Now not only has the British National Party got its own Jewish candidate, so has the French Front National. Madame Arrouas does point out in her defence that some of Le Pen’s best friends are Jewish.
I remember when Britain’s (now defunct) National Front used to have a couple of black stooges who would speak to the media on their behalf back in the 70s so I suppose there’s a precedent for this strangeness.
Here’s another good article about identity myths.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1174826,00.html
Here are some choice bits from an article babara amiel wrote in the Telegraph after the french decision to ban headscarves in state schools:
“France is facing the problem that dare not speak its name. Though French law prohibits the census from any reference to ethnic background or religion, many demographers estimate that as much as 20-30 per cent of the population under 25 is now Muslim. The streets, the traditional haunt of younger people, now belong to Muslim youths. In France, the phrase “les jeunes” is a politically correct way of referring to young Muslims.”
“Given current birth rates, it is not impossible that in 25 years France will have a Muslim majority. The consequences are dynamic: is it possible that secular France might become an Islamic state?”
“For Islamists, assimilation is contamination since, in Professor Bernard Lewis’s words, “Muslims must not sojourn in the land of the infidel”. Intermarriage should be another route to assimilation, though in France this usually involves an Islamic male and often the wife converts to Islam. Meanwhile, the state of Christendom in France is perilous. Catholics may not have reached the secular nirvana of the Church of England’s working party that declared the Sunday Sabbath redundant, but French Catholicism, except for little pools of the faithful, is taken with the notion that their Church will be borne forward only if the next Pope is ready to “dialogue” with Islam – a code word that augurs dilution of the faith.”
“Europe’s chickens are coming home to roost. The Great Powers used the Commonwealth or La Francophonie to continue the fiction of Empire. Large numbers of people were admitted mainly from North Africa.”
“European countries are not organically immigrant societies. The groups that went to America in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries did so specifically to become Americans. They wanted to shed their past and, within a generation, they did. America’s emphasis today on faith and God is just an echo of the founding Pilgrims for whom Christianity was central.”
“Europe’s chickens are coming home to roost. The Great Powers used the Commonwealth or La Francophonie to continue the fiction of Empire. Large numbers of people were admitted mainly from North Africa.” “European countries have none of this melting-pot principle. You cannot become German or Italian with the same ease with which you become American. Also, into this very different European environment came a very different sort of immigrant – people who had no interest in assimilation at all. They came as settlers, wanting to establish their own communities; at best they favoured a merger – at worst, a takeover. Their approach was nurtured by notions of multiculturalism, a creed appealing to intellectuals, administrators and enforcers, but having almost zero appeal to the home population.”
On a related point, you posted a very interesting article by Rod Liddle here recently; it warrants a more detailed response but this is the best I can manage in the available time. For all the many faults in his article, Liddle actually skims the surface of genuine and worthwhile debate, and he does it more subtly than your summary suggests. The essential point is that in almost all Western countries, secularism and free market economics are the prevailing forces and EVERYTHING else is subservient, especially Christianity. The only reason Christians are comfortable with this because they believe Jesus(AS) said something about giving to Ceaser what belongs to Ceaser and giving to God what belongs to God; he didn’t say that, but that’s a different debate. Most practicing Christians and Jews that I know regard politics as something dirty and quite separate from religious practice. Islam isn’t like that, it simply does not make such distinctions, which is why it is more a way of life than a religion; you simply cannot be a good Muslim and a secularist. The strong sense of common identity it engenders in its followers, together with its willingness to be a political force is what makes it such a threat to the political elites in the West; as Liddle suggest, it is currently the most obvious opposition to the secular, free market capitalism they advocate. This is also why a number of Westerners are now making increasingly shrill appeals to some common sense of identity – and the stuff they are coming up with is absolutely laughable. Samuel Huntingdon’s essay in the current issue of the Journal of Foreign Affairs is a case in point. I actually agreed with his take on the Clash of Civilisations, but in his recent essay he warns that hispanic immigration and fertility will precipitate a crisis in america by breaking the “white protestant consensus”. Its almost as funny as all those “English” people, that when asked to describe “Britishness” begin by talking about “a sense of fairplay”; as if God dished it out to them at the expense of everyone else.
Given this background, the idea that Islam will somehow be defeated by free market capitalism is, frankly, wishful. Apart from anything else, it underestimates what Islam, as a personal and political choice, is all about. Islam does not mean peace, it means submission and that’s the essence of the statement “they (the non-believers) love life as much as you (the believers) should love death”. I can quite see why this would be scary to some, but for a Muslim, it’s meaning behind the strangeness of life.
Anyway, I’m off to watch the India vs. Pak. One-dayer. It’s the deciding game.