"Beyond Radical Secularism" by Pierre Manent

Above: "Beyond Radical Secularism. How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge." Pierre Manent. 128 pages.

The hope that French Muslims would accept liberal values and embrace the virtues of a secular state, he says, was based on little more than "self-flattery and naivete."

Wikepedia:

Pierre Manent (French: [manɑ̃]; born 6 May 1949, Toulouse) is a French political scientist and academic. He teaches political philosophy at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron. Every fall, he is also a visiting teacher at Boston College at the department of Political Science.

After graduating from the École Normale Supérieure, he became assistant to Raymond Aron at the Collège de France. He was one of the founders of the quarterly Commentaire and remains a regular contributor.

Manent is a key figure of the contemporary French political philosophy and his work has helped the rediscovery of the French liberal tradition. Manent is a Euroskeptic,[1] and has been called by The Weekly Standard to be "the most profound of the Euroskeptical philosophers."[2]

Abstruse and turgid reading notwithstanding, (I'd hate to try to read it in French!), this is one of the most important books I have read in years. It steals my talking points. Culture is important.

The book is about culture. French culture... and by extension, European and American culture. I lived in France for three years and speak passable French. I know how much the French value their culture. The Academie Francaise is a cultural organization solely devoted to preservation of French Language and Culture. Yet French culture is under threat from Islamic terror and growing Islamic cultural hegemony on French soil. Manent expects this condition to worsen before it improves... and it won't improve without some serious reflection about how "radical secularism" treats France's Islamic immigrants.

Manent's book takes to task the current secular approach to the rapid growth of an Islamic minority in France. Manent believes that France's elites have failed to diagnose the problem of France's enormous, largely unassimilated population of Muslims. This is of particular concern considering the rise of Islamic terrorism in France.

The hope that French Muslims would accept liberal values and embrace the virtues of a secular state, he says, was based on little more than "self-flattery and naivete."

Manent writes: "When some of our citizens take up arms against us in such a brazen and implacable way, this means that, not only the State, our government, our political body, but we ourselves have lost the capacity to gather and direct our powers, to give our common life form and force."

French elites have believed that Islam's religious and culture customs would soften in an atmosphere of French secularism. Not gonna happen according to Manent. Just the opposite is happening. Islam surges as a religious and political philosophy among French Muslims. There is an Islamic awakening that now assaults the French secular model.

Manent: What defines a society, what makes it something an outsider can conform to or reject, is its habits and morals. But, modern liberalism, based as it is on the "unlimited sovereignty of the individual" will not allow the individual to be defined by anything external to him. What, then, are French policy makers asking Muslims to be part of? Its hard, says Manent, to blame European Muslims for wishing to remain precisely who they are.

Liberal Europeans, Manent says, have defined themselves out of existence. "Dominant opinion in Europe," he writes, "tends to consider Europe as a 'nothing,' a space empty of anything common..."

Conclusion? France has neither the moral authority nor the practical capacity to urge French Islam to modernize itself.

What to do? Defensive measures... even though such might even be too late.

1. Ban the burqa. French/Western culture has always depended on facial recognition to facilitate human interaction.

2. Ban polygamy. Manent sees this as not being a problem for most French Muslims.

3. Ban French Muslim organization dependence on foreign money.

But, accommodate other Muslim customs. How is it helpful, Manent asks, to put pork on the school menu as the only meat option of the day?

For Muslims, to see themselves as French citizens, rather as merely sojourners, they must have a sense of what they are being asked to join. This will require the return of a strong French nation state with a sense of its own identity. A Brexit for France fits the logic of Manent's thinking.

Manent: Not only must the French begin again to understand themselves as citizens of the French Republic (Frexit?); they must also come to terms with what he calls the European continent's "Christian mark." European nation states developed in Europe rather than elsewhere for specific reasons. The Catholic church is inextricably linked to the development of French culture.

I am reminded here of Vladimir Putin's rationale for resisting cultural linkage with secular Europe. He has noted that Russian culture suffered greatly when the Communist state tried to eliminate God from the peoples' daily lives. Putin, with many problems on his hands following from the Communist period... alcoholism, population shrinkage... affirms that a strong Russian culture is like a double helix... where religion and the state work together to create that which can lead a people to identify wth a common cultural theme. It is that "theme" which Manent claims is missing from France today.

So, Manent claims that the only humane, enlightened way to deal with the Muslim presence in France, is to acknowledge France's Catholic Christian character. France's Catholic Church, he thinks will need to assert itself as a "mediator" between Muslims and non-Muslims, with a view to admitting Muslims into a civic life defined by some common practice and a common good (I'm summarizing something here that Manent takes several chapters to develop).

It is unlikely that the hyper secular, globalist, French elites, most of whom are outwardly hostile to religion, will find cause to shift towards considering Manent's proposals.... unless the bloodshed becomes to great. Five years (or so) ago, Colonel Ralph Peters, who writes for the New York Post, penned an article where he predicted significant conflict between Muslims and Europeans "within fifteen years."

Ten years ago I double tipped my ski instructor, Oz, Ed Martin. He was a special forces officer who fought in Timor for the ozzes. I asked him why he fought. He answered, "because culture is important." I agree.
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