RUTHFULLY YOURS

As sharia continues to make inroads in America and Europe, we should take heed of Ralph Waldo Emerson who once wrote:
“[w]e began well. No inquisition here. No kings, no nobles. No dominant church here, heresy has lost its terror.”

If only that founding reality of the American experience were understood by those who foolishly claim tolerance and acceptance for sharia law in this country — sadly, it is not.

The fact is, sharia is well entrenched in the Middle East and creeping forward to the West. The charge of heresy is imposed on any who would counter its mandates. In the Muslim world, those who speak out for reformation have placed a bull’s-eye on their chests. Consequently,

Ayatollah Boroujerdi has spoken out against political Islam and [has] been [a] strong advocate of the separation of religion and state, for which Iran sentenced him to 11 years as an Iranian political prisoner.

On September 23, 2014, Mohammad Mohavadi, prosecutor of the Special Clerical Court visited Ayatollah Boroujerdi in Ward 325 of Evin prison. Mohavadi informed him that the contents of Boroujerdi’s book were ‘heresy’ against the leadership and insulted the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Mohavadi continued that the punishment for these crimes is execution, and stated that all those who had a hand in publishing the book will also be killed. When Ayatollah Boroujerdi suggested an open, public debate with the Special Court regarding his views, Mohavadi announced that his office did not participate in debates, just trials and punishment [execution].

Iranian Kurdish prisoner Zeinab Jalalian was arrested on March 16, 2008 by the Iranian secret police. An Iranian court charged Jalalian with being a member of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), a banned Kurdish group, found her guilty and sentenced her to death. Based on her alleged membership of that Kurdistan political party, she was accused of fighting God (mohareb) and given the death penalty.

The arts are being crushed, too. Thus, “[a] Tehran Revolutionary Court has sentenced the poets Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Moosavi to 9 years and 6 months and 99 lashes, and 11 years and 99 lashes, respectively, on charges of ‘insulting the sacred’ for the social criticism expressed in their poetry.” The flogging sentences were as a result “of their shaking hands with strangers (a person of the opposite sex who is not one’s immediate kin or spouse) [.]” Thus, “[t]hese sentences show that ‘repression in Iran is intensifying,’ said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. ‘Hardliners aren’t just going after political activists, they are determined to stamp out any social or cultural expression with which they disagree.'”

Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was “arrested in 2012 and sentenced to ten years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and 1,000 lashes for ‘insulting Islam through electronic channels.'” At the New Yorker, Robin Wright describes how the Saudi government “pulled a blogger named Raif Badawi from his jail cell in Jeddah, brought him to a square in front of a mosque, and administered the first phase—fifty lashes—of a public flogging.”

“There are plenty of private Muslim schools and madrasas in this city. They pretend that they all preach tolerance, love and peace, but that isn’t true. Behind their walls, they force-feed us with repetitive verses of the Qur’an, about hate and intolerance.” — Ali, an 18-year-old of French origin, whose father was radicalized.

“In England, they are free to speak. They speak only of prohibitions, they impose on one their rigid vision of Islam but, on the other hand, they listen to no-one, most of all those who disagree with them.” — Yasmina, speaking of extremist Muslims in the UK.

“Birmingham is worse than Molenbeek” — the Brussels borough that The Guardian described as “becoming known as Europe’s jihadi central.” — French commentator, republishing an article by Rachida Samouri.

The city of Birmingham in the West Midlands, the heart of England, the place where the Industrial Revolution began, the second city of the UK and the eighth-largest in Europe, today is Britain’s most dangerous city. With a large and growing Muslim population, five of its electoral wards have the highest levels of radicalization and terrorism in the country.

In February, French journalist Rachida Samouri published an article in the Parisian daily Le Figaro, in which she recounted her experiences during a visit there. In “Birmingham à l’heure islamiste” (“Birmingham in the Time of Islam”) she describes her unease with the growing dislocation between normative British values and those of the several Islamic enclaves. She mentions the Small Heath quarter, where nearly 95% of the population is Muslim, where little girls wear veils; most of the men wear beards, and women wear jilbabs and niqabs to cover their bodies and faces. Market stalls close for the hours of prayer; the shops display Islamic clothes and the bookshops are all religious. Women she interviewed condemned France as a dictatorship based on secularism (laïcité), which they said they regarded as “a pretext for attacking Muslims”. They also said that they approved of the UK because it allowed them to wear a full veil.

Another young woman, Yasmina, explained that, although she may go out to a club at night, during the day she is forced to wear a veil and an abaya [full body covering]. She then goes on to speak of the extremists:

“In England, they are free to speak. They speak only of prohibitions, they impose on one their rigid vision of Islam but, on the other hand, they listen to no-one, most of all those who disagree with them.”

Speaking of the state schools, Samouri describes “an Islamization of education unthinkable in our [French] secular republic”. Later, she interviews Ali, an 18-year-old of French origin, whose father has become radicalized. Ali talks about his experience of Islamic education:

“There are plenty of private Muslim schools and madrasas in this city. They pretend that they all preach tolerance, love and peace, but that isn’t true. Behind their walls, they force-feed us with repetitive verses of the Qur’an, about hate and intolerance.”

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/print/french-presidential-campaign-part-4#ixzz4f3wU3fZa Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Part 1 can be found here – click.

Part 2 can be found here – click.

Part 3 can be found here – click.

How are citizens supposed to detect fake news when the real news is so bizarre? How did Karim Cheurfi, born 31 December 1977 à Livry-Gargan (Seine-St. Denis outskirts of Paris) achieve his lifetime dream of killing a policeman despite the “vigilance” of the courts and law enforcement? How did he manage to do it on the Champs Elysées smack in the middle of the final all- candidate show of a problematical presidential campaign? How could this emblematic attack not influence the results of the first-round vote on April 23rd?

The final 11-candidate show

Because several of the leading candidates refused to participate in a last-minute debate, France 2 organized an 11-piece candidate show on the 21st of April. Expecting a routine replay of all that had gone before, bottom-heavy with the obligatory presence of all 11 candidates, I faced up to my self-imposed obligation to miss nothing, follow everything, dig everywhere, and think uninterruptedly.

In fact, it was more interesting than the “debates” that channel candidates into one-minute statements on contrived questions. In the close up 15-minute segments with each candidate in turn, hosts David Pujadas and Lea Salomé were less intrusive, the candidates were more expansive, and….one hour into the broadcast, Pujadas announced the “terrorist attack” on the Champs Elysées. Yes, from the first flash, authorities labeled the attack with the code word terrorist meaning jihad. From that point on, candidates integrated into their 15-minute slot a spontaneous reaction to the breaking news. I reported details as they emerged in updates to Part 3 of this series.

As the broadcast came to an end, all 11 candidates lined up in the studio and gave 2-minute closing statements. With the exception of Marine Le Pen and François Fillon, they were incapable of integrating the sudden intervention of harsh reality. After a brief expression of condolence for the family of the slain policeman and wishes for the prompt recovery of his wounded colleagues, they each delivered the vote-for- me speech they had prepared in advance. Le Pen, Fillon, and Macron announced cancelation of events scheduled for the following day, Friday, the last day of the campaign.

Special Edition (= Breaking News)

Midnight. Switch to the Champs Elysées, thick with police vans and flashing blue lights, reminding me of the scene on bd. Beaumarchais on the fateful night of November 13, 2015. As if the central nervous system of Paris were emitting an alert of immediate massive danger. Details emerged, some confirmed others corrected the following day. A policeman died instantly, shot in the head as he sat at the wheel of his van. Another critically wounded, a third less seriously hit. The assailant shot dead before he could kill anyone else. Already identified, his ID is in the Audi he drove up to his private little killing field. For the purposes of the investigation, his name would not yet be released. Daesh took claim for the attack but something doesn’t fit, they identify the soldier as Belgian. Is there another one on the way?

Morning after

The previous arrest of two jihad hopefuls ready to strike in Marseille did not get the attention it deserved. This studied avoidance is a familiar practice of French media. We know the reasoning: uh-oh terrorist attack, might be to the advantage of Le Pen and Fillon and disadvantage peace & love Macron, so let’s not talk about it. Karim Cheurfi’s exploit could not be ignored. Especially as details of the determined cop killer’s CV rolled out. He spent 14 of the past 16 years in jail. It started in 2001 when the stolen car he was driving collided with a vehicle driven by a rookie policeman and his brother. Cheurfi broke and ran, the two men chased him down and when they got close, he fired, wounding both of them seriously in the chest. While in detention for this crime he tricked a gendarme into entering his cell, grabbed his gun, and shot at him. All three of these victims survived. In 2008 he was charged with assaulting a prison guard and attacking a cellmate in 2009. Authorities recently received an alert from an acquaintance of Cheurfi: he said he wants to kill policemen because they ruined his life. Because they didn’t let him get away with the stolen car? Drawing him into a vicious circle?

Friday morning, Marine Le Pen and François Fillon made statements from their respective headquarters. Le Pen was as usual emotional, bombastic, long-winded and all over the place. She solemnly enjoined the government to take immediate measures to seal the frontiers, stop all immigration, deport bi-national terror risks, close radical mosques, a whole program of things it never did and can’t do now, two weeks before vacating the premises. She accused the government of doing nothing and claimed she could have done everything. Last night’s shooting, the Mohamed Merah massacre, and everything in between would never have happened if she were president. After spending most of her campaign touting ridiculous retrograde isolationist protectionism, she splattered her fire at Islam.

The real-estate market in any sophisticated city reflects deep aspirations and fears. If you had a feel for its ups and downs—if you understood, say, why young parents were picking this neighborhood and drunks wound up relegated to that one—you could make a killing in property, but you also might be able to pronounce on how society was evolving more generally. In 2016, a real-estate developer even sought—and won—the presidency of the United States.

In France, a real-estate expert has done something almost as improbable. Christophe Guilluy calls himself a geographer. But he has spent decades as a housing consultant in various rapidly changing neighborhoods north of Paris, studying gentrification, among other things. And he has crafted a convincing narrative tying together France’s various social problems—immigration tensions, inequality, deindustrialization, economic decline, ethnic conflict, and the rise of populist parties. Such an analysis had previously eluded the Parisian caste of philosophers, political scientists, literary journalists, government-funded researchers, and party ideologues.

Guilluy is none of these. Yet in a French political system that is as polarized as the American, both the outgoing Socialist president François Hollande and his Gaullist predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy sought his counsel. Marine Le Pen, whose National Front dismisses both major parties as part of a corrupt establishment, is equally enthusiastic about his work. Guilluy has published three books, as yet untranslated, since 2010, with the newest, Le crépuscule de la France d’en haut (roughly: “The Twilight of the French Elite”), arriving in bookstores last fall. The volumes focus closely on French circumstances, institutions, and laws, so they might not be translated anytime soon. But they give the best ground-level look available at the economic, residential, and democratic consequences of globalization in France. They also give an explanation for the rise of the National Front that goes beyond the usual imputation of stupidity or bigotry to its voters. Guilluy’s work thus tells us something important about British voters’ decision to withdraw from the European Union and the astonishing rise of Donald Trump—two phenomena that have drawn on similar grievances.

At the heart of Guilluy’s inquiry is globalization. Internationalizing the division of labor has brought significant economic efficiencies. But it has also brought inequalities unseen for a century, demographic upheaval, and cultural disruption. Now we face the question of what—if anything—we should do about it.

A process that Guilluy calls métropolisation has cut French society in two. In 16 dynamic urban areas (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Nice, Nantes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rennes, Rouen, Toulon, Douai-Lens, and Montpellier), the world’s resources have proved a profitable complement to those found in France. These urban areas are home to all the country’s educational and financial institutions, as well as almost all its corporations and the many well-paying jobs that go with them. Here, too, are the individuals—the entrepreneurs and engineers and CEOs, the fashion designers and models, the film directors and chefs and other “symbolic analysts,” as Robert Reich once called them—who shape the country’s tastes, form its opinions, and renew its prestige. Cheap labor, tariff-free consumer goods, and new markets of billions of people have made globalization a windfall for such prosperous places. But globalization has had no such galvanizing effect on the rest of France. Cities that were lively for hundreds of years—Tarbes, Agen, Albi, Béziers—are now, to use Guilluy’s word, “desertified,” haunted by the empty storefronts and blighted downtowns that Rust Belt Americans know well.

Guilluy doubts that anyplace exists in France’s new economy for working people as we’ve traditionally understood them. Paris offers the most striking case. As it has prospered, the City of Light has stratified, resembling, in this regard, London or American cities such as New York and San Francisco. It’s a place for millionaires, immigrants, tourists, and the young, with no room for the median Frenchman. Paris now drives out the people once thought of as synonymous with the city.

Yet economic opportunities for those unable to prosper in Paris are lacking elsewhere in France. Journalists and politicians assume that the stratification of France’s flourishing metropoles results from a glitch in the workings of globalization. Somehow, the rich parts of France have failed to impart their magical formula to the poor ones. Fixing the problem, at least for certain politicians and policy experts, involves coming up with a clever shortcut: perhaps, say, if Romorantin had free wireless, its citizens would soon find themselves wealthy, too. Guilluy disagrees. For him, there’s no reason to expect that Paris (and France’s other dynamic spots) will generate a new middle class or to assume that broad-based prosperity will develop elsewhere in the country (which happens to be where the majority of the population live). If he is right, we can understand why every major Western country has seen the rise of political movements taking aim at the present system.

In our day, the urban real-estate market is a pitiless sorting machine. Rich people and up-and-comers buy the private housing stock in desirable cities and thereby bid up its cost. Guilluy notes that one real-estate agent on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris now sells “lofts” of three square meters, or about 30 square feet, for €50,000. The situation resembles that in London, where, according to Le Monde, the average monthly rent (£2,580) now exceeds the average monthly salary (£2,300).