by Boaz Bismuth
It will be interesting to see if any French leader tries to explain to Obama how best to integrate the African American population the next time riots erupt in Ferguson.
In Paris, too, U.S.
President Barack Obama is having a hard time understanding. A week ago,
he made the mistake of not taking part in the solidarity march against
the jihadist terrorism that had struck France. Now he's the one
explaining to the French where they went wrong and giving them a lesson
on how to better integrate the Muslim population. Obama's remarks sound
more like the things that Muslim kids in the French periphery say than
declarations by the leader of the free world. It seems that Obama
doesn't understand that the ideology of the Islamic State group and
al-Qaida has no borders, and the threat to the West is the same threat,
regardless of immigration policy.
Obama, who will go down
in history as a marked absence in the "march of the millions,"
explained on Friday that the U.S.'s "biggest advantage … is that our
Muslim populations feel themselves to be Americans." He did not utter
one simple phrase: "Islamist terrorism."
Has Obama forgotten the
attacks in Boston and Fort Hood? Wasn't it Muslims who "felt themselves
to be Americans" who were behind them? In the Texas attack, the
perpetrator even had officer's insignia. So was the U.S. immigration
policy the reason for that?
Obama is right about
one thing: America is a wonderful nation of immigrants that knows how to
integrate them. The minute one lands at John F. Kennedy International
Airport, an immigrant from Poland will announce that he is proud to be
an American. But France is also a nation of immigrants, and everyone
remembers the large influx from Italy and Spain at the start of the 20th
century. Right away, they were proud to be French. People are
constantly arriving from China, from Vietnam, and from Cambodia. But
what can we do -- despite political correctness, which prevents us from
calling a spade a spade -- it is the children of the Muslim immigrants
who boo the "Marseilles" and who refused to stand for the moment of
silence in honor of the terror victims. It's the children of the Muslim
immigrants who are involved in terrorist attacks. So maybe the problem
is radical Islam, and not the welfare benefits that France grants
immigrants from Tunisia, Algeria, or Cambodia.
The American president
also explained that in the end, "there also has to be a recognition that
the stronger the ties of a North African or a Frenchman of North
African descent to French liberties, that's going to be important over
time." Will it? When was the last time Obama visited the outskirts of
any large European cities? When was the last time he saw the
radicalization of the young people who see Jews, not the Kouachi
brothers, as the enemy? Is he unaware of the large-scale demonstrations
throughout the Muslim world that feels no connection to the slogan "Je
suis Charlie"? So maybe the integration of immigrants isn't the problem
-- maybe religion is. Doesn't Obama see that the latest issue of Charlie
Hebdo also upset the Muslim community?
Obama needs to
understand that France has a tough problem: how to reconcile Charlie
Hebdo and its drawings, and everything it stands for, with the Muslim
population -- or the opposite: How to incorporate the Muslim population
into the secular French public. How can a society for whom Islam is
sacred -- a legitimate belief -- be integrated with a French society for
whom secularism is a religion, which is no less legitimate?
It seems like Obama, even after
six years as president, is having difficulty understanding the processes
taking place in the world. Or maybe it is difficult for him to detach
from the idyllic reality he has constructed. It will be interesting to
see if any French leader tries to explain to Obama how best to integrate
the African American population the next time riots erupt in Ferguson.
Boaz Bismuth
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=11269
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment