A few days before the riots began, Le Figaro's weekly France-Amerique edition published a disturbing article detailing how French public school textbooks justify terrorism. The article is a summary of the new book Élèves sous influence by Barbara Lefebvre and Éve Bonnivard, published by Editions Audibert, and which details how French high school and college textbooks treat terrorism. The article is Quand les livres scolaires "expliquent" le terrorism: Les manuels d'histoire réduiraient le djihad islamique à une contestation de l'Oncle Sam, by Cécilia Gabizon. (When schoolbooks "explain" terrorism: History textbooks reduce Islamic jihad to a dispute with Uncle Sam.)
Summarizing Élèves sous influence, Gabizon explains that textbooks say almost nothing about the role of Islamic fundamentalism or theocracies in their explanation of terrorism. Rather, terrorism is explained as "l'arme des faibles" (the weapon of the weak), used by people who cannot frontally attack the great powers: the United States and Israel. Textbooks criticize the attitude of condemning only terrorists, and not their enemies. Islamism is justified as resistance to western domination and globalization. The Taliban are described merely as favoring a "rigorous" Islamic moral order.
One textbook quotes with approval an article written in the run-up to the Iraq war, arguing for the urgency of containing American power, which imposes its will by force and is contemptuous of allies.
Also approvingly reprinted in a textbook is a student essay: Terrorism is a revolt against aggressors. As in France during the Nazi occupation, terrorism appears when a people suffer and have no other solution except explosives.
After the riots began, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy denounced the rioters as "racaille," which translates as "rabble" or "scum," depending on who is doing the translation. As the French begin to ponder how their nation came to be filled with a Fifth Column of Jew-hating, French-hating criminal scum, I hope that France re-examines its educational system which, by justifying terrorism against Americans and Israelis, appears to have taught principles that were readily usable to justify terrorism against the French themselves.
UPDATE: A commenter asks how to tell the difference between the justifiable use of arms against tyranny and what Islamonazi terrorists are currently doing. As the commenter notes, I've written several articles on religious attitudes about resistance to tyranny; all of them are available on www.davekopel.org. Most of the religious philosophers whom I cite, including 12th-century Catholics and 17th-century liberal Protestants, addressed the question of "What is tyranny?" a question which is a necessary, but not sufficient, part of inquiring about whether revolution is justified in a particular circumstance. All of these philosophers were Christians, and they were especially interested in freedom for their particular Christian denominations. The philosophers' answers about tyranny are not identical, but they are entirely consistent in two applications: 1. The current French government, notwithstanding its imperfections, is not a tyranny. Among the reasons that it is not a tyranny is that it does not suppress the free exercise of religion. 2. The Taliban-style regimes which contemporary terrorists hope to impose are tyrannies, because they suppress the practice of all religions except for a hateful form of Islam. In modern application, if a government allows religious freedom for everyone, the evidence is strong (although not absolutely dispositive) that the government is not a tyranny, in part because governments which are tolerant of religious freedom are usually tolerant of many other freedoms. Conversely, people who seek a government which will kill all people of a particular race or religion (e.g., Jews) and which will suppress all religions except one particular sect almost certainly is a tyranny. Among the legitimate uses of firearms are self-defense by free governments and free citizens against tyranny and against terrorists who are attempting to impose tyranny.
Thanks for the article/. Interesting, and unavoidable.
According to Time Eurpoe, the book you describe as the offending school textbook, Élèves sous influence, is in fact a book *about* textbooks that allegedly "promote a skewed, decidedly anti-American view of the post-9/11 world." Given the title, this strikes me as much more plausible than your description, and given that the book was published last month, so it seems highly unlikely that it "is in very widespread use."
Of course, this doesn't in itself really affect the broader point you allege (potentially, in fact, it makes it stronger, if the book documents widespread use beyond your broad extrapolation from a single data point).
But it does make your account look a little breathless, not to mention wildly inaccurate. Primary sources. Always a good idea to check them before flinging generalizations around. Took me about 12 seconds on Google to find the links above.
[DK: Your comments are entirely correct. I revised my post accordingly. Obviously my French III skills have some room for improvement. In any case, I should have first checked out the book summary on Amazon.fr. Thanks for catching my errors.]
"In Eléves sous Influence (Pupils under the Influence), authors Barbara Lefebvre and Eve Bonnivard claim the country's school books promote a skewed, decidedly anti-American view of the post-9/11 world. They analyzed 24 textbooks, most of them written in 2003 and 2004 and intended for the 9th and 12th grades of college-directed French schools."
The article provides a few examples of the anti-Americanism of which the book's authors complain.
Please disregard my last.
Meanwhile in the U.S. one of the arguments given for the right to bear arms is that they provide a "weapon of the weak" against a possibly tyrannical central government. A recent article by Mr. Kopel traced this right to early medieval times.
Clearly the first message is odious, while the second message is celebrated by many in the U.S. I'm interested in hearing a clear rational argument why this is so - an argument not based upon "I can't define tyranny, but I know it when I see it."
They look to me like standard urban riots, grounded in poverty and racism, of the sort that America has suffered. The fact that the rioters are almost entirely African, and that Turkish and other Middle Eastern Muslims have not participated, suggests that Islam per se is probably not central to the riots. Looks more like race than religion.
Gay Paree
In my blogpost's case, I made mention that the Grands Ecoles schooling system, which is geared toward educating a high-powered elite to rule over France in almost every field of endeavour, is if not the case, at least one very unmentioned factor of the tensions.
It's not difficult for an immigrant to integrate himself into society, if that society is pliable.
The French, of whom I am not against unlike many people who are Conservative, are many things, and claim to be pliable as a people, but their society is quite rigidly run.
There's no "give" to it, unlike even we in the UK have for the working class.
Cheers,
Victoria
That isn't correct. This is the classic (Stanley Fish?) problem of the free exercise of the political viewpoint that demands that other viewpoints be silenced.
The idea often appears in the Western press -- always with no attribution or example whatsoever -- that there exists some "moderate" form of Islam which encourages democracy and allows for participation in a heterogenous society.
This may be true as a theoretical matter, but it isn't a common Islamic belief today, and its totally inconsistent with the history of Islam and body of Islamic theology and political philosophy.
It is obligatory on Muslims -- and this has been the prevailing view among Islamic theologians consistently for a thousand years -- living under non-Muslim governments to subvert those governments and impose Islamic law.
From that perspective, France is a tyranny, and the Taliban was not.
Paging Juan Non-Volokh. I expect a denunciation of David Kopel for the "irresponsible" comparison to the Nazis.
I'm afraid not.
It's much more a large turf war that is being waged by neighbourhoods which have been, in all but name, ceded to the immigrant drug gangs, and local toughs.
They are quite literally, no-go zones.
The fact that the rioters are almost entirely African, and that Turkish and other Middle Eastern Muslims have not participated, suggests that Islam per se is probably not central to the riots. Looks more like race than religion.
The only problem is, race and religion are inseparable in this French equation, whereas that wasn't the case in Alabama with the mainly Christian, Baptist African-American community, as just one example.
Sorry, but you can't project American realities unto the continent.
They are as chalk and cheese.
Cheers,
Victoria
"This may be true as a theoretical matter, but it isn't a common Islamic belief today, and its totally inconsistent with the history of Islam and body of Islamic theology and political philosophy."
That is your theory, but European history (including the Balkan troubles) bears a different picture. Additionally, you cannot really look to large parts of history, since most world powers were trying to take over everyone else.
Yet insofar as they are standard urban riots, I agree with the late Edward Banfield that such rioting is only incidentally a protest against poverty and injustice, but rather is "mainly for fun and profit."
Can you please explain what an "Islamonazi" is?
[DK: Islamonazism = Islam + totalitarianism + genocide. I think it is a more apt word than "Islamofascism," which is more commonly used. The prototypical fascist state, Mussolini's Italy, was in practice often authoritarian rather than totalitarian, in part because of Italian sensibilities. Mussolini, while a very bad man, did not practice genocide against the Italian Jews; to the contrary, Italian Jews had a much higher survival rate than Jews almost anywhere in Nazi-controlled Europe. I think that "-nazi" rather than "-fascist" is a more apt description of al Qaeda and related modern Islamist movements because their ideal state is totalitarian rather than authoritarian, and because they aim for the extermination of the Jews. I realize that neither "-nazi" nor "-fascist" is an exact match for the modern terrorist movement, in part because both nazism and fascism were strongly tied to the national state and the cult of personality, and Islamism is not. But, like the national socialist workers party ("nazi") and fascist parties, Islamism is very hostile to the free market, and wants economic activity to be strictly controlled in the service of a tyrannical ideology.
It is the self-defeating side of the riots that shows me that they are protests against poverty and injustice.
It's a big problem in the West, the assumption that whatever our government is doing is OK. David Kopel's casual assertion that France "does not suppress freedom of religion" is on the same level as people's assertion that "all the Guantanamo prisoners are terrorists." Both are false for any reasonable definition of their terms, and come out of a serious misunderstanding of the relevant concepts.
Oh? Failure to suppress free exercise of religion qualifies as a non-tyranny? Isn't there a sufficiency/necessity problem here? It appears DK has been spending a lot of time writing about Christian philosophers and not enough time thinking about philosophy.
Can you please explain what an "Islamonazi" is?
It's the same thing as a "Christofascist". The only difference is the idol.
its totally inconsistent with the history of Islam and body of Islamic theology and political philosophy
Cheburashka, you Russian freak! This is such a historically nonsensical statement, I don't know where to begin. Like every religion--particularly the dogmatic forms of Christianity--Islam has undergone multiple transformations, including a number of period of political, philosophic and scientific enlightenment. In fact, much of "Western Civilization" that the academic equivalent of white trash always want to attribute to the Greeks would not have existed without a significant original influence of Islamic culture and of the intentional effort by Muslim philosophers to preserve the Greek academic heritage. If it were not for Islam, we'd still be collecting wild turnips for the lord's table.
In any case, there have been many moderate Islamic movements, enligtened rulers, peace and tolerance advocating philosophers, etc. In some sense, one could argue that the modern militant form of Islam is an aberration. Having worked with a number of moderate Islamic scholars, I would suggest that the militant anti-democratic version of Islam is not unversal even today.
Myth. I know why you think that, but its grossly mistaken.
There was a brief period time in which the Islamic empire had expanded to control Greece and, with it, the repertory of ancient's learning there contained.
It was this period in which, deprived of access to what was then the foundation and store of the world's higher learning, European progress floundered.
At the start of that time, Greek scholars continued producing new learning under Islamic rule - but as court slaves to the Muslims, and under arabic names forced upon them in the Muslim tradition. For this reason, many people continue to make the mistake (which Islamicists are all to happy to encoruage) that there was a period of great Muslim or Arab learning. There was not -- there was a period in which Greek scholars were given arabic names.
In any event, the period of Greco-Islamic scholarship was all too brief. Just as it did in India (where the same phenomenon, Hindu knowledge under arab names, took place), all learning, knowledge, and progress died out within a few generations of Islamic conquest.
The problem with those moderate scholars is that all of the moderate muslims have teaching posts at Western educational institutions. In other words, there just ain't many of 'em.
You could, I suppose, make the arguments you describe. They would simply be wrong, but you could make them.
Bernard Lewis put the final nail in the coffin of the myth of Islamic tolerance years ago. Each of the tiny number of "moderate" rulers was followed by ones with policies of oppression or genocide, and "tax them until they convert, don't burn any synagogues as long as they pay" was as close as any of them ever came to moderation.
It's quite simple actually. Terrorism by whomever is the use of force against a (civilian) population for the sole purpose of forcing your views upon that population.
Justifiable use of arms would be the use of force against the armed representatives of a regime in order to defend yourself from oppression by that regime.
The situation in Iraq is such that the terrorists there, while using arms against the armed representatives of a regime/government, are not fighting oppression. Instead, they're trying to impose an oppressive regime by replacing a government that is attempting to remove oppression from the country.
By this logic, whether or not the U.S. or Israel (the two scapegoats allegedly made by these textbooks) constitutes a tyranny by any objective standard is irrelevant to the terrorists. All that matters is that they, for whatever reason(s), have decided that (1) it is a tyranny, and (2) they are victims of that tyranny, and so they are rebelling against it in their own way.
Unfortunately for the French people, the rioters have evidently bought into this same logic - and applied it to their own society.
Per son
Additionally, you cannot really look to large parts of history, since most world powers were trying to take over everyone else.
Ahh... cant take your histroy as multiple choice. Maybe you can define the world wide contributions to the needy,and compare those, to, gee, Christians?
Also! USA is the most dominate Gvt on the planet. And we have taken over....WHO?
Doesn't David's response to Orin Kerr adequately explain his use of "islamonazi"? While the use here is not a perfect mapping from Nazi history, is there really a better objection to it than "violates Godwin's law"?
Second, who said "whatever our government is doing is OK"? Do you honestly think there's no objective distinction between the Taliban and the US or France in their treatment of various religions? Are you aware that wearing the burkha or other garb is not mandated by Islam and is a cultural, not religious, symbol? Personally I don't know where I come down on France's efforts to control the wearing of religious or cultural symbols in schools, but are you honestly unable to tell the difference between that and efforts to exterminate entire peoples?
I’ll set aside the introductory clause is in some way facetious and second the emotion that France ought to re-examine its educational system (albeit for different reasons), but the rest of the paragraph (indeed much of the article) is quite foreign to me.
I admit that I haven’t read one of those French textbooks in the couple of decades since I was enrolled in a University-prep high school in France. I suppose it may be possible that these textbooks have degenerated into the sort of ridiculously simplistic “truisms” that are common in high-school textbooks in the U.S. In which case, yes, something’s gone terribly wrong.
Based my limited experience, I’m not prepared to assume that is the case any more than I’m prepared to accept the little snippets you quoted here (I don’t have access to the article you quoted either) as evidence of what you propose.
Rather, it seems more likely that these textbooks reflect the pedagogical tradition of University-prep high schools in France, which (somewhat simplistically rendered ::grimace::) is that before one can understand a complex problem one must understand the problem’s complexity.
“Terrorism is bad” is both simple and true. To abandon the analsysis at that point, however, is to learn absolutely nothing.
Such a concept may be foreign to the dominant culture in America. Indeed, I think it’s probably unworkable in American public education. That is, however, a sad—perhaps even terrifying—conclusion.
I am not following the multiple choice thing. I was not just targeting the US. My point is that the history of must powerful societies has been full of massive expansionist policies - no different than the rise of Islamic societies. Consider that historic Islamic expansionist policies is no different than any other imperialism.
Cheb: Can you inform me on all of the Greek scholars during the dark ages and middle ages? I thought the height of Greek philosophy (and Roman) were long over during the Dark Ages.
Well actually my corn-producing friend, charity is one of the pillars of faith of Islam. Your comparison might well not go as you think.
Corny, old chum, the USA has been THE dominant government for approx. 17 years or so. In that time period we have instituted military actions in Iraq (twice), Bosnia, Somalia, and Panama. Give us time--we'll win one of these days...
You have a good point - but in fact "Islamonazi" is quite fair. Contemporary Arab philosophical thought was highly influenced by the nazis, and indeed the Arab Nationalism of Nasser, Arafat, and the Baathists was quite explicitly fascist.
Charity is a pillar of Islam. Islam is not the debate. The debate is those filthy scum that use the Islam faith to justify their demented blood lust.
So? The USA has only been dominate since 1988? Really? I suppose France won WWII (and WWI).
We have not taken over any county you mention. Bosnia? Clinton put us there with no exit strategy. I guess GWB has a bit of time to form one for Iraq. Ooops my bad. Iraq has had three elections to establish a govt. How many times has Bosnia voted?
Somalia I was not aware the US owned it. Your reaserch is better than mine. Do the people of Somalia get to vote in US elections?
Panama???? Seems to me that Carter gave it back to the people of Panama. We built the Canal and it generates $Billions$ of income.
Your lame point was that ALL dominate nations are expanionist. The US is not. You cant come up with ONE! example. But I think I'm with you on this. Suck it in and not spend a single dime in any foreign country ever again. No aide. No military bases. no health care. nothing
Be careful what you ask for, you might get it!