a day ago
Has France got what it takes to stand up to the Islamists?
In the early 1990s, an underground organisation was launched called the Barbie Liberation Movement (BLM). Its mission statement was a 'commitment to challenging malign systems', by which it meant the patriarchy.
The BLM was inspired by a talking Barbie doll, launched in 1992, who had 270 platitudes, one of which was 'math class is tough'. Outraged feminist groups forced Mattel Inc, the makers of Barbie, to remove what they described as a sexist slur.
Now, though, may be the hour for the Barbie Liberation Movement to reform and once more fight the patriarchy. This time, however, the patriarchy is different. It no longer consists of ageing white men with their outdated views that science and maths are subjects best left to boys; it's Islamists, whose view on women make the men of Mattel in the early 1990s seem positively progressive.
Last week, an Islamist mob forced the mayor of Noisy-le-Sec, a Parisian suburb run by the Communists, to cancel a screening of Barbie, the Hollywood blockbuster starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. They liked neither the feminist nor the homosexual elements in the film and threatened the mayor that there would be trouble if the open-air screening went ahead.
The mayor succumbed to the threats, provoking an angry backlash among France's political class. Aurore Bergé, the minister for gender equality, said it was more than just a thuggish threat from a group of young men: it was an attempt by Islamists to 'infiltrate' society and impose their values at the expense of the Republic's.
Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister, also used the word 'infiltrate' and said the objective of the Islamists is 'to tip the whole of French society under sharia law'. In the face of such dedicated fanaticism, said Retailleau, 'the slightest retreat…is unacceptable'.
The mayor of Noisy-le-Sec has promised to show the film – which was requested by residents of his district – at a later date; but rather than admit he was wrong to cave in to the Islamists, Mayor Olivier Sarrabeyrouse has tried to blame the furore on his political adversaries. At a press conference he declared:
While I continue to condemn in the strongest terms the acts that I have described as obscurantism and fundamentalism, I condemn even more strongly the political exploitation and speculation, the racist and Islamophobic hatred that has been pouring out of the right and the far right.
Sarrabeyrouse also pointed a finger at journalists, suggesting there were more important matters in the world than Islamists curtailing freedom of expression.
I regret that you journalists are still arguing about our local issue, even though a few days ago, several of your colleagues were cowardly murdered by the Israeli army.
Sarrabeyrouse doesn't appear to understand what is at stake; or perhaps he does and he knows, like others on Europe's political left, that pandering to elements of the Muslim vote is the only way to be re-elected, as they have long since lost the support of the white working class. The French call this 'clientélisme'.
In June this year the official magazine for all France's elected mayors published a warning ahead of next May's municipal elections. Headlined 'Muslim Brotherhood: the risk of 'clientelist deals' in municipal elections', the article relayed the key findings of a recent government report about the Muslim Brotherhood in France. The secretive Islamist organisation had embarked on a new strategy, warned the report, which they described as 'municipal Islamism'. The Brotherhood would stand some of its members in next year's elections while also organising ''clientelist transactions' aimed at satisfying certain specific segments of the Muslim electorate'.
Mayor Sarrabeyrouse will have a hard time trying to convince France that his critics are 'Islamophobic'; the threats made against Barbie are just the latest in a series of ugly incidents this summer. In June, a pop-up store opened in Lyon selling Islamic clothing. Stating that it catered to 'modest Muslim women', the shop refused entry to any customer whose head was uncovered.
In July, a cinema in Saint-Ouen, just north of Paris, cancelled at late notice a documentary about freedom of expression inspired by the murder of the Charlie Hebdo staff a decade ago. It was reported that the cinema felt that the film violated its 'welcome charter', which 'prohibits political events'. This hadn't prevented the cinema from showing a film a week earlier about environmental activism.
At the end of July, a 28-year-old woman was beaten up at a station south of Paris by a man who called her a 'dirty whore' for wearing a short skirt. The man's wife, who was wearing a North African djellaba, joined in the attack.
Nine years ago this month, I wrote an article for Coffee House headlined 'France is right to ban the burkini'. That summer, young women had begun appearing on French beaches wearing the Islamic burkini; coming only days after an Islamist had murdered 86 people at Nice, the authorities banned the garment for fear it would provoke a wider French public still in shock after the massacre.
I argued that the French were right because the burkini was just one strand of an Islamist strategy of intimidation. I referenced the case of a Muslim waitress in a Nice bar who had recently been assaulted by two men for serving alcohol during Ramadan. I also mentioned the young woman in Reims, beaten by a pack of furious teenage girls who objected to her sunbathing in a bikini in a public park.
At the time Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, warned of the emergence of a police of morality, and said: 'If we do not put an end to this, there is a risk that in ten years, young Muslim girls who do not want to wear the veil or burkini will be stigmatised and peer-pressured.'
Last year in Montpellier a 13-year-old Muslim girl was beaten unconscious outside her school gates in Montpellier by a fellow pupil who felt she dressed too liberally.
The Islamists haven't mellowed since 2016. Quite the opposite. They sense that France, and Europe in general, is weakening. They haven't the stomach for a fight. Most European politicians, like the mayor in Noisy-le-Sec, just want a quiet life. Better to submit than to stand up to the Islamists.
