A French awakening - Eldad Beck

by Eldad Beck

It seems that large portions of the French public have begun to understand that the problem with Islam extends beyond the recent terror attacks and that the religion in fact threatens the country's existing way of life.

Clichy, a suburb in the northwest of Paris, has in recent weeks become a battleground in the war over France's secular republican character.

It began when a Muslim organization decided to protest against a municipal decision to relocate one of its prayer venues from a central location to a less central site, one that members claim is too small and unsafe. Protesters without the necessary permits held mass prayers on the main street near city hall, angering non-Muslim residents.

In response, around 100 elected officials stood on the side of the street wearing tricolor ribbons and singing the national anthem. The Muslim protesters filed a complaint with police over "violent behavior" and "incitement to racial hatred." Last Friday, local police decided to ban the mass prayers.

It seems that large portions of the French public have begun to understand that the problem with Islam extends beyond the recent terror attacks and that the religion in fact threatens the country's existing way of life. The protest staged by elected officials is proof that politicians have also come to understand that the policy of burying their heads in the sand has contributed to the ongoing erosion of France's secular character.

After years of denying the existence of the phenomenon, there is now significant public debate on Muslim anti-Semitism in France. The French establishment's scandalous handling of the murder of Sarah Halimi, insisting that the murder was not an act of anti-Semitism, challenged the conspiracy of silence.

The desecration of a monument honoring Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man coincidentally with the same surname as the later victim, who was kidnapped and brutally murdered by Muslims over a decade ago, led French daily Le Monde to dedicate an article to the issue of Muslim anti-Semitism. However, the article insisted on differentiating between old anti-Semitic stereotypes and modern Judeophobia, meaning a fear of Jews that feeds the usual anti-Semitism, mainly on social media, and so exemplified the French left-wing elite's difficulty in calling the problem by its name.

Sexual assault allegations against Europe's most senior representative of "moderate Islam," Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, have served to undermine the blind support usually offered by the French Left. Ramadan's attorneys face an uphill battle, not just in the face of growing accusations against their client, but in light of the anti-Semitic claims by many of Ramadan's followers that the entire scandal is a Jewish-Zionist conspiracy.

Is this but a temporary awakening? It could be, if the French and European Left do not engage in some serious soul-searching and identify the reasons they previously chose to ignore Muslim anti-Semitism and blindly follow these radicals disguised as moderates. One of the reasons, it should be noted, is the anti-Semitism so prevalent among many in today's Left.

Eldad Beck

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/a-french-awakening/

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