French interior minister: “We are at war with an enemy trying to pit Muslims against non-Muslims” - Robert Spencer

by Robert Spencer

Muslims are exhorted to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers, with no exception made for unbelievers who are kind, accommodating, and welcoming toward Muslims.

This idea is very common in the West. American politicians have articulated it. The reasoning goes like this: jihadis recruit by pointing to Western counter-terror initiatives (such as France’s now-discarded burkini ban, which was meant to strike against allegiance to jihadist and Islamic supremacist groups that flaunt Islamic dress in the West, and proposals such as Trump’s now much-nuanced temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration) and telling Muslims that they will never be welcome in the West. So in the face of jihad attacks in the West, authorities must redouble their efforts to bring Muslims to the West and accommodate them. By showing Muslims and non-Muslims living together in harmony and peace, this will stymie jihadist recruitment in the West and around the world.

This argument rests upon the assumption that jihadis recruit based on grievances against the West, and that if those grievances were redressed, there would be peace. That ignores the jihad imperative embedded within the Qur’an and Sunnah: Muslims are exhorted to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers, with no exception made for unbelievers who are kind, accommodating, and welcoming toward Muslims.

In reality, the dynamic works in almost exactly the opposite way: after every jihad attack, jihad groups see Western governments becoming more welcoming and accommodating toward Muslims, and resisting all attempts to make even a symbolic stand (like the burkini ban) against jihad activity. This enables them to embed more jihadis among “refugees” to the West, and to plot more freely in Muslim areas without fear of surveillance that has been deemed “Islamophobic.” Thus Cazeneuve’s determination to resist “an enemy trying to pit Muslims against non-Muslims” only has the effect of making French citizens more vulnerable to jihad attacks.


“French minister: ‘We are at war with an enemy trying to pit Muslims against non-Muslims,’” Associated Press, August 30, 2016:

France’s Interior Minister is mounting a bid to unite Muslims and non-Muslims in France as tensions rise following the ‘Burkini ban’
France’s interior minister has said the country is at war with an enemy trying to pit Muslims against non-Muslims.
Bernard Cazeneuve called for urgent action to create a strong bond between the nation and citizens of the Islamic faith in response.
He also said it was crucial to tailor the religion to the values of secular France, “a pillar of the republic.”
Cazeneuve spoke after a day-long conference with Muslim leaders, professionals and lawmakers to try to kick start a project aiming to bind Muslims to the nation, a task given new urgency after deep divisions surfaced over burkini bans in 30 French beach towns and after extremist attacks that also stigmatised Muslims.
A high court struck down the burkini bans on Friday, but the debate had already seeped into France’s political sphere revealing tensions between the secular establishment and sectors of France’s estimated five million Muslims, the largest Muslim population in Western Europe.
Cazeneuve, speaking to reporters, said a “strong and calm” relationship with Muslims is “urgent and particularly necessary.”
“France is at war with terrorists, at war with an enemy trying to divide it and pit the French against each other, fracture the nation’s body, sap the republic,” he said.
“We must not fall into this mortal trap.”
The July 14 attack on revellers in Nice, the killing of a priest in Normandy on July 26 and the killing of a police couple in their home in June — all claimed by ISIS — have focused tensions on Muslims.
A French prosecutor opened an investigation into suspected racial discrimination after two Muslim women said they were ordered out of a restaurant over the weekend with the owner heard saying on an iPhone video, “I don’t want people like you in my place. … Get out.”
Cazeneuve warned in an interview with France’s Roman Catholic newspaper La Croix that if the political class cannot unite all French “the dynamics of division may prove dangerous.”
However, he ruled out drafting a national law banning burkinis.
“What is at stake is very important,” said Abdallah Zekri, who heads the Observatory Against Islamophobia. “Firstly, we must end the arguments over the burkini, which make no sense.”
He told reporters that some people wanted to use burkinis to stigmatise Muslims, while politicians looking to France 2017 presidential race seized the issue “for vote-catching reasons.”
He also contended that humiliating Muslims “has facilitated the work of Daesh (ISIS) recruiters” of vulnerable Muslim youth….

Robert Spencer

Source: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/08/french-interior-minister-we-are-at-war-with-an-enemy-trying-to-pit-muslims-against-non-muslims

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