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Maude Vallet |
Well, perhaps not "joy" exactly, but before we plunge into things let's get something out of the way, immediately.
A "Jihadi," as I am using the term, is anyone who believes in the restoration of the Muslim Caliphate for the purpose of spreading al-Sharia throughout the known universe and who justifies violence in that "noble" pursuit.
In a piece for the Gatestone Institute entitled, France's New Sharia Police, Yves Mamou tells us that:
For years, "big brothers" have been obliging their mothers and sisters to wear a veil when they go out. Now that this job is done, they have begun to fight non-Muslim women who wear shorts and skirts -- no longer just in the sensitive Muslim "no-go zones" of the suburbs, where women no longer dare to wear skirts -- but now also in the heart of big cities.
The cultural enrichment is just stupefying.
Mamou's examples include the beating of a French girl by a Muslim man in Brittany for daring to wear "provocative" clothing; the attack by ten young Muslims in Toulon of two European families on a bike path as they yelled "whores!" and "strip naked!" before beating the holy crap out of one of the husbands; also in Toulon, 18-year-old Maude Vallet was spat upon by a gang of Muslim girls for the crime of wearing short pants; in a resort in Garde-Colombe, the Alps, a Moroccan guy stabbed a woman and her three daughters for being "scantily dressed" and then complained that he was, in fact, the "victim" by accusing one of the men of making an obscene gesture in front of his wife; and last April a 16 year-old-girl in a suburb of Paris was severely beaten by three young Muslim women for wearing a skirt.
The rise of Political Islam is not limited to Sharia-enforcing states like Iran or ISIS, nor to Jihadi organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Gaza, or Hezbollah in Lebanon. It also includes regular Muslim on the streets of western cities, when those Muslims approve of imposing Islamic law on non-Muslim societies. Your average work-a-day Muslim in the West, however, despite their disinclination to condemn their Jihadi brothers and sisters is not a problem. Like Muslims everywhere they are simply trying to put food on the table and take care of their families.
Nonetheless, what we are seeing today is the contemporary example of a thirteen-hundred year old imperial project designed by Muhammad in the early 7th century. It is good that most Muslims are not Jihadis, but this does not change the fact that the rise of Political Islam is, perhaps, the most significant geo-political phenomenon since the demise of the Soviet Union.
Just as the conflict against Nazi Germany in World War II was not "racist" towards Germans, so those of us concerned about the rise of Political Islam are not "racist" toward Muslims. Political Islam (or Islamism) is a highly significant and toxic political movement throughout the Middle East and Europe and, like any political movement, it can be friendly or unfriendly, but always open to criticism. Unfortunately, given the brutality and the goals of Political Islam as expressed in the various Jihadi organizations, like the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood, finding necessary and harsh criticisms is like picking apples from a tree.
Beheadings. Stonings. Slavery.
Where do you start?
Mamou believes that "the Islamic dress code is the Trojan horse of Islamist jihad..." and quotes Professor of Philosophy, Berenice Levet, of the École Polytechnique, telling the French daily newspaper, Le Figaro that, "In the war that Islamism is leading with determination against civilization, women are becoming a real issue." And:
... I want it recognized once and for all that if today the roles of the genders are forced to regress in France, if domination and patriarchy are spreading in our country, this fact is related exclusively to our having imported Muslim values.
This is, of course, exceedingly touchy terrain and I can practically hear the ice cracking beneath my feet as I write.
However, the primary question is whether or not we are seeing the emergence of "Virtue Police" in the streets of Paris.
Mamou tells us:
And this is precisely why Political Islam is already having a profound influence on western culture.
As a movement, it is not merely a top-down phenomenon, but an organic, bottom-up phenomenon, as well. It is the organic nature of this fascist-like movement that makes it so slippery and difficult to pin down. It is for this reason that Jihadi apologists in Europe and the United States, including Barack Obama, always explain away Jihadi attacks as the psychotic doings of lone maniacs who suffer from schizophrenia or homophobia or work-place discontentment or who are driven to kill non-Muslims by the NRA or the Trump campaign or the evil behavior of ordinary, privilege-strutting, white guys.
It can never be about Islamic teachings, as we find them in the Qur'an or Hadiths, because that is far too inconvenient for international elites such as Angela Merkel or Hillary Clinton who want an enlightened progressive system of open borders with a significant degree of top-down control as we see in the non-democratic European Union.
The grassroots imposition of Islamic dress codes on the indigenous European population is merely one way of normalizing a system of jurisprudence that is completely at odds with the western political tradition as handed down from from Magna Carta via the Constitution of the United States and the western liberal political tradition, more generally.
If al-Sharia is encroaching onto western legal terrain, the implications should be sobering for anyone concerned about the maintenance of free speech or the fundamental rights of individual liberty.
Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.