies full of old women clutching house keys to lost homes in Hawally. They had made a bad bet by backing Saddam Hussein. And paid the price for it.

Kuwait refused to allow Palestinian Authority leader Abbas to visit until he apologized for supporting Saddam. And apologize he did. “Yes, we apologize for what we have done,” the terror boss whined.

The PLO has yet to apologize to Israel for the Muslim settler role in the attempted 1948 genocide of the indigenous Jewish population and the thousands who were maimed and murdered by its terrorists.

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MacArthur’s Spies: The Heroes of the Philippines By Elise Cooper

By on May 19th, 2017

MacArthur’s Spies by Peter Eisner recounts how three individuals played a significant role in the resistance against the Japanese occupation in the Philippines during World War II. The book shows how heroes come from many backgrounds: a singer, a soldier, and a spymaster. As the Greatest Generation dies off, written accounts such as this are a reminder of how ordinary people can become extraordinary by putting themselves in danger to help others survive and achieve victory.

The emphasis of the book is on the American singer Claire Phillips, who opened a nightclub in Manila catering to Japanese officials and officers. She and those who worked for her gathered information that was passed on to the allies. In addition, she provided food, supplies, and medicine to many of the allied POWs and citizens interned in the camps. Given the code name “High Pockets,” she met with guerrilla fighters to inform them of Japanese military plans, and by all accounts, she gave credible intelligence reports.

Another contributor was U.S. Army corporal John Boone, one of the first to start a guerrilla organization against the Japanese. He had to evade not only the Japanese, who would kill him on the spot, but also homegrown Communist Filipinos and turncoats. After the Japanese overran the forces in Bataan, they demanded that the Americans surrender. Although the majority did, Boone was one of the few who disobeyed orders by refusing to surrender, and he fled into the jungles, where he aided in foiling the Japanese. Through sabotage and disruption, he and his men helped pave the way for General MacArthur’s return. Readers will enjoy how Eisner intertwines the resistance with the battles fought in and around the Philippines.

Charles “Chick” Parsons was called MacArthur’s spymaster. An American businessman who was in Manila during the Japanese advance, he convinced the enemy that he was a Panamanian diplomat. They never found out he actually was a U.S. Navy intelligence officer, and they allowed him to depart the Philippines. Having convinced MacArthur to have him return, in March 1943, he arrived back via submarine. He eluded detection by operating off the grid and became the chief aide in organizing and supplying the guerrillas, including making sure the intelligence network was successful.

The book also discusses the faceless American heroes, those captured by the Japanese. Although much is known about the Nazi atrocities during World War II, the Japanese also had their share of brutality. Citizens in Manila would have to bow and show their subservience to the Japanese or risk being slapped, kicked, and beaten. One of the worst was the Bataan Death March, where starving and thirsty American prisoners were forced to trek for miles in the wilting sun.

Eisner noted, “This march was a horror show of inhumanity. The Americans and Filipinos who fought with them were brutalized and slaughtered. When some stopped because of exhaustion, they were bayoneted on the spot. Another example occurred just after the surrender, where the Japanese mowed down the allied forces with rifle and machine gun fire. This continued throughout the war and came to a head when in August 1944 the Tokyo High Command issued a secret kill order.

“At the Palawan POW camp, prisoners became slave laborers and were forced to build an airfield. In December, under the guise of a supposed air raid, the POWs were told to go into the trenches for shelter. Suddenly, the Japanese guards dumped gallons of gasoline into the trenches and torched them.

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Sean O’Callaghan The Real Heroes of a Dirty War

By on May 19th, 2017

I took up William Matchett’s splendid book as someone who, in August, 1974, murdered Inspector Peter Flanagan of RUC in a County Tyrone public house. I am deeply ashamed of that act. Like many young Irish republicans before me I thought I was fighting for Irish freedom. I was not.

Secret Victory: The Intelligence War That Beat the IRA
by William Matchett
William Matchett, 2016, 272 pages, about $30
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Some might regard the title of this book as making a grandiose claim. Others may deride it, or ignore both title and book, choosing instead to believe that whatever fragile peace Northern Ireland enjoys today is a blessing bestowed by Tony Blair, Gerry Adams, Bill Clinton and an assortment of peaceniks, chancers and conflict resolution groupies. Many such people have lined their pockets by grossly inflating their influence in the “peace process” and exporting their inanities to gullible audiences worldwide.

In reality they reaped the harvest of peace that others had sown in a long intelligence war, and William Matchett’s book is the perfect antidote to their delusions. The author is a former senior officer in the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary who fought the IRA (and their loyalist counterparts) for a quarter of a century and who has gone on to advise police forces across the world on counter-terrorism. He describes with the familiar understated practicality of the North’s Protestant-Unionist majority how he and his Special Branch colleagues were able to win a war of intelligence within the civil law.

One experience of mine in Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast in 1989 confirmed for me—not that I needed much convincing—the absolutely central and critical role that RUC Special Branch played in degrading the Provisional IRA, and forcing it to end its campaign of murder and intimidation against the people of Northern Ireland. I was being led, in the company of seven IRA members, through the tunnel from the jail to the courthouse, each of us handcuffed to another prisoner. I happened to be handcuffed to a senior and long-standing member of the IRA from Dungannon, County Tyrone, named Henry Louis McNally. I knew him quite well from my days as an IRA operative in the mid-1970s in County Tyrone. He was once named, by Ken Maginnis, an Ulster Unionist MP in the House of Commons, as being directly responsible for the murders of seventeen members of the security forces. He had been arrested, charged, and later convicted of the attempted murder of British soldiers travelling by bus to their base in Antrim.

McNally was a very canny, experienced and long-term senior IRA man who followed his own timetable, operating in his native County Tyrone for going on sixteen years, interrupted only by one spell on remand. I was curious as to why this cautious man was operating far from his normal stomping ground. I asked him, and the answer I received in that tunnel was this: “Special Branch have us in a vice-like grip in Tyrone and it is just too difficult to operate, so like a fool I finished up going to Antrim to get some kills and ended up here.” Out of the mouths of babes and killers … McNally had no love for the Special Branch, but he had good reason to be realistic about them as formidable and professional enemies forged in a very unforgiving fire.

In the introduction to his book Matchett describes his first days as an eighteen-year-old recruit in the RUC, stationed in the IRA heartland of South Armagh:

At 18 it was a rude awakening to the reality of armed conflict. I was shot at, caught in roadside bombs and mortared. I lost some good friends. I would lie if I said I was not afraid. I knew the IRA men who were doing this, we all did, but we could not prove it.

This was Northern Ireland in 1982, not Beirut or Afghanistan, but a part of the UK situated on the island of Ireland. It is I think worth taking a moment to ponder those lines. The border was but a stone’s throw away and mostly the IRA simply scooted across the border into the Irish Republic where Matchett and his colleagues could not follow. And so it went on—year after bloody year. A police force that had been utterly demoralised and demonised by the events of 1969 took years to recover some sense of mission and purpose. It wasn’t until police primacy in law enforcement and intelligence gathering was restored in 1976 that a revamped and reinvigorated RUC really took on the slow and deadly task of taking back control of IRA-controlled areas of Belfast and Derry. Slowly but surely the rule of law began to assert itself. The centre of IRA activity began to retreat more and more to the rural heartlands bordering the Irish Republic. Eventually towards the end the IRA was on its knees, its last stronghold in South Armagh on the verge of collapse.

It would of course be wrong to downgrade the huge role and sacrifice undertaken by the British Army, particularly in the early 1970s. Without the Army holding the line in those difficult years the RUC, and Special Branch in particular, would almost certainly never have had the breathing space to re-organise. Matchett recognises the debt of gratitude to those soldiers who served and were injured or murdered when he writes simply, “The Army prevented Ulster from unravelling.” Of course one of the primary differences between the police and the Army was that police knew the ground where they were born, went to school, got married, had children and worked and socialised. They were of the soil, as their enemies in the IRA were, and they proved more resolute, determined and fearless in protecting their children, homeland and way of life than those who opposed them. They were often frustrated by having to observe the rule of law—but it proved the right way. They were determined to outwit and outlast the IRA—and they did. Matchett sets out in clear, precise words the operational strategies and tactics Special Branch adopted to defeat a well-armed and vicious terrorist group.

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French Legislative Elections: Part 1 by Nidra Poller

By on May 18th, 2017

Ra’anana, Israel 14 May 2017

The sun is shining, the air is sweet and breezy, the birds are chirping and the jacandas are ablaze in purple blossoms. I’m like a restless pupil in summertime, looking out the window and aching to run out of the classroom and dive into glorious nature.

Far away in Paris, François Hollande is handing over to Emmanuel Macron the nuclear scepter and other secret codes and coded secrets of the Elysée Palace. There will be all sorts of media winks and hints with flashbacks to the last such exercise when the newly elected Hollande nastily skipped the courtesy of escorting outgoing President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni to the car that would carry them to their new civilian life.

I can’t cheat on time, place & perspective. Instead of following the inauguration as if I were there, I want to see it from this perspective, from Israel…where the question of Aliyah hovers over French Jews, those that have already made the choice, and the others.

My dear friend and colleague Moti Kedar asks me if France is doomed. His parents made Aliyah from Poland in the early 30s, he was born in Israel where he has fruitfully multiplied. Demographically, he says, France doesn’t add up. It subtracts. How did he put it? A nation that doesn’t make children is heading straight for the museum. I am always at a loss to answer this existential question. Of course I respond at great length and exhaustively, but without any statistics or hardware to justify my long term predictions. Or is it simply hope? Not idle hope, not “where’s the problem?” Simply hope instead of dejection, hope as a form of light, my default mode.

Election night

Since my last report at 8 PM on election night, the figures have been refined. The final count is:

percentage

votes

Emmanuel Macron

66.1 %

20,753,797

Marine Le Pen

33.9%

10,644,118

Abstentions

12,101,416

Blanks

3,019,735

Exit polls were posted on non-French media several hours before the official announcement of the results. The candidates and their supporters knew, of course. Stiff silence at the Front National venue at the Chalet du Lac in the Bois de Boulogne where Marine obviously would not be celebrating a victory. At the Louvre, Macron fans were rushing into the courtyard, grabbing pastel t-shirts and French flags from the ellpeurs [helpers] like marathon runners reaching for water bottles without losing a step. Everyone remembers the proliferation of huge foreign flags, mostly from Muslim countries, at the Bastille where François Hollande celebrated 5 years ago. Nothing was left to chance this time. The roving mike did catch some uninhibited folklore from an ecstatic African supporter: “I was on my way to the toilets to pee,” she said, “when I heard them announce that Macron is the winner!!! Wow!!!

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Damien Grant: Hysteria over Israel a stain on our nation

By on May 18th, 2017

BACKGROUND: What sort of relationship does New Zealand want with Israel?Both Prime Minister Bill English and new Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee have said they want to repair the relationship with Israel in the wake of New Zealand co-sponsoring anti-Israel UNSC Resolution 2334

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DAMIAN GRANT RESPONDS…..
OPINION: I’ve liked Gerry Brownlee ever since he flouted airport security. It’s inherently obvious that an overweight middle-aged Caucasian cabinet minister isn’t going to hijack a plane. He may have shellacked Christchurch but views differ on that.

Still, I like him even more now he’s let slip his view on New Zealand’s shameful support of a UN resolution declaring Jewish building in the occupied territories illegal. Israel squeezes 8 million people on a sliver of land smaller than Waikato, most of which is desert. They need to build houses.

The world’s obsession with Jews in general and Israel in particular is one of the many disheartening features of modern life.Imagine that you are a member of God’s chosen people. For over 1000 years your ancestors have endured periods of mild-but-tolerable persecution followed by irregular bouts of genocidal rage.

The one thing the last millennium should have taught us is it is never safe to be a Jew. Organised campaigns of anti-semitic violence even have their own term: a “pogrom”.

The United Nations Security Council has dealt with 226 resolutions concerning Israel. More than six percent of the total. The UN is obsessed with Israel. In a speech last December retiring UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conceded the UN has passed a “disproportionate volume of resolutions, reports and conferences criticising Israel.”

Not all criticism of Israel is unwarranted but we forget it is a liberal democracy in a sea of tyranny, terror and hatred. The endless preoccupation over the 700,000 Arabs displaced when Israel was created ignores the equal number of Jews who fled Arab nations. No one calls for their right to return and equally overlooked are the 1.5 million Arabs living in relative peace in Israel today, not including the occupied territories.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to hold my child knowing that he would be subject to fear and hatred because of his race, subject to hostility from alt-right creeps and left-wing “anti-Zionists”.

The world owes a debt it can never repay for the crimes committed to a people displaced for two millennia and Israel is the one place on earth, perhaps excluding New York, where a Jew can feel safe from persecution. Although not safe from suicide bombing and Hamas missiles.

It was a stain on our nation that we participated in the mass-hysteria over Israel. I wish Brownlee success and safe travels.

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Danish Foreign Minister Set to Announce $8 Million in Grants to Pro-BDS Palestinian NGOs by Ben Cohen

By on May 18th, 2017

Denmark’s foreign minister is set to announce a grant of over $8 million earmarked for NGOs involved in the demonization of Israel, drawing protests from a leading Israeli watchdog.

The announcement by Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen is set for Thursday in Ramallah, the political center of the Palestinian Authority (PA). According to NGO Monitor, which reports on foreign funding of NGOs in Israel and Palestinian-controlled territories, Samuelsen will confirm the release of $8.3 million to an intermediary agency, the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat, which will then distribute the funds to Palestinian NGOs.

The Secretariat, which is based at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, is jointly funded by the Danish, Swedish, Swiss, Norwegian and Dutch governments. According to NGO Monitor, “although these governments claim to oppose BDS, 65 percent of Secretariat funding is provided to NGOs that are BDS leaders.”

“All of these NGOs are campaigning on BDS and ‘lawfare’ – making allegations of Israeli war crimes,” NGO Monitor President Prof. Gerald Steinberg told The Algemeiner.

Among the groups receiving funds, Steinberg said, were Al Haq, a legal organization that has spearheaded accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Israeli security forces, and Adameer, which was launched by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a left-wing terrorist group within the PLO.

“The funding that the Danish government and others provide through the Ramallah framework does a tremendous amount of damage to the peace process and to human rights,” Steinberg said. “Ending that funding is long overdue.”

In a separate statement, Olga Deutsch, Director of NGO Monitor’s Europe Desk, criticized the Danish government for agreeing to the new funding without holding public hearings in the Danish parliament.

“Danish Members of Parliament should debate whether Danish taxpayers should transfer their hard-earned money to organizations that incite violence, glorify terror, and promote blatant antisemitism and BDS,” Deutsch said.

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France: The Ideology of Islamic Victimization by Yves Mamou

By on May 18th, 2017

They are not the victims of any racist system — it does not exist — but they are the victims of an ideology of victimization, which claims that they are discriminated against because of race and religion.

Victimization is an excuse offered by the state, by most politicians (right and left) and by the mainstream media.

To avoid confrontation, all the politicians from the mainstream political parties and all mainstream media are going along with the myth of victimization. The problem is that this is only fueling more violence, more terrorism and more fantasies of victimization.

French sociological research seems to have no new books, articles or ideas about French Muslim radicalization. It is not hard to see why: the few scholars tempted to wander off the beaten path (“terrorists are victims of society, and suffering from racism” and so on) are afraid to be called unpleasant names. In addition, many sociologists share the same Marxist ideology that attributes violent behavior to discrimination and poverty. If some heretics try to explain that terrorists are not automatically victims (of society, of white French males, of whatever) a pack of hounds of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars start baying to lynch them as racists, Islamophobes and bigots.

After the November 2015, terrorist attacks in Paris, Alain Fuchs, president of France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), launched a call for a new project to understand some of the “factors of radicalization” in France.

The project that emerged, “Youth and Radicalism: Religious and Political Factors”, by Olivier Galland and Anne Muxel, was thorough. Their survey is based mainly on a poll conducted by Opinion Way of 7,000 high school students, and was followed by a second “poll” of 1,800 young people (14 to 16 years old). The next phase will apparently include individual and group interviews with young secondary-school students.

Galland and Muxel do not say that their survey is “representative” of all French youth. Muslims high school students are over-represented in the polls, in order to understand what is at stake in this segment of the population.

Their proposal, however, is heretical: it means there is a problem with Muslims.

The preliminary results of this vast study were released at a press conference on March 20. To the question in the study: What are the main factors of radicalization? The answer was: religion.

“We can not deny the ‘religion effect’. Among young Muslims, the religion effect is three times more important than in non-Muslim groups. Four percent of youths of all denominations defend an absolutist vision of religion and apparently adhere to radical ideas; this figure is 12% among young Muslims in our sample. They defend an absolutist view of religion — believing both that there is ‘one true religion’ and that religion explains the creation of the world better than science.”

What about the usual explanations of lack of economic integration, fear of being on welfare, social exclusion and so on?

“A purely economic explanation appears not to be validated. The idea of ​​a ‘sacrificed generation’, tempted by radicalism, is confronted with the feeling of a relatively good integration of these populations. [Young Muslims] appear neither more nor less confident in their future than all other French youths; they believe in their ability to pursue studies after the baccalaureat and to find a satisfactory job.”

These young Muslims recognize that they are not suffering from racism or discrimination. But at the same time, many of them say they “feel” discriminated against anyway. They are not the victims of any racist system — it does not exist — but they are the victims of an ideology of victimization, which claims that they are discriminated against because of race and religion.

“The feeling of being discriminated against is twice as strong in our sample especially among young people of Muslim faith or of foreign origin. To explain the adherence [of young Muslims] to radicalism, we must consider that religious factors are combining with identity issues, and mixing themselves with feelings of victimization and discrimination”.

If Islam is an engine of radicalization, the second powerful engine of radicalization is this dominant ideology of victimization.

“Young Muslims who feel discriminated against adhere more often to radical ideas than those who do not feel discriminated against.”

These preliminary results are more than worrying. Against all sociological evidence, social origin and academic level do not outweigh the effect of religious affiliation. In other words, regardless of a young Muslim’s performance at school and his parents’ profession, he is four times more likely than a young Christian to adhere to radical ideas.

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