JUST HOURS INTO A TERRORIST ATTACK that started on the evening of November 13, and would eventually claim 130 lives, François Hollande announced that France was reestablishing border controls, and used a 1955 law to proclaim a state of emergency.
This 60-year-old law gives French law enforcement wide and sweeping powers, freeing them from much of the normal judicial oversight. The law gives prefects, the French government’s local representatives, the ability to place people under house arrest, based merely on the suspicion of the intelligence service that they pose a threat to national security. They can also order police raids targeting any place where they think information about terrorism may be found, without a warrant.
Initially intended to last 12 days, the state of emergency was extended on November 19 for an additional three months by both chambers of parliament. During the vote in the lower house, only six MPs voted against the extension.
In some instances, the concrete consequences of the state of emergency border on the Kafkaesque. There’s this man, who was challenging the requirement that he report frequently to a police station (one of the other features of the state of emergency law). Because his court hearing to challenge the requirement was late, he showed up 40 minutes past the time he was supposed to be at the police station. He was immediately detained. Then there’s this man, who was placed under house arrest in southwestern France because he was suspected of being a radical Muslim — except he is a devout Catholic. The police also raided a halal restaurant for no apparent reason.
Since last month’s attacks, there have been some 2,500 police raids, and nearly a thousand people have been arrested or detained. French local and national press are now full of reports of questionable police raids. So outrageous were some cases that the French Interior Ministry had to send a letter to all prefects reminding them to “abide by the law.”
The state of emergency, which was initially supposed to mitigate the threat posed by Islamic terrorism, has been used to target environmental and political activists who have nothing to do with radical Islam, let alone terrorism. Several heavily armed police officers stormed the home of produce farmers in rural France, and Le Monde reported that at least 24 people closely involved with protests around COP21, the Paris climate conference, were placed under house arrest. This includes a member of the legal team of Coalition Climat 21, a well-established gathering of more than 130 organizations and NGOs. The French Human Rights League said the minister of the interior was confusing terrorism with normal civic activities and concluded, “The state of emergency is a danger to civil liberties.”
Yet rather than be regarded as a temporary measure for extraordinary circumstances, the government’s ability to declare an extended state of emergency may soon be written into the constitution. François Hollande, speaking in front of both chambers summoned in Versailles two days after the attacks, announced his plan to modify the French constitution in response to terrorism.
Although some members of parliament were stunned by the boldness of the proposal, most welcomed the news.
A few weeks later, on December 1, the government unveiled the modification it plans to submit to the French parliament. The first measure would write the state of emergency into the constitution, because the 1955 law, even in its renewed 2015 form, is likely unconstitutional. The government fears it could be challenged all the way up to the French supreme court, especially by those who have been raided by the police or placed under house arrest.
The second modification would put into the constitution the ability to strip French citizenship from someone of dual nationality who has been convicted of “crimes against the fundamental interest of the Nation,” or terrorism.
If both changes were to be adopted — which appears likely — it would be the first time that a terrorist attack has triggered a change in France’s constitution, and the first explicit reference to the highly debated word “terrorism” in the constitution.
Ironically, the strong-arm measures put into effect by the socialist government appear, in many cases, to echo those demanded by the National Front, France’s largest far-right party. The day after the attacks, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, said that France had “to regain control of its borders, close salafist mosques,” and revoke French citizenship from dual nationals involved in “Islamic movements.” She also said that “urgent measures [were] needed” to tackle the terrorist threat.
Three weeks later, her party claimed 30 percent of the vote in the first round of regional elections, more than any other party. The National Front might even govern two of the 13 French regions after the second round. Although regional governments in France don’t have direct authority over security and counterterrorism measures, the National Front appears to have benefited in the elections from the post-attack climate.
The main political parties and their representatives have been supportive of both the state of emergency measures and the modification of the constitution, including Marion Maréchal Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s niece, who may be elected as the head of one of the regions after the second round of elections next Sunday.
“We’ve been surprised by François Hollande,” said Marion Maréchal Le Pen. “There has been some positive reorientation.”
Somehow, I doubt the French will call it an “Emergency”constitution.
Belgium is making similar moves right now, while the far-right mayor of Antwerp has just signed a 5 year deal with the NYPD to work and train their police forces together. Part of this deal includes implementing their Domain Awareness System (DAS) on security cameras in Antwerp.
These Gestapo tactics should alarm everyone in France.
Indeed. And nearly everyone else, as well.
Comme on fait son lit, on se couche.
I know it is true that not all Muslims are terrorists. But we need to about the 800-pound gorilla in the room http://goo.gl/uPRhGP Lets talk facts now! Lets get violent Muslims and peaceful Muslims with Muslim leaders together and have them have an open debate.
A debate is good, but it doesn’t solve anything. Selling weapons to various factions in the Middle East will allow them to find a more permanent resolution to their differences of opinion and generate a lot of revenue at the same time. Some violence may spill over into the West from time to time, but there is no such thing as a perfect solution.
There’s this question that very gets very little attention. Glenn Greenwald mentioned it in his interview with Kyle Kulinski on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDqYzAvYdQk
– Why do these “extremists” attack only a select list of countries over and over again when there are so many countries that have a larger population of non-Muslims? It is understandable that religious ideology is the basis for the taliban shooting a girl in the head for going to school. But is it the case with attacks in France and the USA? As Glenn has mentioned in several interviews before (based on studies to which I don’t have links but I am willing to believe it since it makes sense. I’m sure you can find some of the studies if you search on google scholar), if you take violence outside your nation for whatever reason, there will be members from that nation, however unjustified it may be. American politicians and media, out of faith in the innocence of their own government or for pure political and personal gain, are willing to call an outsider’s violence on the USA terrorism and the American attacks outside by less terrifying names (targeted airstrikes, for example. After all, when a drone strikes near you, depending on your proximity, you could be shattered at once, burnt to death over a few minutes, get your lungs ripped due to dust entering your lungs at high pressure, permanently handicapped or traumatised for for life).
Now as much as I would like the world to be a more peaceful place, if my next of kin dies in one such attack and I have no reason to believe they will get justice, I might be motivated to take revenge into my own hands. It is human nature. So this idea of violent Muslims meeting peaceful Muslims (as if that is an identifiable trait) wont work. One step to take would be to stop creating more violent Muslims. No one is born violent. But there is a lot of profit to be earned in war. So it would be a difficult thing to achieve. Look at the UK. The conservative party won the election just this year arguing for austerity and cost cuts. Somehow, now there is more money to spend.
And regarding the link you provided, Glenn discusses in in the same video. While he was a lawyer defending the freedom of speech of some neo-nazis, these people attacked Judaism by taking the most violent quotes from the Torah stripped entirely of context. You and I know that most Muslims and Jews don’t interpret their religion that way (I concede there are some who do. Law of large numbers).
France’s situation is particularly sad for one main reason. France didn’t want to join the Iraq war. It was attacked by the american right wing media and calls were made to boycott french goods until they agreed.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/22/germany.france
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/24/germany.france
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/02/19/americans-just-say-non-to-french-products.html
which later turned into this.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/06/france.germany
As long as you keep discussing this as an act of religious ideology, as long as you ignore the West’s (primarily the USA) role in the escalation of war, I don’t see an end. Don’t expect your leaders to wake up one day and decide they need peace more than profits (political, financial).
There’s a lot more to say but this post will go far down in a matter of minutes. My time can be put to better use. Apologies
Why do carefully-selected, out-of-context (and endlessly-repeated) snippets from the Quran constitute reason to condemn Islam, while the numerous similar (and worse) quotations from the Jewish and Christian versions of the Bible do not?
It’s called “confirmation bias” and is a well studied and recognized problem in today’s cultures. We see what we want and hope to see, often even twisting something that isn’t really into what we expect.
Advanced cultures and technologies with a high degree of division of labor result in widespread disassociation of reward and actual results. Practitioners get paid for doing things that provide no actual benefit and even for doing things that have the opposite result from what was intended and result in harm rather than benefit and loss rather than gain.
The underlying problem is that accurate feedback on the actual benefit/loss is sometimes completely lacking. As this phenomenon becomes increasingly widespread, many become cynical and focus only on getting paid, taking the attitude that it’s up to their customers to determine whether they are getting any benefit or not and assuming that if they get no complaints, they are, at the least not causing any problems.
Under such circumstances, there arises a tendency to “give oneself the benefit of the doubt” – if a piece of actual evidence is somewhat dubious or is “open to question” the attitude becomes to always take as the “default” option the interpretation that is to ones own advantage. That degrades into “selective vision” where one tends to see what is in ones own interests and be blind to what opposes it. In other words, confirmation bias.
This cannot be done in an area where evidence is completely objective and unambiguous. But as cultures become more complex and technologies more advanced, there are fewer and fewer such areas (currently scientific research (except even that is being seriously degraded) and few others).
Corruption massively exacerbates this problem. A good example is Western medicine where it is generally acknowledged that “some of the best medical reputations are made by doctoring the records rather than doctoring the patients” This kind of abuse happens whenever there is no truly independent oversight – which is becoming far more the norm than the exception. (Reagan really started the ball rolling by spreading the patently absurd idea that regulation is bad, pe se. (Very few, if any, things work even remotely acceptably in a complex society/technology without effective regulation)
When it becomes the norm to take the attitude that the best approach is to always focus solely on what is favorable to your interests and ignore the rest (on the grounds that’s someone else’s worry) a culture is already far into the process of collapse. Western “civilization” is in very deep trouble.
“Western civilization is a great idea! We really should try it at least once.”
Bravo, Jim! Great post.
It reminds me (painfully) that, although I studied sociology and psychology, I ended up becoming a builder and then an “accidental engineer” — because I got offers I failed to refuse.
One of my sins was to be significantly (some might say primarily) responsible for the construction of a number of the first cellular telephone systems in smaller metropolitan and rural areas of the US. I told myself I was doing good things for civilization, although I had plenty of reasons to doubt that was entirely true.
Now, every time I’m nearly crushed, on foot, bike or scooter, by yet another yakker or texter behind a steering wheel, and every time I see a crowd of people or lineup of kids so glued to their screens that they are barely aware of the real world around them, I think about my share of responsibility for the gadget-worshiping society we’ve become — and hope that my well-deserved karma isn’t waiting around the next corner. ;^(
Maybe you can take some solace in reminding yourself that people being “barely aware of the real world around them” didn’t start with you or with the smartphone.
Photo circa 1955 — Commuters reading their newspapers on a train in Philadelphia
I second the remark that Jim Barron’s comment is a dandy.
@ Doug
I was a cog in the cellular bonanza as well. Back in the 80s, in an effort to spur Cell development (b/c SAT phones were a bit pricey), the FCC was practically giving away (i.e. as low as $1.00 for rural sites!) cellular rights to anyone who could provide an engineered plan w/ the appropriate lease option(s) for towers.
Hot Damn … I could have made a Fortune$ looking back! Some of the sites I helped develop have been bought & sold so many times (like my own service.) it makes my head spin… and are worth many qillion$ now.
*I reminisce occasionally about all that lost … ‘confirmation bias’ (h/t Jim Barron)
ps. I’ve been in 3 non-injury auto accidents in my entire life, all b/c the other driver was ‘yakking’ on the cell! … they didn’t even see me!
Mr. Untersinger
In 2010, there were approximately 5,000,000 Muslims living in France, so the 1000 detained or arrested people (presumably almost all Muslims) represents about two-one hundredths of one percent of the Muslim population in France. In the US, about 800 American citizens are on the no fly list out of an estimated population of 3,000,000 Muslims (Hina Shamsi; director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project):
“……They are far from alone. Based on a leaked government document published by the Intercept last August, there were approximately 47,000 people on the no-fly list, of whom about 800 were U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. In all likelihood, the numbers are higher now……”
These are hardly extreme numbers. It shows the relatively low numbers of known radicalized Muslims in France and the US which represent a significant threat to target and murder innocent people. The leader of the murderous assault in Paris was already known to the French authorities, but they could not act in violation of his civil liberties leading to the death of 130 innocent people.
In times of war, civil liberties are curtailed. People are generally willing to accept that for greater security. Democracy and security are not mutually exclusive concepts.
This is true, but not widely appreciated. I blame politicians who often repeat the words ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ in the same phrase, causing people to believe they are somehow interlinked. Imagine a prison where the inmates can vote between two candidates for chief warden, one of whom promises the cafeteria will serve spaghetti on Tuesdays, and the other on Wednesdays. Such a system would be both democratic, and, as a prison, secure. This would be my model for the future evolution of Western democracies, and many countries such as France seem to be proceeding in the right direction.
The US IS a prison without walls- just a border.
Many prisoners find this unsettling. But Trump has a plan.
Thanks Benito
But as we saw in an article exclusively at the Intercept, they don’t allow inmates to vote – even after they leave prison!
Well that’s just wrong. If the choices are carefully circumscribed, it should be safe to allow anyone to vote.
ISIS is being cited as the reason for radical change within French society. Yet if one listen closely to the subtext, everyone in France is going to be equally scrutinized as a threat to the established political order. In fact, there is talk about the wide spread implementation of infrared surveillance cameras that have the alleged capacity to detect “abnormal behavior.”
The alleged threat of imminent terror attacks will be the mean by which pre-crime detection becomes normalized within the EU.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/11/17/call-to-arms-hollande-urges-constitutional-changes.html
Of course the alleged necessity of pre-crime detection gives rise to the perception that “indefinite detention” is a integral complimentary measure:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/henry-ergas/paris-attacks-our-politicians-must-confront-islamic-extremism/news-story/a6e5d3dc8cabc93f8885ff63373264a0
The Australian is owned by News Corp which was founded by Rupert Murdoch’s father, Sir Keith Murdoch; it is the Australian equivalent of fox news. Sir Keith himself was very savvy at aligning himself with the seat of power within Australia. He used his editorial clout to manufacture consent, advance the political ambitions of allies, and undermine the political careers of enemies. Prior to Rupert Murdoch’s business expansion into Europe, he was already far exceeding his father’s capacity of aligning his business interests with those in power:
http://www.constantinereport.com/secret-history-rupert-murdoch-ciamafia-drug-murder-cover-ups/
It should have been clear in the wake of Hebdo that this would occur. The concept of free speech in France is not at all like the American ideal.
Down with Liberté, égalité, fraternité -Francoise Hollande.
Unfortunately the French have now sunk to a new low of the American NSA.
The constitutional changes are just a return to the French credo in it’s original form: “liberté d’exploiter le peuple, égalité dans la pauvreté des salariés et fraternité entre les riches”. It’s not as snappy as the short form credo, but the lack of brevity is somewhat compensated by the improvement in clarity.
The French were past the NSA in 2013. In the U.S. the spies may be trying to ban Tor, and other encryption, as in France, but have you heard them trying to get free wi-fi banned? The French are now far out ahead – though we should be watching them to see what might be down the road for Americans.
You are right. France now leapfrogs ahead of the U.S. in the stifling of freedom and privacy. The obvious point I am trying to make (Benito Mussolini, and Wnt) is that liberty is dead in France (as in liberte,equalite, fraternite), just as “land of the free – home of the brave” is dead in the U.S.
I was formulating your post in my head and then, here it is before me. I agree 100%, the French beat the US to it and I heartily concur that soon our paranoid/corporate run government will come up with similar legislation, further curtailing what is left of our rights. Well done.
The U.S. seems to be rather far down in the pecking order of these UKUSACANZAU countries. Almost always, whatever New World Order crap they come up with goes straight to the Australians, who rubber stamp whatever it is without even seeming to read it. Then it’s off to the UK. I’m not sure where the US ranks with CA and NZ, but it’s after those two.
French cowards met American Cowards.
“NO MORE LAND OF VOLTAIRE AND ENLIGHTENMENT. IN THE PROPAGANDA WORLD NEW FRANCE EMERGES AS A LAND OF BLIND FURY AND LUST FOR BLOODY REVENGE TRIGGERED BY ANOTHER BLACK OP/FALSE FLAG OP OR IS IT ALL SMOKE AND MIRRORS?”
https://syrianwarupdate.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/syrian-war-update-continuing/
Unfortunately, The French may do the “time warp” like US in 2001. More control” for your security” less freedom. As far as the “invisible hand” they are making out like bandits. More weapon sales, more bombs, more killing and oh yes more profit.
Take more rights away from the France’s lambs.
Cui bono from a terra-istic attack in Paris? Why that scooterette twerp HOLLANDE.
and who suffers? French democracy and Liberte. No wonder he dumped Valerie. She’s have kicked his ass and never let him get away with this power grab. Next Le Pen will be “detained”
Recommend: http://www.wsj.com/articles/frances-hollande-extends-state-of-emergency-for-three-months-1447690309 Though I don’t think even this covers some of the things like the “suspicious activity” requirement on ISPs in May after Charlie Hebdo. These people are talking not just about banning Tor, but banning *wi-fi*. Automatic extension of six-month “states of emergency” where (as was already upheld) people can be detained without evidence, searched without cause.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the Fifth Republic is at its end, leaving us with the question of what to do about a highly nuclear-armed totalitarian state in Europe.
The imperfect judgement of those of the civil governmental persuasion would be rectified by the adoption of the right to self-defense supported by individual initiatives to enforce it.
When François Hollande was elected he stated that he had one enemy; Finance Capitalism, guess they won him over. Terrorism is a diversion from the real problems in the world, especially the developed world; that being the relentless race to the bottom and the acceleration of inequality. In peaceful, wimpy Canada, my homeland; over 1000 peaceful demonstrators and bystanders were jailed at the G20 a few years ago and no one has been punished for that suppression of civil liberties. It cost over a billion to supress peaceful unarmed people, agent provocateurs burned their own cop cars. Not one demonstrator was armed, the velvet glove of mind control came off easily to show the mailed fist of the elites and the people still don’t understand. 130 people killed in France; how many have died since the French led invasion of Libya? The US led sanctions and invasion of Iraq? Afghanistan? Assad may have not been to the liking of the west but he was a saint compared to the Daesh barbarians who will take over the country; ditto for Saddam and Muammar. We, led by the USA have so much blood on our hands it can never be washed off. When democracy broke out in Algeria, the French were not long in helping the military to put it down; same in Egypt with the west. Ever wonder why 30,000 Daesh fighters can whip the armies of Iraq and Syria and the mighty USA can drop so many bombs they are running out and still not win? Ever occur to anyone that, they might be popular like the cong were in Vietnam and real Palestinian governments are in the occupied and threatened country’s. It gives me hope that someone can stand up to the USA led west even if they are barbarians, at least, they are their barbarians.
I don’t understand French politics and don’t have the time to learn about it, but it seems like it’s taking a turn toward more state control than desired. If this is the case, then the terrorists are winning. In the US I see a disturbing trend toward the right too and we certainly don’t need it. Our Constitution has been being eroded for some time, more so after 9/11 and also is getting worse. Once again the terrorists are winning. There is a concerted effort to re-invade countries and get more of us,(and civilians), killed. When is this type of madness going to stop? Leaders need to stop, breathe and evaluate a valid plan instead of declaring another “war” on terrorism that can’t be won. The civil rights don’t need to removed just because of a pervasive sense of fear grips a state. We are all stronger than that. We don’t all have to give up rights just to have a sense of security, at least to me anyway.
I think this is where a liberal strain of anti-Islamic sentiment could be beneficial. The U.S. keeps getting dragged into conflicts, then is responsible for the deaths that occur (whether these or other deaths would have occurred otherwise) and faces the vendetta. A strongly anti-Islamic sentiment is to look at ISIS and say these sorts of atrocities are normal for Islam, therefore the U.S. should not run around trying to ally with whoever (Turkey, Assad, Iran, Saudi Arabia, al-Qaida??) promises to stop the horrors. Instead it should step back, close off migration and trade. Hope that once the bombs stop falling some of those hopelessly brave Christian missionaries who like to go into places like that might have some luck… know that the military approach certainly has no better odds.
The problem with the rose-colored-glasses view of Islam that the very politically correct like to have is that it leaves them vulnerable to every mountebank who tells them there’s going to be a democratic revolution if they just authorize a few surgical strikes to help things along.
Many ‘rights’ in western societies were in fact privileges – made possible thanks to their head start with respect to social institutions, education and technology. As those advantages erode, their citizens become merely cogs in a globalized work force and their life style will regress accordingly. A citizenry with rights would not tolerate such changes (the French in particular are known for their predilection for noisy protests), so unfortunately some of those rights, as an emergency measure, will be revoked. However, the good news is that once the expectations of French citizens have been properly adjusted downwards, in a generation or two, some of those rights can be safely restored.
Can it really simply just be called “Islamic terrorism”, as the author of this article has called it, when the perpetrators yelled “this is for Syria” and when there are clearly legitimate political grievances? Like France arming extremists in Syria and Libya to help oust popular leaders might have something to do with it. Ditto with France (and this was revealed by Wikileaks) fully supporting and aiding the illegal destruction we rained down on Libya so it could get its hands on Libyan oil (there are emails between French and US officials showing how France was trying to make sure some percentage of Libya’s oil would be “saved” for France to basically steal. Even Bin Laden made speeches listing political reasons for his actions.
France was a brutal colonial force all around the world, including the Muslim world, for a very long time. Instead of paying reparations for their crimes (which includes bloody massacres of people in countries they occupied and in France, where the people of those countries were fighting for independence) and righting their wrongs, they’ve turned to another form of colonialism/brutality in which they aid US atrocities that obliterate entire countries and loot their resources.
Maybe the French people need to open their eyes a little and question their own government and its actions. They need to start asking who it is that’s really putting them in danger. You can’t just invade other countries, aid in massacres in those countries, destroy those countries, take their resources, etc. and just expect no blowback. That’s not how it works. You need to ask “who started all of this” and go from there.
Yes, you got it right! That’s why my reaction to the Paris attacks is to say that,while a lot of innocent French people were victims on 13 November, the social/political entity called ‘France’ was and is not a victim of ‘terrorism’ but a perpetrator thereof. Here’s one summary of the contemporary situation:
http://thisisafrica.me/france-loots-former-colonies/
Thanks for reporting on the political situation in France. I’m especially interested in Le Pen and hope you’ll keep a reporting eye on her and the FN.
Welcome to the Neoliberal police state. We saw it in the United States after 9/11, now Europe will increasingly enjoy the benefits of the constant fear mongering and corporate, military/industrial police state.
With the overall decline of the judiciary as a branch of government, constitutions are looking more and more like pieces of paper with only ceremonial relevance. Perhaps we should focus more on the technology from that French farm article:
The computers in the house are connected to “a device that looked like an external hard drive, apparently to copy the contents”, without even needing to ask for passwords. “There is a computer with Ubuntu [a system free operating, note], and there, it did not. “” They also connected mobile phones to a machine, explaining that the software is triggered based on keywords. “A policeman is permitted a small impertinence:” I am not sure that it works with the toll Mussidan. “
What kind of intel do we have on these things and what they do?
It’s almost like that time I comvinced the Galactic Senate that giving Palpatine emergency powers would make them safer lol
“There has been some positive reorientation.”
There has been much reorientation of our Constitution under Bush & Obama. Can hardly wait to see which parts Trump or Hillary “modify” or disregard.
This can’t be good. And let us not forget that France’s “laicite” is NOT the same as our [theoretical] separation of Church and State. It is nothing more than thinly-disguised hostility to anything other than Christianity. And at a time when we keep hearing about how the French invented modern democracy, let us also remember that it didn’t take much for their Vichy regime to become a cog in the machinery of fascism. Liberte, egalite, fraternite? My ass.
Good news. The enemy within must be excised.
Yet here you are.
Good repartee!
As I have stated often, there’s nothing Islamic about terrorism. The term, Islamic Terrorism, is invalid and links Islam to terrorism.
To a Muslim, the word, Islamic, means, “According to the teachings of Islam”.
What’s more accurate to say is: Terrorism committed by some Muslims.
I’ve been trying to draw the attention of The Intercept’s writers to not use terms, such as Islamic Terrorism and Jihadism, for a few years now, but to no avail.
So if I can’t even get TI to use other more appropriate terms or add footnotes to these terms to explain how they are invalid and distort Islam, and how Muslims use them, there’s no way I, or anyone else, can put any sense into other media outlets and pundits.
I agree with you. I hope the editors of this online journal will read your comments and take them to heart.
Agreed. Language matters, especially in a news source such as this.
I believe as long as Islamic “teaching” continues to be the claimed basis for actual violent attacks and imams of a certain persuasion continue to call for violent “resistance” from their pulpits, the activities of the few will continue to be called “Islamic terrorism”.
While activities of the IRA were not similarly labelled “Catholic terrorism”, neither were religious centers of Catholic worship also centers for preaching violence against society and magnets for those who do.
It is true that Muslims are, by and large, generous and peaceful folk who simply want to get on with their lives. But it is likewise true that they are easily intimidated by threat of fatwahs being laid on them by religious authority permitting any of the faithful to commit murder for a reward in heaven. (It would seem heaven may eventually suffer an sufficient supply of willing your virgins.)
While similar excesses of violence are not unknown in the history of other religions, it seems only Muslims continue to accept behaviors which everyone else drop-kicked them after the Dark Ages.
In particular, Sharia law is an archaic throwback institution stoutly maintained in some deeply Islamic countries and continues as the basis for some pretty bloody behavior under color of civil law.
No other major religion endorses (or even tolerates) such crude practices, which it is generous to describe as “medieval”.
It is also fair to say that to be Muslim is not necessarily to endorse such practices, as most other westerners do not. But it is also entirely fair to say Muslims have been visibly less than vocal critics of other Muslim regimes with a well-established reputation for retaliation. These good folk are not therefore “bad people” merely because they share a religion with some others who are villains. But the problem is that they are intimidated into fearful silence by the climate of fear propagated by those others of the same faith.
And that is the essence of the danger of Islam: it is not only a prescription for personal, private faith and conscience but is also a cultural corridor promoting rule by a religious order whose pronouncements must be obeyed as having the force of law and with potentially violent consequences inflicted on any who do not.
My own experience is that intimidated people are not trustworthy. Not because they are devious persons, but because they are weak. If being weak in that dangerous way is a typical feature of Islamic people, then western society cannot benefit from accommodating it.
And as long as westernized Islamic people continue to whinge on about how unfair it is to label their religion as dangerous, it remains clear that they haven’t yet figured out why it actually is. And they are.
Spot on! Add to this that Daesh is a US proxy militia for boots on the ground, the affront gets even more severe.
To shed some light on the situation: ISIS revealed as ISRAELI SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE
What is more accurate still is “politically motivated violence by individuals who ascribe their actions to a supremacist interpretation of Islamic beliefs.”
If this is the will of the people of France, and their elected representatives, from the Socialist majority and the far-right contingency, then democracy is functioning as it should. Others may not like the direction that France is taking toward a more authoritarian, surveillance oriented society, but it is the people’s choice to do so.
The author of this article reported on the situation rather than condemning it, which is good journalism.
They didn’t get to vote on that actually, just because they voted for Hollande doesn’t mean every action taken by the government is a democratic process. Not to mention he wasn’t voted in specifically to take these measures, no process is democratic without transparency.
I agree that this is good journalism, but not for the reason that you incorrectly pointed to.
Here are four examples within the article of the author condemning it. Maybe you and the author don’t speak the same language.
This is not the will of the people of France.
The president was elected as a socialist candidate to “put an end to the financial criminality and domination over the political system”. To our biggest disappointment ! His policy since has been the most liberal ones and pro “bankster” ever seen.
First, he putted an investment banker (Emmanuel Macron, from Rothschild bank) as the minister of economy. Hard to fight the banking system when such conflict of interest are involved.
Then he started destroying our working code to the profit of companies making people more and more disposable resources !
Nowadays, while we should have expected that he calmed down the situation following the terror attack , he is just doing worst than the terrorist themselves by turning the country into a dictatorial regime… Like in USA after 9/11, is is now using the “democracy preservation” argument and the “emergency state” to launch or pursue military operation, to threatened political opponents or to shut away activists or associations.
It may sounds like a bad joke but it is not…
It’s not a joke. It’s called Fascism and there’s a wave of it sweeping across Europe and the U.S.
Dark times lie ahead.