France’s Muslim population is exploding and fundamentalist Islam is gaining control over it. French society remains almost completely oblivious. Does this phenomenon entail a ticking time bomb? What consequences does it pose to the West? What lessons is it teaching? To discuss these issues with Frontpage Symposium today, we are joined by a distinguished panel. Our guests:

Mohamed Ibn Guadi, an Islamologist at Strasbourg University and a researcher in Semitic Philology. He is a contributor to Figaro, Le Point and other journals. He has lectured at the Theological Seminary of Montpellier (France) in Islamic Law and Islamic Warfare during the Abbasside empire at Fez (Morocco) and has taught Persian, Arabic, Sumerian and other Semitic languages in Switzerland;

Dr. Soner Cagaptay, an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow and director of The Washington Institute's Turkish Research Program.

Laurent Murawiec, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. His book Princes of Darkness: The Saudi Assault on the West will appear in August;

and

Reza Bayegan, a Paris-based university lecturer, political analyst and human rights activist. He writes regularly about Iran and the Middle East and is a political commentator for Iranian radios in exile.

FP: Mohamed Ibn Guadi, Soner Cagaptay, Laurent Murawiec and Reza Bayegan, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.

Mr. Cagaptay, let’s start with a brief overview of the phenomenon of Muslims in France. Tell us about the situation there. Is there a ticking time bomb? If there is, what is it? Does it pose a threat to the rest of the West?

Cagaptay: Here is the picture: percentage-wise as well as in cumulative terms, France has the largest Muslim community in the EU. There are no official figures, since France does not collect numbers on religious affiliation, but according to official estimates, there are 6 million Muslims in France, that is 10 percent of the population. Unofficial estimates point at an even higher figure, suggesting as many as 8-9 million Muslims.  What is more, given the low birth rate in the general French society, and the continuing immigration of Muslims from North Africa, this number is bound to increase. 

The issue I would like to raise in this context is not that we should be concerned that there are so many Muslims in France, rather it is that the Muslims in France see themselves at the margins of the society and resent that fact.  The Muslims in France are the worst integrated Muslim community in any EU country.  Mass Muslim immigration to France is a post-WWII development.  Many came from North Africa, especially Algeria, to look for jobs.  However, France has done a terrible job in integrating them.  The benign founding myth of the French state, that there are no differences between the citizens, has worked against the integration of the Muslims. On the one hand, from the very beginning, Muslims in France, already from a background of conservative--rural Islam, had few avenues towards assimilation into the metropolitan French society, and on the other, the society has acted as if these barriers do no exist. 

The end result is that vast segments of the Muslim population in France have little to do with the rest of the society. There are for instance no Muslims in the French parliament, and when is the last time anyone met a Muslim diplomat representing France? The banlieus of Paris, Marseilles, and other major French cities are full of disgruntled and poor North African Muslims today, who feel discriminated in the school system, in the public sector and in access to government services. The bottom line is that elite institutions, means of upward mobility, as well as quality government services are in accessible to most Muslims in France.  What is more, with the rise of radicalism in the 1990s, these neighborhoods are now under the effective control of fundamentalist Muslims.  If I were French, I would be very worried.

FP: Fair enough, but wait a second here. Can you completely blame France and the French government itself for Muslims not “integrating” into French society? It’s many of the Muslims themselves that despise their host society and isolate themselves into their own communities and cultures, no?

Mr. Bayegan?

Bayegan: I don't think it is the issue of whether it is the fault of the French government and people, or whether it is the Muslim community here that is to be blamed. The issue is very complex. The French colonization of North Africa created a new relationship that the French could not pick up and drop down at will. The French language and culture had a greater and more permanent impact in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon than anything that could ever be accomplished by military might. It is very significant that Albert Camus, one of the greatest twentieth century French novelists, was born in Algeria. During its colonization of Algeria for one hundred and thirty years France transformed Algeria to a French département. Small villages were turned into French villages and the whole Algerian economy was geared towards serving France's needs. Algeria became so Frenchified that one could go to a village restaurant there and order croissants and cafe au lait for breakfast.

Many Arabs have come to live in France not merely for economic reasons, but also because they felt France is their cultural homeland. There is no resemblance between these people and say Turks in Germany who have no historical or cultural ties with their adopted country.  As Dr. Cagaptay pointed out, a large number have also come to France from rural, uneducated backgrounds. What ails these people and makes them stick out like sore thumbs in French society is not so much Islam and Islamic teaching but backward traditions they have brought with them from home. One of most problematic of these cultural baggages is the status of women within these communities. Second or third generation North African  women  in France still live under tremendous pressures to uphold the retrograde practices of their paternalistic communities. Women are treated as inferior to men and are bossed around by their husbands, brothers and fathers.

Here in France, French art and especially French cinema is playing a role in dramatizing this predicament and educating the public. A recent movie 'Chaos' directed by Coline Serreau was about the plight of an Algerian prostitute who was led to a life of crime and violence through a forced marriage.

There is also an attempt within the Muslim community to modernize Islam and bring it into line with the realities of the twenty-first century. Soheib Bencheikh, mufti of Marseilles and his preaching of a progressive Islam that rejects backwardness and fundamentalism, can be cited as a good example.

The French government has also tried to defuse Islamic fundamentalism. In December 2002, the then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy persuaded the country's three main Islamic organizations to settle their differences and form a body called the French Council for the Muslim Religion. The jury is still out about the long term consequences of this move. In a country where only a small percentage of Muslims attend mosque regularly, this religious council can hardly be representative of the secularized Muslims.

What is certain is that there are no short cuts, easy answers or quick fixes here. The presence of six million Muslims in France is a reality as strong as the presence of Basque, Breton, and Corsicans in the multicultural French mosaic. This reality is not going to go away. The more the French Muslims are antagonized and alienated the better it would be for the spreading of fanaticism and the growth of a violent version of Islam. Efforts should be made in further enhancing a culture of tolerance and mutual understanding between Muslims, Christians and Jews within the French society.

FP: Dr. Ibn Guadi?

Ibn Guadi: I agree with Dr. Cagaptay. I think the French state could be blamed and in particular for the French model. In this model, individuals do not exist -- only French citizens. The general interest takes precedence over the particular interests. As a community, the Muslims see themselves with difficulty recognizing the right to the difference. The French state succeeded in imposing the ideology of its model on a society which is not it. That's why, as Dr. Cagaptay pointed out, they are the worst integrated Muslim community in any EU country. France wants to build a French Islam but without Islamic institutions. It is impossible. The dilemma is that the French law is disconnected from the religious questions.

Is there a ticking bomb? Probably. But not necessarily because of Islam. For several years the French have been also very confused concerning their own values. For a long time, they believed that they could manage to set up an exemplary society by eliminating the religious sphere, and in particular Christianity. The religious feeling is almost non-existent in France. It is normal that Islam, a young religion in France, occupies the essence of spiritual space here in this country. And in particular today, Islam generates fear, fascination and questioning. The place of the Muslims and Islam in France will in the future present new anthropologic and sociological challenges for the French people.

Reza Bayegan mentioned Soheib Bencheikh, the mufti of Marseille. Unfortunately, the Mufti Bencheikh is not really representative of the majority of Muslims in France. Actually, most of the Muslims in France wish to be represented by the leaders of the UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France). It is a normal reaction since the UOIF means an Islam expurgate of artifices regarded as specifically Western - reform, secularism, integration, etc. - It is illusory to think that the Muslims "moderates" are or form the majority in France.  
 
As far as foreign policy is concerned, France - and Europe - is not the center of the history anymore. France does not have the means to follow an international politic distinct from the United States. In the Arab world, France is seen especially as an undecided and ambiguous country vis-à-vis of Islam and Muslims. France believes that it has weight on the international chess-board against the United States only because it calls upon the relations with its old colonies. France is not the model anymore for Arabs. Public opinion remains still very badly informed on these fields.

FP: So Soheib Bencheikh, the mufti of Marseille, doesn’t represent the majority of Muslims in France. In other words, if this is true, the majority of Muslims in France are not interested in reforming Islam to make it a religion compatible with modernity and democracy. What danger does this spell for the future of France and Europe?

Murawiec: I fail to distinguish an Islamic community that is "well integrated" anywhere in Europe. Turks in Germany were not allowed to become German until a few years ago. British Muslims are dominated by radical rabble-rousers. Dutch Muslims, I'm afraid, have not distinguished themselves.

The large-scale Muslim presence in Europe is the unanticipated consequence of scores of State and individual decisions. Nobody imagined thirty years ago that a permanent Muslim community of 6-plus million would live in France. For instance, president Giscard d'Estaing in 1975, in order to display his compassion, took the decision that legal immigrants could bring in their families. As a result, such problems as polygamy arose on French soil.

A second set of problems: all earlier waves of immigration into France, from Italians in the 1880s onward, Jews, Poles, Spaniards, Portuguese - when I was in the military, I checked the rostrum of my regiment: close to twenty per cent had foreign surnames - all passionately wanted to become French, and did. This was not and is not the case with the preponderance of Muslim immigrants, North Africans and West Africans in the first place. The price of the entry ticket was higher for the Muslims than for Christians, or Ashkenazi Jews, from other parts of Europe.

Thirdly, France used to be an effective melting pot. After 1968, the culture in general collapsed, the moral fibre of society, which stopped believing in its own values, that traditionally were Christian. France's intelligentsia deconstructed the nation - this is no incentive for integration. I agree with Mohamed - there is no competition between a lame, self-loathing ex-Christian and a young Muslim who is all the more intent on his belief than he knows very little about the religion, and the Arabic language. The current of conversions through marriages is one-sided.

The French elite, and that benighted president Chirac, have been sucking up to the Muslim world in the imperial hope of taking the lead in a world-wide We Hate America alliance. Arab leaders in particular have used that conceit to their advantage. Chirac was a prime supporter of Arafat, fought against any measures to curb Hezbollah and Hamas, and so did Villepin. France has mostly reaped a great deal of the contempt reserved for the dhimmi-s. To me, the ticking bomb is the European drift toward dhimmitude, as Bat Ye'or has shown. It empowers Muslim radicals. The Union of Islamic Organizations in France is dominated and run by the Muslim Brotherhood. The textbooks are Wahhabi. A large number of the imams are Wahhabi-trained.

I do not think that the assassination of Theo van Gogh has had the same impact in France as it has in the Netherlands, but also in Germany. I think that some fundamental reorientations are afoot, concerning immigration, Islam, and definitions of nationhood. Look at the results of the referendum on the European Constitution.

FP: In other words, for the sake of worshipping at the altar of anti-Americanism, France has committed national suicide.

So gentlemen, paint me the worst case scenario in terms of this ticking time bomb. And what can we do to take the edge off of the explosion when it comes?

Cagaptay: First, I agree with Laurent that there are no well-integrated Muslim communities on the continent.  Yet, it is the case that some Muslims have assimilated better the others.  One case is the Turks in Germany, which gives me a chance to look at where the problem is with regard to the Muslim communities on the continent.   Even if for a long time the German state made it difficult for Turks to assimilate, until 2001, for instance, the Turks could not even take German citizenship, the Turks, nevertheless, persisted.  They moved into middle-class German society faster and in bigger numbers than Muslims in other countries, such as the North Africans in France.  Why?  Because the Turks are "Western leaning" Muslims.  Even if they may be of the poorest and least educated segments of Turkey, Turks have come to Germany from Ataturk's Turkey, having been exposed to Western values and institutions.  Accordingly, even if there are Turkish working class neighborhoods in Germany, you do not see the problem of Islamist-run, and, due to the ineffectiveness of past French governments, often criminal ghettos there as you do in France. 

Next, the worst case scenario.  But, first let's deal with a cliché.  Europe is not a continent with religious tolerance.  Look at 1492, the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain and then Portugal, St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of French Protestants in 1572, Thirty Years War, incessant pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe from the 17th century until the 20th, the Holocaust, and last but not least, expulsion and annihilation of European Muslims in Central Europe, Balkans and Russia ever since the seventeenth century.   

Why am I making this point?  Even under the veneer of post 1968-multiculturalism, which Laurent skilfully mentions, there persists a Europe that is intolerant towards religions other than Christianity.  What is interesting is that in this day and age, when a majority of Europeans are either non-believers or lapsed Christians, and Europe is arguably the most secular,

Europeans view Muslims through their religious identity and their European credentials, or the lack thereof.  Given this dynamic and the historically combustive mix of religious hatred on the continent, here is my prediction for a worst case scenario, which I should add I would never want to see:  imagine for a minute that there were 9/11 style attacks in France, what would the French response be? 

We have a small scale test case to answer this question.  Remember what happened after the murder of Van Gogh in the Netherlands. This was a gruesome and appalling murder.  Yet, the response to it, acts of violence against Muslims and mosques collectively in the old --but apparently still alive-- European fashion showed that even in the very liberal Dutch society, the old European mind set still persists.  Hence, to go back to my worst case scenario, if there were a 9/11 type of attack in France,  I shudder to think in which ways the majority French people will take on the Muslims in the country. 

FP: Sorry if I am misunderstanding you here, but this interpretation implies a theme that gets my blood boiling. It reminds me of the lefties here in America who, after the 9/11 attacks, instead of being sympathetic to the victims and their families and angry at the perpetrators, and supporting revenge against those who committed the crimes and those who harboured them, instead were agonizing about how Arab and Muslim rights were now going to be violated.

I am a Russian. If tomorrow, hypothetically, some Russians massacred 3,000 innocent people, my heart would go out to thee victims and to their families, and I would want to see retaliation against those who committed the crime. My greatest concern would not be sitting around thinking: “Oh and now they will discriminate against people like me, people with the ending ‘ov’ at the end of their name.”

I think that this emphasis reveals a certain ideological bent.

Sorry, but when I think of the problem of the growing presence of Muslims in France, the first thing that comes to my mind is the heart-breaking reality of forced marriages and honor killings being perpetrated on Arab-Muslim girls on French territory. I think of forced veiling. I think of the gang-rapes of Muslim and non-Muslim girls who are not veiled in Arab-Muslim ghettoes. I think of female genital mutilations. I think of the growing radical element that might perpetrate another 9/11 over there. I think about all we can possibly and hopefully do to crush these forces. Needless to say, that is what is on my mind, not sitting around worrying what will happen to someone else afterwards, someone that is not even a victim of the huge crime that is perpetrated and should be thought about and condemned.

Bayegan: The worst case scenario will emerge out of our failure to discriminate between Muslims and Islamism. By Islamism, I mean the fundamentalist, extremist doctrine that is based on a violent and intolerant interpretation of  Islam. The worst case scenario will show its ugly and violent face when in our rage against fanaticism we subscribe to another form of fanaticism ourselves. In other words, as Amos Oz the Israeli novelist has said, 'In our anti-fanaticism we can turn into the worst kind of fanatics'.

Remember that the person who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was not a female-genital mutilating, honor killing Muslim, but a fanatical Jew. The worst case scenario would develop out of blind ignorance in all its various shapes and forms. Blind ignorance is not the monopoly of Muslims, it has a fertile breeding ground wherever reason and sound judgment give way to hatred and bigotry. Do not forget that The Holocaust was perpetrated by refined Christians who enjoyed listening to Wagner and perused the works of Heidegger and Celine, and not gang-raping Arabs. What the fundamentalists want, and as an Iranian I can testify to, is to polarize and radicalize the conflict between Islam and the West as much as possible. They want to push the West over the Rubicon of waging a wholesale war against all Muslims. Achieving this task they can turn around and tell their fellow Muslims that the argument of moderate, tolerant Muslims is ineffective and irrelevant. They want to make all Muslims believe that anyone who argues that peaceful coexistence with the West is possible is a traitor to Islam and acts as a fifth column.

The West should concentrate its efforts in defeating Islamism, and not in the alienation of Muslims.

As a child growing up in pre-revolutionary Iran, I remember that my Muslim parents had their best friends amongst the Jews. One of these Jewish friends helped me to leave Iran for Canada after the Revolution and his family provided me with all the love and assistance they could offer at a time when I needed it most: early difficult years of separation from my parents and country. During the time of the Shah, religion did not create division and hatred amongst the Iranian people, but it was a force for gaining spiritual strength and provided the ability to empathize with other human beings irrespective of their race, religion or color. If the fundamentalists eventually prevailed, it was to a large extent due to the unfortunate fact that forces of moderation failed to develop a discourse for safeguarding the spirit of peace, tolerance and political evolution. They took for granted that political stability will last for ever without thinking it necessary to intellectually nourish and defend it. Accordingly the challenge of the writers and orators who were preaching sabotage and violence went unanswered. Fanaticism won by going unchallenged and in absence of a cogent counter-argument.

Dr. Ibn Guadi remarks that it is illusory to think that Muslim moderates form a majority in France, and the moderate Soheib Bencheikh the Mufti of Marseilles does not represent a wide section of the Islamic population in France. The corollary is that the bulk of the Muslim population in France supports groups affiliated with Islamic extremism. This is not an inference reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning. In a country like France where the public opinion shifts from socialism to the far right in a matter of months, it is not fair or consistent to assert that Muslim public opinion is exempt from the same vagaries and is locked in a certain inflexible mode. Muslims, like every member of the human species respond to changes in political, societal and economic circumstances. It would be as ridiculous to suggest that white French Christians are represented by the National Front and Jean-Marie Le Pen because they agreed with him in rejecting the proposed European Constitution; or to say that the protest vote against the Socialists in 2002 was a vote of popularity for Jean-Marie Le Pen and his fascistic views.

Adam Lebor, the author of 'A Heart Turned East' is very illuminating when he says : "In most (French) people's minds to be an Arab is to be a Muslim, and to be a Muslim or a fundamentalist is the same thing. Everywhere young Muslims are told that they ae fundamentalists... So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy". (p. 174). The worst case scenario can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It will happen if people are deprived of their hope to live with dignity and are driven to desperate mindless acts. I believe the very fact that moderate Islamic discourse such as the one propounded by Soheib Bencheikh exists is a cause for hope. I am not here calling for appeasement or promoting wishful thinking, but am suggesting that since there are rational elements within the Islamic community in France, one should do one's best to encourage and disseminate its message. In medieval Spain for more than seven centuries Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, where literature, Science, and arts flourished. If such a co-existence was possible in the so called Dark Ages it cannot be impossible in the twenty-first century.

There has been also some change in French attitudes in the past seven years towards Arabs which seems hopeful. When in 1998 Zinedine Zidane, the French soccer player of Algerian origin scored two goals for France in the World Cup helping France defeat Brazil and claim its first World Cup, everyone in France celebrated; Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Jingoism and casus belli are the attitude of the of Eastern and Western fanatics. A creative solution on the other hand requires a search for a way of peaceful coexistence of diverse and seemingly incompatible elements. The worst case scenario will only come about as a result of victory of ignorance over common sense. Unfortunately there have been many historical precedents for such a victory. It is also possible to change the ticking time bomb into a mellifluous instrument of peace and harmony there have been precedents for that also.

FP: Sorry gentlemen, my eyes are starting to glaze over.

When organizing this symposium, I thought about the term “ticking time bomb” and thought it was a given that it referred to the growth of the Muslim population in France and the dangers it poses. There is an obvious Islamist component here. Within this whole phenomenon lies a clear threat to democracy, freedom, individual rights (of Muslims and non-Muslims) in France, not to mention the rise of extremism and terror etc. As this discussion proceeds, it appears that several members on this panel believe that the ticking time bomb is the potential response that some French citizens might engage in to Islamist terror and extremism. In other words, Islamist terror and extremism is not the problem, but the response that might be made to it.  

Obviously we need to avoid alienating Muslims. It is clear we need to try to nurture a moderate Islam and to ally ourselves with Muslims who seek to modernize and democratize Islam. But to pretend that the threat to France posed by Islamism has nothing to do with the growth of the Muslim presence in France is mind-boggling.

The reminder to us that a fanatical Jew killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is an absurd distraction to this conversation. Sorry, I think the last thing the victims of Islam’s gender apartheid, and all the victims of Islamist terror, worry about at night are fanatical Jews. The homosexual Palestinians that flee to Israel to avoid their death sentences under PA culture for being gay, I assure you, do not live their lives in dread worrying about fanatical Jews. And trust me, when I go to sleep at night and worry about the world’s safety and future, I think about things like 9/11, about Tehran’s Mullahs having nuclear weapons, about Zarqawi and Bin Laden getting their hands on WMDs. The threat of fanatical Jews, I am afraid, does not loom large in my fears at night.

The point about the Holocaust being “perpetrated by refined Christians” is a crock and the people who utter it know it is a crock. The Holocaust was not perpetrated for a Christian reason. It was not perpetrated by Christians acting out of loyalty to their faith and following their religious texts. The Holocaust’s evil was not perpetrated and legitimized, step by step, by references to verses from the New Testament. The Holocaust was the ultimate anti-Christian act that might have been committed by some people who happened to be Christian but who were violating the basic tenets of their religion. You cannot find anything in the New Testament that serves as a foundation for the legitimacy of the Holocaust nor can you find a reference to anything even close to justifying the acts used in carrying it out. And I am not going to waste my time here going over how Islamist terror finds its roots in Muslim texts. Go read Robert Spencer’s Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West.

Do we support Muslims who want to reform Islam and democratize it and make it a religion of peace? Yes. Can we deny that when Osama and al Zarqawi refer to Surahs in the Koran to justify their violent acts that they are referring to real Surahs? No.

The Muslim community is as diverse as any other group, culture and community? Please. When there are Muslim women from the Muslim world freely competing in sports and in the Olympics, get in touch with me. When they are free to become prominent intellectuals and critics in their own society and receive material and cultural rewards for being prominent dissidents, get in touch with me. When they are free, if they so choose, to engage in Muslim beauty pageants, get in touch with me. When Muslims throughout the Arab world start creating the most hilarious self-critical stand-up comedy routines, get in touch with me. When Muslims create heated and controversial talk shows, books and films, where free opinions startle and provoke thought on all limits, and the creators are not hiding in desperate fear of their lives, get in touch with me.

When you can name me ten fatawa, off the top of your head, made by ten famous Muslim clerics against bin Laden within this “diverse” community, get in touch with me. Yes, of course these fatwas exist, but why are they so few in number and what effect have they had on widespread support for Islamic terrorists within the Islamic community worldwide? Does this not say something about "diversity" in the Muslim community?

Kindly also spare us the nonsense about the Islamic “tolerance” that was practised in medieval Spain. Newsflash: it never happened. Robert Spencer has meticulously delegitimized this myth in his Ch. 7, “The Modern Myth of Islamic Tolerance,” in Onward Muslim Soldiers.

In any case, Dr. Ibn Guadi? Sorry, it’s getting a bit hot in here.

Ibn Guadi: I see.

I share the concerns of Reza Bayegan on the fact that no one should favor excess pressure against Muslims. We need, on the contrary, to nourish relations with Muslims who wish to democratize the institutions in the Arab countries. But the error would be to believe that the Islamic religion is accessible to the reform. What I mean to say is that those who wish to change the political institutions don’t want to necessarily change the Muslim institutions. They are two different things. As faith and policy are inseparable to Muslims, the subtraction is difficult. The change is more difficult because it requires the re-examining of several centuries of traditions and Islamic jurisdictions. The authority in Muslim theology rests on Bukhari, Muslim, Shafi'i, Ibn Hanbal and other schools. To be able to "reform" some religious elements, it has to be justified by a person of a higher authority. Which is impossible, given the doctrine they follow.

On the theological level, no one can avoid or draw aside the Hadiths. Several Islamic regulations do not come from the Koran but primarily from the Hadiths. The Canonical circumcision or the five canonical prayers do not appear in the Koran but in the collections of Sahih Bukhari, one of the greatest authorities in the chain of the traditions. Other regulations which do not find their source in the Koran but in the Hadiths are the subject of a religious decree (fatwa) to abolish these precepts as the death penalty for apostasy (Bukhari Jihad 149: II, 56, p. 352, 2), the punishment relating to adultery (Muslim, Hudud 12) or the night voyage of Muhammad to the sky (Bukhari, Manaqib Al-ansar, 42: III, 63, 42, p. 37, 1) which is important to negotiations related to the statute of Jerusalem. But even as great authority as the Mufti of Al-Azhar was, even he could not abolish these precepts. Because to some, when you discuss these points you call into question the legitimacy of the Muslei faith. It is precisely for this reason that the leaders of the UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France) have had disputes with the French government. For the Moslems in France and elsewhere, to discuss these points is to reduce their faith.

It should be realized that in the eyes of some Muslims, the religion of Islam is itself the reform the world needs. According to the Islamic doctrines, Judaism and Christianity are good religions but not sufficiently reliable to claim the authority on the questions of faith. For the Muslims, the Christians and the Jews were misled in their writings. In the spirit of Islam, the religion was reformed because the Koran corrected the preceding revelations.

Even if it is difficult to admit, I must recognize that Jamie is right when he says that no one can be unaware of the various texts in which Osama bin Laden or others are using. In February 1998, in a text of six pages, bin Laden declared the war on the Jews and the Christians through a fatwa. No Muslim religious authority produced a fatwa to refute the remarks of Osama. Few Muslims would be in disagreement with what bin Laden said on November 3, 2001 on chain Al-Jazira: "It is impossible to forget the hostility which exists between the inaccurate ones and us. It is a question of religion and creed". From a purely objective point of view, he was right.

Some Muslims are better assimilated than others. Yes, but if they are better assimilated it’s because they are "less" Islamic. The more spiritual questions that face the Muslims in France, the less they feel related to the country which they live.

Moreover, contrary to the Turks in Germany, the Muslims in France did not need to insist to get their citizenship because a residence permit can be sufficient. The residence permit is delivered to aliens for a 10 years period. Several immigrants whom I know have had this card for 40 years and don’t know the French language at all.

Moreover, they do not wish to acquire French nationality and speak about it rather with contempt.

About the worst case scenario in France. On the one hand, France could implode. But on the other hand, I don’t think that this implosion would have a huge impact in French society. I agree with Laurent about the Theo van Gogh impact among the French people.

Bayegan talks about Jean-Marie Le Pen. But most of Muslims in France have been like (even admire) him since the end of 80’s. This field is taboo in France, but when Jean-Marie Le Pen says in some interviews that most of aliens agree with him, he is right.

Murawiec: The sad truth, I think, is that little indigenous to Europe will seriously contribute to defusing the “time bomb.” There is a bomb ticking because the world of Islam has proven itself incapable of facing modernity, because of the stubborn adherence of its rent-seeking and rent-owning elites to a mythical view of the world, because Muslims have been left with the delusional world-view of a Golden Age of Islam to which one should aspire to return, because a self-image of the Muslim-as-victim (of “imperialism,” of “colonialism,” of “Zionism” and whatever else) has been systematically propagated by those elites, and accepted by large numbers. So we have large numbers of alienated Muslims throughout Europe.

Soner is right about the Turks: since they come from a more structured society with strong historical traditions and a sense of self-respect born of a millennial domination of the region south and east, their self-identity tends to be less based on self-aggrieved victimhood than that of Arabs. However, even the Turkish model, which has much to be admired, today faces the rising tide of an Islamic regime which is drowning the secular modernizers. The limits of the Ataturkian model have been reached: Mein Kampf is the #1 bestseller in Turkey today, it is sold at train stations, museums, newsstands, etc. Once again, it is perfectly true that Turkish areas in German towns are no ghettoes. So both Turks and Germans are better off. Still, it does not dispense us from dealing with the problem that Islamism in general poses.

We’ve got to deal with Islam – I’ll agree with Mohamed. Now, being alienated does not mean being right. “Suffering bestows no right,” said Albert Camus. The problem is that today’s world of Islam considers it licit and even recommended to kill Infidels as a way of “solving” problems. Al-Azhar says that. Qaradhawi says it. The Saudi shaykhs repeat it endlessly. Arafat built a career on it, as well as Saddam, Assad, etc.The ideology of terror has been promoted, extolled, lionized, and adopted, in the world of Islam as in no other part of the world. It is symptomatic of the generalized blindness that prevails in the world of Islam: a love of destruction, a desire for annihilation: Nihilism has become a principal intellectual force. Blame Khomeini and Shariati, al-Banna and Qutb, as well as Michel Aflaq and the ideologues of “secular” nationalism. This is what powers the time bomb.

Now, Europe’s attitude has been to pretend that this does not exist, and look the other way. In the UK, the Labour Party is so craven toward the radicals in the Muslim population, there is little that it will not do to gain its favors. While France was watching existentialist movies and dreaming of imperial glory, huge swaths of surburban (banlieue) territory have become “lawless areas” (zones de non-droit). So it’s not just a French problem, though the problem there is acute. Bat Ye’or has a very strong point when she analyzes Europe’s evolution as moving toward what she called “Eurabia.”  To deal with a problem, you would need to recognize it to start with. I’m alright, Jack, says the French elite. Europe, I predict, will do nothing. It will wait, like the proverbial Roman patricians, waiting for the Barbarians at gates to enter and slaughter them.

Now, dealing with Islam. It seems to me that we have to escape the fatal dilemma: “it’s their religion, we can’t touch it.” The problem is that Islam has been captured by Islamism; we can live with Islam in general, we cannot live with Islamism. Islam has failed to cope with Islamism. We have to do so, because it will not let us live, but make us die.

In part, slowly, haphazardly, awkwardly, the U.S. has started facing the problem. See Condi Rice’s superb speech in Cairo – challenging our pseudo-friends and revoking the disastrous Eisenhower Doctrine in the Middle East, which, as she emphasized, put stability ahead of democracy to the point of forgetting the latter altogether. So we’re moving ahead. This in turn encourages those in Europe who are unhappy with continental suicide, and, even more importantly, those in and around the world of Islam, who want it to change: Irshad Manji, Nasser Abu Zaid, Ibn Warraq, Yousef Seddik, Abdelwahab Medeb, Kanan Makiya, etc. Dissidents all, each in their own way. They are the seeds. We must help them, because their societies are too despotic and frightened to give them much help. We’ve started with Iraq – we’re doing the right thing, through our innumerable stupidities and mistakes. Let’s go on. The idea is that it is at the root – Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. – that terror as the preferred and extolled solution to the crisis of Islam must be tackled.

Am I far from France? Oui et non. There is indeed a ticking time bomb. The growing self-assertiveness of a radical and violent minority has already started to spill over into the hip and posh areas – a recent street demonstration of high-school students in Paris was violently attacked by Arab thugs from the suburbs who proceeded to beat up and loot the ‘rich French kids,’ with abundant displays of racial hatred. Not that I think that the multiculturalist elites will take heed. When you're bent on self-annihilation, you don't "notice" the Barbarians. There we are.

Cagaptay:  Let's put things straight.  First, no need to compare Europe to the US when we discuss the issue of and how and if Muslims fit into these societies, etc.  The US is light years ahead of Europe in terms of religious coexistence and also its ability to frankly discuss such issues.  (I am not even going into why we should not compare Russian cases to America: just remember the "rescue" effort when Chechen terrorists took hostages at the Moscow theater: Russian security forces stormed the building and killed over a hundred of their own citizens instead of saving them).  Anyhow, the point I am making, which I should repeat so it does not get blurred behind the moderator's comments, is that we face two gruesome problems: a large, growing, unintegrated, poor, and increasingly radical Muslim population, which because it has been left in the hands of fundamentalists is becoming monochromic and is segregated from the rest of France, and a larger French society that will not even admit that these problems, is at a loss as to how to deal with it.  This society, I am afraid, will be rudely awakened and will react harshly as deserved but not wisely as needed for victory -because of its lack of religious tolerance when the fundamentalist Muslims show the first signs if serious unrest or conduct terrorist attacks in France. Now, is that a time bomb and a half or what?

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