France goes on a (secularist) jihad against ... "Islamo-leftism" (?!?)

Emmanuel Macron's version of "European values" is looking grimmer all the time. I must admit I don't recall hearing the term "Islamo-leftism" before although this article says it's been around since the 1960s. You might think "Islamo-leftism" would be some Islam-inspired set of political values that included secular government and protection of equal rights of women, the same values European Muslim-haters claim to be defending against those scary, scary Muslims. But apparently it's just another synonym for "we hate Muslims and fancy perfessers".

French Assembly passes bill aiming to curb Islamism Reuters 02/17/2021:

Norimitsu Onishi and Constant Méheut (Heating Up Culture Wars, France to Scour Universities for Ideas That ‘Corrupt Society’ New York Times 02/18/2021):

[T]he French government announced this week that it would launch an investigation into academic research that it says feeds “Islamo-leftist’’ tendencies that “corrupt society.’’

News of the investigation immediately caused a fierce backlash among university presidents and scholars, deepening fears of a crackdown on academic freedom — especially on studies of race, gender, post-colonial studies and other fields that the French government says have been imported from American universities and contribute to undermining French society. [my emphasis]

You have to give Macron's political consultants some credit though. They have managed to frame this latest anti-Muslim schtick as anti-Americanism, too!

There's a real irony here, as there often is with these kinds of goofy theories: "In recent years, a new, more diverse generation of social science scholars has ... clashed with an older generation of intellectuals who regard these social science theories as American imports — though many of the thinkers behind race, gender and post-colonialism are French or of other nationalities." (my emphasis)

I guess the good thing about terms like "Islamofascism", "political Islam", and this "Islamo-leftism", is that you can use them without having to know anything about Islam or politics or political theory to use them. Because they all are various forms of "we hate them thar Muslims.

But an actual "Islamo-leftism" that included secular government, women's rights and other things like reducing poverty and providing good public services really would be a good thing. There are a lot of Muslims in the world in a lot of very different countries, so elements of those ideas can surely be found in various forms, though this French propaganda campaign has nothing to do with that. Since many of those countries were colonies of Western powers, anti-imperialism has been a element in various strains of "Islamic" politics, something which corresponds with left politics. And the obligation for individuals believers to contribute to supporting the poor is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

But much of what we know today as "Islamism" or "Islamic fundamentalism" was also consciously promoted by the US and other Western powers as a conservative alternative to Soviet ideology and "Arab socialism". Robert Dreyfuss describes that history in Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (2005). The US support for the mujahideen in Afghanistan's war against the USSR - the mujahideen who were celebrated by US conservatives and most liberals alike as heroic freedom fighters - created a distinctive form of "jihadism" of which we have become more familiar than most of us would have wanted to. Even though the theological trends incorporated into the ideologies of groups like Al-Qaida and the Islamic State have much longer historical roots. (See, e.g.: Myra MacDonald, From "Freedom-Fighters" to the Islamic State: The Mutation of Jihad War on the Rocks 03/09/2015)

One of the favorite Islamophobic political tropes is to say, look, them Muslims are against women's rights and are anti-Semitic, and I hate Muslims, so I'm for women's rights and against anti-Semitism. It's cynical to the point of caricature.

But pretending you believe transparently ridiculous stuff is part of the far-right culture, in Europe like in America. Of course, not everyone of that persuasion has to *pretend* they believe transparently ridiculous stuff, because they really do believe it.

For a long time, I thought a classic-liberal-type position would make sense as a counter-argument, i.e., a secular government should enforce equal rights and freedom of religion. And illegal religious coercion should be dealt with legally. Protection against domestic violence and psychological abuse should be available to everyone, along with medical and social help for victims. Handling religious diversity is always a challenge in education for children and teenagers, of course. But it's far from being a new problem.

Yet even though all of that is sensible from a liberal or left position, those arguments don't really address the actual Islamophobic rhetoric. One, because Islamophobic fear-mongering is actually about "Othering" Muslims and foreigners. And, two, in my limited experience, e.g., people complaining about Muslim women and girls wearing "headscarves" (hijabs) don't give a flying flip about Muslim women's rights. (Nor are they particularly concerned with the rights of non-Muslim women.)

The headscarf gripe is mainly used to stigmatize Muslim women and girls, not as any show of actual sympathy. This is very much in line with the identitarian/xenophobic/racist conspiracy theory that Muslim women and girls are the biggest danger to "The West" because they supposedly breed more little Muslim babies, as part of a plot enshrined in the Qur’an to conquer infidels by more prolific sex, or whatever.

I can say specifically for Austria that Austrian-born Muslim children on the average produce as many children as other Austrian-born Austrians, not more. Although I expect most if not all EU countries see something similar.

If the Islamophobes were serious about "integration" of Muslims in egalitarian, democratic cultural practices, something like a "left" version of Islam is exactly what would be needed to produce that. That's especially true for de-radicalization efforts aimed at countering actual Islamist religious-political propaganda. Young people who are attracted to that scene need to hear and see Muslim men and women who can talk about the Islamic faith and social values stemming from it. They aren't going to listen to some Christian preacher or rightwing politician saying that Islam is Satanic or that the existence of Muslim women and girls are the greatest threat to "European values".

Given that Macron's latest xenophobic posturing is focused on complaining about fancy-pants college perfessers and their weird ideas that ain't gone teach nobody how to repair a car, this just seems like another exercise in rightwing populism to me.

A final consideration. Predominantly Muslim Algeria was formally a département of France from 1848 to 1962, not a separate colony like France's other colonial possessions. So if France's supposedly superior European culture hasn't yet found a way to "integrate" Muslim citizens - maybe it's not Muslim culture that is the only problem.. If France hasn’t found a solution to the Muslim “problem” by now – maybe Muslim culture isn’t the main problem.

International dispute around the Samuel Paty murder in France

Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan is taking the current uproar in France over the murder of a teacher by a Muslim zealot to posture as a champion of the Islamic faith (Muslim world condemns Macron, France over treatment of Islam 10/26/2020):

The backlash over French President Emmanuel Macron’s critique of Islam has intensified after Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan questioned his counterpart’s mental health, while Muslims in several countries are demanding a boycott of France.

Marking his second sharp criticism against Macron in two days, Erdogan said on Sunday that the French president had “lost his mind”, prompting France’s foreign minister to recall the country’s ambassador in Ankara.

The controversy has to do with a sensational case of a 47-year-old teacher, Samuel Paty, who "was beheaded after he reportedly showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a civics lesson." (Rachel Treisman, After Brutal Beheading, Rallies Erupt Across France To Honor Slain Teacher NPR 10/18/2020)

Deutsche Welle English reports on the ensuing discussion in France (Elizabeth Bryant, As France mourns slain teacher Samuel Paty, some question secular values 10/24/2020):

The same mocking cartoons which inspired the Charlie Hebdo attacks — and last month's stabbing of two people in Paris — are again testing the limits of France's vaunted secularism, or laïcité. Clashing views of faith and free speech are on the line. Feeding the tensions, some experts say, is a broader sense of stigmatization and disenfranchisement felt by many French Muslims, who represent Western Europe's largest Islamic community.

Now, as President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist government have vowed an all-out war against radical Islam, critics have said the strong defense of secularism is only exacerbating the problem. Instead of providing a neutral space for the country's melting pot of beliefs, as it's intended, secularism - enshrined in a 1905 law separating church and state - has become a flashpoint.

"There's a political culture that has problems with Islam," said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a prominent sociologist and expert on radical Islam. "And this political culture, laïcité, is a problem."

If one wants to have a real grasp of the real issues involved with violent Islamic fundamentalist groups, secularism and its relation to the democratic values of freedom of religion, social integration of immigrants from Muslim countries, women's rights, Islamophobic demagogy, and the problem of so-called "parallel communities". Elizabeth Bryant discusses the French version of the latter:

Authorities insist there is no disharmony between moderate Islam and French values. They instead fault communitarianism, a term used in France to suggest an inward-looking view of society that is often, although not exclusively, linked to conservative Islam. More recently, Macron has replaced communitarianism with separatism in his lexicon.

Some observers have said that same inward view helped fuel Paty's murder, with authorities citing an online hate campaign launched by a disgruntled parent of a student in Paty's class. That campaign, they say, motivated 18-year-old Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Anzorov to kill Paty.

In its fight against communitarianism over the years, the French government has introduced bans on religious symbols in public schools and offices and outlawed full-body Islamic swimsuits, or burkinis, in public swimming pools and beaches, the latter cast as a hygienic measure.

In September some lawmakers, including from Macron's own party, recently walked out of a session of the National Assembly during a speech by a veiled student leader — although she had broken no laws with her hijab. [my emphasis]

The French conflicts around Islam and Muslim extremism often gets framed in the press as a conflict between secularism values/laïcité and Islamic fundamentalism. In terms of classical liberal-secularist values, people are free to practice the religion they want, or no religion at all, and are free to talk and write about their religion without being put in jail for it. At the same time, they are free to criticize other people's religion or lack thereof without being jailed or murdered for it. In that framework, Samuel Paty's murder seems like a classic case of a hate crime motivated by his exercise of legitimate speech as a teacher.

But Islamophobia is also a key element of the ideology of non-Muslim far-right parties and sects and is often promoted by people who are also anti-democratic and racist and are using Islamophobia to promote a political program that has nothing to do with respecting women's rights or freedom of religion.

So keeping in mind the need to walk and chew gum at the same time is important in looking at larger controversies like the one that is currently associated with the murder of Samuel Paty.

The notion that Muslim form "parallel societies" in Europe, or "separatism" in Macron's usage, is always worth scrutinizing closely when it's used by politicians or the popular press. In France, for instance, the status of Muslims in society is heavily influenced by the specifics of French colonialism, and in particular the experience of Algeria being held as a French colony since 1830 and then becoming independence in the Algerian War of 1954-1962, which was particularly traumatic for French and Algerian politics.

But the notion of "parallel society" easily serves as one more iteration of the idea of Those People Who We In The Majority Society Don't Like as "not being like us," i.e., "The Jews keep to themselves", "Black people don't want their schools integrated with white schools," and on and on. Obviously, if immigrants or other minorities are really completely isolated from the society in which they live to such an extent that they really cannot participate in daily life and work as normal members of society, that is clearly a problem. And one that responsible governments would need to address in a practical and decent way.

But on the other hand, immigrants are more likely to hang out with other immigrants or previous immigrants from their national group because that's a key part of integrating into a new society. And terms like "parallel society" or "separatism" is mainly a means of Other-ing a targeted group. The US and European countries, for instance, have compulsory public education laws that guarantee most children growing up there will develop basic social ties outside their immediate family group. And it's not as though France or Germany or Italy are peppered with independent republics of Muslims or Algerians where the authority of the national government does not reach, like the Russian-controlled enclaves in Ukraine or Georgia, for instance.

And what we call civil society could also be described as an overlapping series of "parallel societies." The Catholic Church is itself a type of "parallel society" - as Catholic-haters have pointed out for centuries! - that has its own rituals, its own membership rules, its own institutions of authority, its own publishing houses, and even its own version of sharia, i.e., Catholic canon law. Obviously, this doesn't mean that Catholics are allowed to organize their own deaths squads and go behead some Protestant teacher they don't like. But it does mean that buzzwords like "separatism" and "parallel society" used for other-ing people should be treated with appropriate caution.

The same goes for headscarf debates.

The hijab controversy

Islamophobia has become a major theme among European and American xenophobes. While it is commonly directed against immigrants, as it is in the United States.

(The German version of this post appears here.)

In Europe, the hijab has become a hate symbol against Muslims. It is embedded in a narrative of women's rights. But in practice, it becomes a way for non-Muslim white Europeans to stigmatize Muslim women in particular. In Austria, the FPÖ (Freedom Party) is the main anti-immigrant party. They are the junior partner of the Christian Democratic ÖVP in the national government under the babyfaced Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose "turquoise" faction has embraced the anti-immigrant approach of the FPÖ.

Since taking office in December 2017, this government has used the hijab as an anti-Muslim image, banning them in kindergartens. On the face, the law doesn't have much actual impact, since it's rare for Mulism girls of kindergarten age to wear hijabs anyway. But Kurz and Strache in their 2017 campaign used "Islamic kindergartens" as a bogeyman, relying on phony or wildly exaggerated claims. Needless to say, Catholic kindergartens were not an issue for them.

There is a twisted but demagogically useful logic to this. Children are normally regarded as minors in need of particular care and attention. But trying to turn five- and six-year-old girls into people to be feared is a way to dehumanize Muslims more generally and make people more open to acts of cruelty against them. It's more than a little pathetic for grown men and women to be afraid of a five-year-old girl with a headscarf. It also fits into the long-standing xenophobic "replacement" argument that scary brown and black people will reproduce at higher rates than white Christian Europeans. In that twisted construction, the children are a particular threat to the white European culture. It's a remarkable psychological inversion of the image of children as people to be protected into a special threat to civilization.

We see similar themes among American xenophobes, like the neo-Nazi chant at the infamous 2017 Charlottesville demonstration of "You will not replace us!" that morphed very easily into "Jews will not replace us!" And we see it in the family-separation policy of the Trump Administration at the US-Mexican border. If people can be brought to enjoy the idea and the scenes of crying children kinapped from their parents and held in cages, at what kind of cruelty will they be willing to draw the line?

As Todd Green explains in one of the quotations below, the veil is a traditional women's garment in some Muslim societies that has two basic forms, the hijab and the burqa. A hijab covers the hair, as in this photo of young women in Afghanistan (via Wikimedia Commons):

The hijab or headscarf is the type of "veil" that Europeans most commonly see on a daily basis, ranging from rather plain versions to colorful and elaborately stylish ones. Although traditional Christian bridal veils are also veils. The niqāb is another type of veil that covers a woman's body and most or all of her face. The Afghan form became particularly infamous in the West during the Afghanistan War after 9/11, which is now one of America's "forever wars," in the form of the burqa.

"Hijab" is also used to describe all these types of Muslim female headdress; here I'm using "hijab" in the more narrow sense. With more extreme face-covering forms of the niqāb, there are some actual health concerns that are not present with the hair-covering hijab. From a purely secular viewpoint, the dispute over the jihab is a dispute over women's fashion.

Of course, that's not how the anti-hijab rhetoric of Islamophobes treat it. The usual narrative from them claims that it's a sign of women's subordination and, for immigrants, a sign of a lack of proper "integration" into a European society and part of Islamic fundamentalism. This allows a rightwing politician to pose as a defender of women's rights. But what that it means in practice is to interpret a Muslim woman's hijab as a sign of the Other, of her as a women inferior to non-Muslim European women, even someone to be suspected as an Islamic terrorist or sympathizer.

Todd Green in The Fear of Islam (2015) explains the common European discussion on the hijab:

... criticisms of Islam should not be translated into actions undermining the freedom of religion or the equal opportunity for Muslim minorities to practice their religion as other religious communities do. For example, in Europe, it is commonplace for non-Muslims to voice discomfort over Muslim women who wear hijabs or burqas, perhaps on the grounds that this restrictive clothing undermines equality of the sexes. Such criticism is not necessarily Islamophobic; it can represent a valid perspective, one shared by some Muslims. But if this discomfort translates into legislation that prohibits Muslim women from freely choosing to wear hijabs or burqas in light of the dictates of their consciences, we have ventured into the realm of Islamophobia. The ban on burqas in public spaces in France and Belgium illustrates the violation of this criterion, particularly given that women from other religious communities, such as Catholic nuns, do not face similar restrictions or scrutiny of what they can and cannot wear.
[my emphasis]

And he describes how the Islamophic narrative on the hijab stigmatizes the hijab-wearing women themselves:

The media’s concern for oppressed Muslim women is also illustrated by stories featuring the veil. The veil, whether in the form of a hijab (covering only the hair) or the burqa (covering the entire face), is a standard symbol for the oppression of women in the Western media. It represents Islam’s backwardness and uncivilized nature and is therefore an object of particular concern for the media. Journalists frequently analyze those President George W. Bush referred to as “women of cover.” (p. 243)

A few news articles on the hijab controversy in Austria:

Kopftuchverbot soll ab nächstem Schuljahr gelten Oberösterreichische Nachrichten 23.11.2018

Kopftuchverbot: Einmischung des Staats "totalitär übergriffig" Kurier 23.11.2018

Helmut Brandstätter, Kein Kopftuch ist noch keine Integration Kurier 23.11.2018

Barbara Eidenberger, "Wir sollten Kopftücher aus den Pflichtschulen heraushalten" Oberösterreichische Nachrichten 23.11.018

Türkis-Blauer Vorstoß: Kommt das Kopftuchverbot in der Volksschule? Kurier 17.11.2018

New Zealand women don headscarves to support Muslims after shootings Reuters 03/22/2019

"Allegiance" as a club against Democratic progressives, especially Ilhan Omar

Susan Davis reports on the Democratic establishment's effort to brand at least one of its Muslim Members of Congress as anti-Semitic based on their criticism of the Democrats' often extremely one-sided and conservative Israel policies in Democrats Planning Another Public Rebuke Of Rep. Ilhan Omar NPR 3/04/2019.

The fact that there is an Israel lobby is not news. John Mearsheimer's and Stephen Walt's landmark political science study on it, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy was published in 2007, though the reality was well known long before 2007. The most prominent group among that lobby is AIPAC, which tends to support hardline rightwing Israeli government positions. There are more liberal and critical elements of the lobby, like the liberal group J Street, which criticizes some of Israel's democratic deficits and foreign policy positions. And an important part of the lobby also consists for far-right fundamentalists Christians, who support hardline rightwing Israeli governments for their own bizarre mixture of political, theological and even racial motives, i.e., white nationalist fundamentalists often see Israel as a bastion of white supremacy.

See also online: Mearshimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby London Review of Books 28:6 03/23/2006 The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (60-page article) Middle East Policy 13:3 Fall 2006. Former President Jimmy Carter published a critical analysis of problematic Israeli policies in 2006, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. (See Jimmy Carter Defends 'Peace Not Apartheid' NPR 01/25/2007.) The irreversibility of the settlement process has greatly advanced since then. The two-state solution seems now completely impossible for all practical purposes, and Israel does confront the real choice of being a Jewish-majority state or a democracy.

I won't bother here hashing through the truisms that clutter around discussions of the Israel lobby: it's perfectly legitimate for American citizens and politicians to advocate for support for Israel; the US and Israel are countries with some national interests that coincide and others that conflict; anti-Semites criticize Israel, seeking to equate Jews in general with bad poilicies of Israel; some anti-Semites support Israel, notably many of the Christian fundamentalists who do so based on a sick theological construct of apocalyptic Scriptures that looks forward to the day that most Jews of the world will be killed in a massive war; a majority of American Jews (the US is the country in the world with the largest Jewish population numerically) are critical toward many Israeli policies, far more so than conservative Jews or Christian fundamentalists.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is currently a metaphorical punching-bag for Democrats who generally support hardline Israeli policies and who want to pander to Islamophia; Omar is Muslim and wears a hijab headscarf in Congress.

The current Democratic establishment's hostility to Omar is part of their larger freakout over the new strength and Congressional presence of Democratic progressives. I know corporate Dems take any kind of observation that Democratic hostility toward progressives who support programs a majority of not just Democratic voters but the public generally could wind up provoking a full-blown party split. But it could.

As Davis reports:

The latest controversy follows comments Omar made at an event last Wednesday at Busboys and Poets, a politically minded coffee shop and restaurant chain in Washington, D.C., that held a "progressive town hall" with Omar and fellow freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. The duo are the first Muslim women to serve in Congress. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., also attended the town hall.

"I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK to push for allegiance to a foreign country," Omar said at the event. The statement has sparked a furious response from senior Democrats and Jewish groups.

Josh Marshall makes what I take to be a good-faith commentary on why Democrats should be especially careful about public references that could be taken to invoke the infamous "dual loyalty" trope. (The Problem with Ilhan Omar TPM 03/03/2019) I wouldn't join his particular criticism of Congresswoman Omar in this situation. Because, as he himself point out in the piece, Americans who are pushing for allegiance to Israel are primarily rightwing Christian fundamentalists, not Jews:

American citizens are entitled to espouse foreign policy views of whatever sort they want. The American Jewish community’s support for Israel has had a decisive impact on US foreign policy toward Israel going back decades. Anyone with the vaguest acquaintance with recent American history knows this. But it is equally true that the anchor of unequivocal US policy support for Israel today and specifically the Israeli right is far more anchored among conservative white evangelical Christians than it is among Jews. As anyone who follows these issues knows, the American Jewish community is increasingly divided over the policies of the rightwing governments which have dominated Israel for the last generation. [my emphasis]

Juan Cole expresses straightforward support for Omar's controversial comments in this case (Israel Lobbies slam Ilhan Omar even as they Try to Bankrupt small Leftist Arkansas Paper over Israel Boycott Informed Comment 03/04/2019):

The Israel lobbies that direct campaign money to representatives and senators insist that Israeli policy of imposing Jim Crow discrimination on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories never be criticized on the floor of Congress. They also insist that the US give Israel, a relatively wealthy country, $3 billion in aid every year on top of other extensive grants and perquisites, despite what the UN says are war crimes committed on a daily or weekly basis. ...

The hypocrisy of her critics on this issue is breathtaking. For nearly a year, Israeli snipers have shot down unarmed, unthreatening peaceful protesters on the Gaza side of the border, which is just murder. Israeli soldiers have killed hundreds this way, including small children, women, medics and journalists, and wounded thousands more with live ammo or military grade tear gas.

Cole includes video of Omar's comments that are at issue, Rep Ilhan Omar Speech about Standing Up for Palestinian lives (video dated 02/27/2019):

It's worth recalling one of the more diplomatically questionable occasions in American history, the time in 2015 Israeli Prime Minister addressed a Joint Session of Congress at the invitation of the then-Republican majority in both Houses, asking them to oppose President Obama's policy on Iran, i.e., the official policy of the US Government, and instead support his own government's position, The Netanyahu speech controversy, explained by Zack Beauchamp Vox 03/03/2015.

While the Democratic establishment panders to Islamophobia to bash Democratic progressives, the dominant narrative of corporate Democrats since the 2016 election is that Donald Trump is in some way working for the interest of the Russian government. They may be correct. But it's pretty severe cognitive dissonance for Democrats to criticize Congresswoman Omar while making a major theme of Trump's compromising links to a foreign government. Here's Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 calling Trump a Putin "puppet," which sounded less persuasive to the average viewer then than it would today. But she is nevertheless accusing him of allegiance to a foreign power. i.e., a much more specific claim than Ilhan Omar's comment for which she's most recently drawing such criticism, Trump to Clinton: 'No, You're the Puppet' Bloomberg Politics 10/19/2016: