LA PORTE DE L'ENFER
What are the factors
and origins of the violence shaking France?
By Sidney Hey
Before the new century
and years before the events of 9/11 in 2001, Arabophobia and Islamophobia were
a reality in the Anglo-Saxon world and even more so in Western Europe. The
mistrust and aversion to Muslims that had prevailed since the late 1970s and
1980s because of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation (framed by
pro-Israeli sympathy), and with the emergence in the 1990s of alleged terrorist
organisations such as “Al Qaeda” (created by the CIA in 1979), that aversion
shifted to a degree of hatred institutionalised by governments and fuelled by
the media.
Immigration to Europe
(including the British Isles) from Arab countries such as Morocco, Algeria and
Islamic countries such as Turkey, Pakistan and Bangladesh began to be perceived
as dangerous by the early 1980s. Centred on racial hatred, this mistrust was
exploited by “private” organisations linked to Zionist (pro-Israel) political
interests to generate more anger and mistrust by creating stereotypes in the
media that dehumanise Muslims.
We saw the result of
this with the brutal invasions of Iraq and Libya and the opaque positions of
the European Union in situations such as Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen.
Muslims have long been
considered second-class citizens and marginalised in France. Long before the
suspicious and unclear attacks on “Charlie-Hebdo” in 2015 and even before 2001,
“Turks”, “blacks” and “Moors” had been the target of all kinds of arbitrariness
and discrimination in all areas of French Catholic but secular life. In this
context of a society with no values or little rootedness in religious tradition,
the influence of Islam was gaining ground, fuelling even more mistrust. This led to several violent uprisings in the
suburbs of Paris, the one in November 2005 being one of the most resounding in
France's contemporary history, which has undoubtedly been surpassed by the one
that took place a few days ago.
The murder a week ago
of Nahel, a 17-year-old of Algerian Arab origin, only reaffirms the state of
arbitrariness and racial violence that exists and underlies one of the European
countries of proclaimed democratic value and whose political elite (not
coincidentally) has excellent and symbiotic relations with the state of Israel,
where such cases are a daily occurrence.
It is in this context
that the political farce represented by the “socialist” Macron, more occupied
with his musical hobbies and posturing over the situation in Ukraine than with
reforming the vices of the republic, stands out. The current government is a
continuation of the administrations of two of the most reactionary
administrations, those of Sarkozy and Hollande, partly responsible for the
interventions in Arab and North African countries that have created the wave of
migration that the public detests.
Within this Status Quo
and from governmental bodies such as the “Sureté Nationale” and the DGSE
(intelligence) Muslims were made the centre of imputation for all the evils
afflicting a society in decadence and that contrary to this, Islam represents a
hope for a spiritual path marked by its own precepts.
The push for the
so-called “fight against terrorism” and the governmental hoaxes created in
Washington to justify this farce gave free rein to unbridled and irrational
hatred against Muslims in Europe and especially in France.
Although the term “anti-Semitic”
has been arbitrarily and discretionary capitalised to qualify only hatred
against Jews, it also includes Arabs because of their Semitic status,
Islamophobia being a more encompassing term for hatred against a Semitic ethnic
group of Islamic confession. It is for this reason -and beyond its political
use- that the diatribes, the instigations formulated over the years in the
Western media and the crimes against Muslims imply a further variant of this
anti-Semitism.
Muslim refugees did not
come to Europe as tourists or as the intellectual taresayers point out in order
to “Islamise” Europe. Their arrival was largely a consequence of the
interventionism and war adventures of their own governments (following the US)
in the regions they come from.
What has happened in
France in the last week is neither new nor alien to the rest of Europe. Killing
an Arab or those who profess Islam is something that has been going on for a
long time and the European media have treated it with little interest. The
phenomenon of Islamophobia is something that has developed strongly throughout
the EU and has branched out to the American continent with the constant attacks
and prejudice against the growth and insertion of Islamic traits into Western
culture. Thus the growth of institutions such as mosques, dress, the role of
women and Islamic practices in public places are the signs most abhorred by
those who fervently hate Muslims.
Will the riots over the
death of this young Arab be enough of a lesson for the French political
establishment? I certainly don't think so.
