Social Matter

France is famous for its staunchly secular political order. Unlike Britain with its state church or Germany with its Church tax, the French state declares itself free of religious influence. Yet in an apparent contradiction, French laïcité routinely makes higher demands of religious minorities. The French constitution’s claim that its Republic is both indivisible and secular extends to cultural norms as well as political ones. This makes France a fine example of one of the core neoreactionary principles: there is always a church – a force which determines which ideas and habits are respectable.

No amount of secularism can obscure the fact that French society shares certain worldviews and values and believe that the state has a role in enforcing these “proper” values. Without these shared principles, the famous French welfare state would have been dead in the water. Because of this, it is possible for Marine Le Pen to work within France’s secular framework to fight Islamic  fundamentalism – to a degree. Yet the narrative following the Charlie Hebdo attacks continues to ignore the impact of religion on political stability. In insisting that fundamentalism is merely an aberration of religious values, France and the West presume that everyone is as shallow about spirituality as we have become. Laïcité may enable France – including its Front National – to engage in a secular cultural nationalism at the moment. But ultimately it serves as a myth. It makes a pretence of disinterest in religion, when in reality this has become impossible.

Following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, much of the media has responded by declaring its solidarity with the Muslim minority. Decent citizens agree: Islam had nothing to do with the attacks. Do we judge all Christians by the Westboro Baptists?

No, but then the Westboro Baptists don’t receive funding from resource powerhouses like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Islamic fundamentalists do.

Saudi Arabia and its neighbours continue to play a dangerous game. The Saudi practice of crushing terrorism in its borders while allowing funds to reach them abroad infuriated Hillary Clinton. Qatar’s interference in countries like Egypt and Syria got so bad that the other Gulf countries even withdrew their ambassadors. Both countries are aware that gaining religious influence over Islamic authorities in Western countries will increase their political influence – a fact well known to French Muslim organizations. Nabil Ennasri, President of the French Muslim group Collectif des Musulmans de France, was quoted in a recent report:

“France has a large Muslim population of Arab heritage, which will one day, whether it is welcome or not, play an important role in French politics. Investing in this population is a way of recruiting supporters who will — consciously or unconsciously — further Qatari interests.”

Religious institutions are an important avenue of funding for these countries. While the press paints Le Pen as a radical for wanting to “go into mosques“, there is no way to confront fundamentalism without confronting its political and economic portals into Western countries. Says Le Pen:

“The massive investments which Qatar has made in suburbs are made because of the very high proportion of Muslims who are in the French suburbs…We are allowing a foreign country to choose its investments on the basis of the religion of this or that part of the French population or of French territory. I think this situation could be very dangerous…

I say solemnly, the Qataris are financial supporters of Islamic fundamentalists, madmen of Sharia. The French have a right to know that, especially in Libya, the jihadists who are now in power and whose first action was to apply Sharia, were financed and armed by Qatar.”

The Islamic Supreme Council of America actively opposes this current of Islam and has criticized more well-known groups for not being staunch enough in this. It reports that, in addition to the Arab countries, Wahhabi teachings have filled the post-Soviet vacuum in Central Asia. Former MI6 agent Alastair Crooke wrote about ISIS’ roots in this ideology in Huffington Post. The Saudi monarchy benefited from its alliance with this faction: Wahhabi clerics supported its leadership role in the Sunni Islamic world. The price for this? Funding its agenda to purge global Islam of “deviations” and unify it under Wahhabism’s stern watch. Through its access to funding and educational resources, it has been able to permeate mosques around the world. Fundamentalism does not simply march into the room, fully formed. It makes use of the increasing links between social status and religious purity, a trend sparked by Wahhabi influence. It justifies itself through calls to increasing stringency until it enters a holiness spiral, bottoming out (?) at Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Perhaps the Caliph is himself an example – the Telegraph reports that he eschewed violence in his years as a scholar, before radicalization in prison. In order to combat this effectively, the West must admit that it is in conflict with an ideology which is not just political, but religious.

Secularist disinterest in religion was possible during that century when Liberalism enjoyed complete triumph over the cowed Christian Churches. This is not the case when mass immigration and global shifts have made religion a powerful force again – and our milquetoast progressives have forgotten what a religion with teeth is really like. France and the West cannot pretend such disinterest in whether it is the esoteric philosophy of the Ismaili, traditional Sunni scholarship, or the puritan ideology of the Wahhabi which is preached in its mosques. It is clearly unreasonable to think that, in the age of the internet, the ideas of fundamentalists will easily disappear. But there is no reason for Western countries to allow networks funded by the same groups promoting fundamentalism in central Asia to operate without prudent oversight and restriction. The alternative is to remain open to ideological exploitation, and ultimately dependent on those rulers who continue their perilous games.

 

Charlie Hebdo Fundamentalism islam Saudi Arabia secularism Wahhabism