Bastié views the new far Left’s alliance with political Islam as one of the most spectacular intellectual shifts. In the last decade or so, controversies about the place of Islam in French society and the challenge of radical (i.e., “political”) Islam have moved to the center of the public debate, along with the related issues of laïcité, immigration, and French identity.
The origin of the debate and, thus, of the fracture of the Left was the famous “veil issue” (l’affaire du voile) of 1989, when three teenage girls refused to take off their hijabs at a school in northern France. The Right rallied the liberal Left to the defense of the French tradition of laïcité, which, since the early 20th century, has sought to keep religion separate from politics and public education. But the far and cultural Lefts supported the rights of the schoolgirls to express their religious identity. Since then, political Islam has been the main actor and beneficiary of identity politics in France—and is likely to survive it. It sees universalism and laïcité as mere screens that discriminate against Muslims and foster Islamophobia.
Of course, the main reason why the traditionally anti-religious far Left embraced political Islam involves its rejection of liberal democracy, not a religious epiphany. Bastié says that the three main intellectual pillars of this alliance are Third Worldism, a legacy of Marxism; the idea that immigrants have become the new proletariat; and the misleading claim that Muslims in the West are what the Jews were in the 1930s, Islamophobia having replaced antisemitism. The most famous and extreme propagandist of political Islam is the Swiss Islamic philosopher Tariq Ramadan. Its fiercest opponents are female intellectuals born in Africa to Muslim families.Bastié also describes the rise of neo-feminism and radical anti-racism as powerful trends in France’s public debate. It is true that feminist, black, and gay movements in France have lacked the intensity and clout they have in the United States and northern Europe. However, the demographic growth of ethnic and racial minorities in France, as well as transatlantic militancy, have given new impetus to these causes and the theories that inform them. Bastié says the old French traditions of gallantry and libertinage are being reinterpreted as screens for the subjugation of women. For universalist feminists, the Muslim veil is a symbol of oppression; but for neo-feminists, it signals the emancipation of Muslim women. Neo-feminists have refused to condemn rapists who are immigrants: In the infamous mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, 2016, the neo-feminists argued that the rapists were merely acting according to their cultural norms.
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The Best Way to Combat Islamophobia (Read 30674 times)
