Nice Attack: ‘I’ve seen France torn apart by Muslim hardliners – and despair for the future’
How I’ve seen the France I love torn apart by hatred: LEO McKINSTRY – who has lived there for over a decade and witnessed growing tensions between locals and Muslim hardliners – despairs for the future
Bastille Day is meant to be a moment of
celebration in France. But when my wife and I had dinner on Thursday
evening with neighbours near our French home in the Loire region, we
encountered visceral despair about the state of the Gallic nation.
The company was charming, the hospitality
magnificent, yet parts of the conversation were profoundly sombre. This
was hours before the news of the Islamist atrocity in Nice emerged, but
our friends’ concern for France’s future was palpable.
Mass immigration, the relentless
growth of the Muslim population, the alarming spread of jihadism and the
enfeebled stance of President Hollande’s socialist government had left
them with a feeling that their country is increasingly under siege.
Their dark forebodings were dramatically
confirmed when we returned home and learned of the carnage on the
Riviera. Another part of this beautiful land had been turned into an
arena for butchery.
This week Patrick Calvar, the head of
France’s General Directorate for Internal Security, warned that his
country is ‘on the verge of civil war’ because of growing tensions
between Muslim communities and the hard Right, represented by Marine Le
Pen’s insurgent National Front Party.
In remarkably frank language to a French
Parliamentary commission, Mr Calvar said that a serious incident could
‘light the powder, transforming France into an uncontrollable country,
where groups take up arms and hand out their own justice’.
The massacre in Nice gave a terrible resonance to his words.
This is just latest in an appalling
catalogue of recent radical Islamist violence against the French,
including the mass murder at a Jewish school in Toulouse in March 2012,
the Charlie Hebdo killings in January last year, the Bataclan concert
hall shootings in November, and the execution of a police officer and
his wife in June.
It is no surprise that in response to this
barbarism, the National Front, once regarded as an irrelevant if
despised fringe group, is enjoying an unprecedented surge in support.
Its leader, Marine Le Pen — daughter of
the party’s founder Jean-Marie Le Pen — is certain to be a serious
contender in next May’s Presidential Election.
Pictured: The lorry used as a murder
weapon on the French Riviera city’s famed waterfront promenade with
police gathering evidence and marking bullet casings with yellow
numbered signs.
And with the mainstream establishment in
disarray and concern over the threat of militants growing, it is not
inconceivable that she could come close to winning.
Nice will almost certainly prove a great
recruiting sergeant for her. ‘Security’ is now a favourite word among
ordinary French people, encapsulating their fear that their society is
collapsing because of bitter divisions.
I have had my own direct experience of this ever-growing tension, which threatens to tear apart the country I love.
More than a decade ago, long before we
moved to the Loire region, my wife and I bought a 19th-century house in
the heart of Carpentras, a Provencal market town with a population of
30,000, little more than a two-hour drive north of Nice.
The place had a rich history stretching
back many centuries, the architectural legacy of which included a
triumphal Roman arch and a magnificent gothic cathedral.
Our new home needed a lot of work, but the
task seemed worth it because we could spend part of the year enjoying
life in southern France. And at first our times in Carpentras seemed
idyllic, wandering through market squares or sitting in a cafe under a
cloudless blue sky.
But gradually, shadows began to creep
across our retreat. What we had thought was a classic Provencal
existence turned out to be something very different. Over the years,
Carpentras underwent a dramatic change as the Muslim population grew and
the town became ever more Islamified.
Although ethnic monitoring is illegal in
France because it is seen as divisive and offends the concept of Gallic
solidarity, it has been conservatively estimated there are at least
13,000 Muslims in the town, making up more than 40 per cent of the
population.
Some have put the figure as high as 60 per
cent. Two mosques, one of them a massive new block, have been
established to meet the changing religious demographic. Inexorably, the
streets were becoming filled with figures in Islamic dress, along with
halal butchers and kebab shops.
In response to this transformation, the
owner of the internet cafe opposite our house grew increasingly fervent
in his support for the National Front, putting up large posters for
Jean-Marie Le Pen in his windows, which were regularly smashed.
Throughout all this, we could sense that
the gentleness of Provence, scented by grapes, lavender and sunflowers,
was giving way to a mood of suspicion and latent threat.
One night I woke up to the smell of acrid
smoke in the air. Looking out from my bedroom window, I saw to my
astonishment that five cars had been set on fire in our street.
On another occasion, while out in the countryside with my wife, I was menaced by a Muslim armed with scythe.
When, slightly shaken, I told this to a
neighbour, who was a French army veteran, he recounted how a local
Muslim had one day threatened to slit his throat.
Let’s be absolutely clear: most of the
Muslim population were thoroughly decent people who wanted nothing more
than to live their lives in harmony with other peaceful French people.
That said, the religious and racial tension in Carpentras was palpable in everyday life.
Carpentras has the oldest synagogue in France, and the town’s Jewish roots were another source of this tension.
My wife and I went one night to a choral
concert at the town hall by a renowned Israeli choir, but because of
Islamist threats of violence, security was as tight as it might have
been for a visiting foreign leader, complete with guard dogs and armed
troops.
It was partly because of the death of our
Provencal dream that we sold our Carpentras house three years ago and
moved further north.
At the very moment of our departure in
2012, there was another indication of the rising local discord when
Marion Marechal-Le Pen, niece of Marine, was elected the local deputy
for the National Assembly, ousting the long-serving centre-Right
incumbent Jean-Michel Ferrand, for whom I had done occasional work as a
speech-writer.
Last year, she headed the poll for Provence in the first round of the regional elections, though she failed to win the seat.
‘I’m not afraid of Marion. I’m afraid of
terrorism,’ said one of her voters when explaining the rise of this
far-Right politician. ‘We’ve had enough immigration. It’s time to close
the borders.’
And this sort of sentiment echoes across
France. ‘Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,’ wrote the poet W.
B. Yeats of the Irish conflict in the early 20th century.
His words could also be applied to modern
France, where there is a widening chasm between the indigenous,
intensely nationalist French and the detached, often hostile, Muslim
community, which is estimated to number anything between 4.5 and 7
million people, about 10 per cent of the total.
Thanks to the high Muslim birth rate,
massive immigration from North Africa and the EU policy of open borders,
that population is already the largest in Western Europe and growing
all the time.
In response to the Nice atrocity,
President Obama declared that ‘we know that the character of the French
Republic will endure long after this devastating and tragic loss of
life’.
But how can he be so sure? The truth is
that France, as many of us know and love it, may not endure because the
very fabric of French society is changing so rapidly.
At the heart of the potential
confrontation is a clash of two different cultures. On one side, there
is the French tradition of a powerful national identity and strong
secularism, stretching back to the late 18th-century revolution.
On the other is the increasingly
self-confident Muslim minority that refuses to accept the French ethos
of assimilation. As we have seen in Nice, that spirit of often
aggressive detachment is reflected at its most extreme in the growth of
Islamic radicalism and terrorism.
Many commentators talk grandly of Isis and
jihadism as if they were foreign problems that can be dealt with by
military action in the Middle East. But the reality is that Islamic
extremism in France is largely home-grown.
Indeed, the Nice mass murderer is a
typical case. Though of Tunisian origins, the 31-year-old behind the
massacre was a French national.
Muslim disaffection is displayed in other
trends, like low participation in the jobs market — unemployment in
Carpentras is double the French average — and the high rates of
criminality that invariably go with joblessness.
Incredibly, more than 60 per cent of the
French prison population is estimated to be Muslim, with the result that
jails are now serving as a breeding ground for radicalisation.
But there are wrongs on both sides. The
rising tensions are further reflected in the surge in hate crimes across
France. While terrorism worsens, more than 400 anti-Muslim incidents,
including assaults, harassment and criminal damage, were reported to the
authorities last year, up from 133 such incidents in 2014.
Meanwhile, in just the first five months
of 2015, 508 anti-Semitic crimes were recorded, an increase of 84 per
cent on the same period the year before.
Until recently, violent anti-semitism in
France was largely seen as the preserve of the far Right, a dark legacy
of Vichy France’s collusion with the Nazis during the war, but today it
is another weapon of Islamist intimidation.
It is common — particularly among the Left
— to blame these mounting social problems on discrimination, poverty
and the aftermath of French colonialism in North Africa.
One of the most repeated theories for
Muslim alienation in France is that immigrants from North Africa in the
Sixties were ‘dumped’ in poor housing.
Vast concrete estates known as Les
Banlieues (the suburbs) exist on the edges of cities throughout France,
from Paris in the north to Marseille in the South. Dominated by Muslim
communities, they have become symbols of Islamic grievance, and are seen
as breeding grounds for disillusion and extremism.
But it is more complicated than this.
Throughout the history of mankind, immigrants have had to put up with
difficult conditions in their new lands.
Their success in overcoming their tough
backgrounds — as with the Irish who came to Britain after the potato
famine in the late 19th century, or the Italian migrants to New York in
the early 20th — is part of their inspiring narrative.
Moreover, the provision of social housing and welfare were gestures of generosity towards newcomers, not rejection.
From my experience of living here, there
is no institutionalised discrimination against Muslims in France. Why,
otherwise, would Muslims star in the French national football team or at
the top of French politics?
In the 2012 National Assembly elections, five MPs of Maghreb — or North African — origin were victorious.
Indeed, the whole thrust of French
national culture is against discrimination, and there is considerable
integration of successful Muslims.
Tellingly, statistics show France has the
highest number of mixed unions between people of different religions and
ethnic groups of any country in Europe.
But crucially, the country is also
unashamedly patriotic as well as secularist, in the sense that ever
since the Revolution in 1789, religion has been held to be a matter of
private conscience rather than the state involvement.
This is why the French refuse to bow to
the demands of uncompromising adherents of Islam who want special
treatment. Why they ban the burka and insist that schools should be
allowed to serve pork.
Inevitably, this approach inflames a sense
of grievance among some Muslims, particularly those of North African
origin who hark back to the country’s colonial period and the savage
Algerian war for independence in the Fifties and Sixties.
But I believe that if too many Muslims
feel excluded from French society, it is because of their own decision
to reject France’s values and identity. Instead, they wish to pursue
their own theocratic, separatist agenda.
To be fair, this is not a problem unique
to France. Britain may have only 600 jihadists fighting in the Middle
East, compared with France’s 1,200, but that highlights the numerical
truth that France’s Muslim population is double the size of ours.
The fact is that, because of the nature of
modern, militant Islam, wherever there is a significant Islamic
population anywhere in the world, whether it be in Boston or Bali, there
will be tension.
The decision by Germany’s Chancellor
Merkel last year to invite more than a million Syrian refugees to
Europe, combined with the EU’s ideological but self-destructive
obsession in abolishing border controls, has only made the problem
worse.
A report this week by the U.S.-based Pew
Research Centre showed that, in eight out of ten European countries
surveyed, more than half of the population believe the influx of
immigrants has increased the terror threat.
In fact Ronald Noble, the former head of
Interpol, has said that the EU’s open-door approach is ‘like hanging a
sign welcoming terrorists to Europe’.
With militant Islam now flourishing in France’s midst, there are no easy answers. The sheer scale of the problem is daunting.
After the last Paris terror attacks, the
police carried out more than 3,500 raids in Muslim-dominated areas, but
that is probably just tackling the tip of the iceberg.
And the truth is the French intelligence
services cannot cope. It would take 30 officers to provide comprehensive
surveillance of each suspected radical, far beyond the resources of the
French state.
Nor is there any sign of immigration
abating. In our village in the Loire, some of the locals talk ominously
of a social breakdown.
Once a bulwark of civilisation, France
today is a tableau of tragedy — and it’s one that sadly, in the short
term, appears to herald a bleak future for our continent.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment