The Henry Jackson Society, named after one of America’s greatest senators and based in London, can occasionally be counted on for political common sense. But not this time, I’m afraid. The executive director of the society, Alan Mendoza, has just delivered himself of some remarks to Fox News on the Muslim riots that might have appeared in The Guardian. Here are some of them:
Mendoza says that the Muslims do not have the same opportunities “to progress and succeed as the native population.” He has things backwards. Government programs in France offer special vocational training courses to Muslims that are unavailable to the indigenous French. A French version of affirmative action makes allowances for Muslim “under-performance” at school to help push them forward nonetheless. Special programs at every step give Muslims a leg up on their French classmates. Some deficiencies cannot be helped. Muslims who grow up in families with ten children (meaning each child receives less attention from the parents than do the children in French families, where two children are the norm), where the mothers are often illiterate, where French is not spoken at home, have special classes in language offered to them for free. French universities take in Muslim students who, strictly on merit, would not qualify for admission. Local governments are encouraged to hire Muslims to work in their offices. Yet Mendoza claims that these coddled Muslims do not have the same opportunities “to progress and succeed.” He has things upside down: the Muslims have opportunities that are far more extensive than those provided to the indigenous French.
What about that “ghettoized community” that Mendoza complains of? It is the Muslims themselves who choose to live together, and in so doing, they gradually push out non-Muslims who find living among those Muslims both unpleasant and dangerous, as they are constantly harassed by their new neighbors. So neighborhoods throughout French cities are gradually transformed until no non-Muslims are left; they have fled for safer quarters. Thus are the hundreds of “No-Go” neighborhoods created, where non-Muslims fear to tread. Even the firemen have to enter such areas accompanied by the police, and the police themselves dare enter only in force. A “ghetto” implies that a population has been forced to live in a certain area, but no one forces the Muslims. They want to live in Muslim-only neighborhoods.
Mendoza claims that with the recent riots that “France’s forgotten communities are showing that they will stay forgotten no longer” is absurd. The Muslims in France are not “forgotten.” They are the main topic of political discussion, on radio and television, in the newspapers, in the speeches of politicians at every level. And from the right and left come different answers to the question of “what can be done with such a hostile population now living in our midst?” These are not, as Mendoza claims, the “forgotten communities” of the Republic.
“France’s forgotten communities are showing that they will stay forgotten no longer.” Also sprach Alan Mendoza. Yes, setting fire to schools and libraries and hospitals is a most effective way to remind people that you exist, and that you deserve far better. Who would not want to do more for Muslims after having seen the way their condition practically forces them to turn to pillage and arson? Mendoza speaks of the “simmering rage in the banlieues” where Muslims live, but does not ask himself if that “simmering rage” is justified. Beyond the tens of billions of dollars spent on these Muslims by the French state, to provide them with everything they need, and to bring them up to the level of the French themselves, what would Mendoza have the French government do? At some point, the government must ask itself why no other immigrant group — not the Chinese, nor the Vietnamese, nor the black Christians from Africa and the Caribbean, nor the Hindus from India — behaves in such a violent and hostile matter as do the Muslims.
Mendoza refers to a “failure to integrate the country’s Muslim immigrant population.” He must be unaware of the tens of billions of dollars the French government lavishes on that Muslim population, providing them with everything – free housing, free medical care, free education, family allowances, unemployment benefits (even for those who have never worked in France), and more. He must not know that a large part of the government now devotes itself to programs to “integrate” the Muslim population. But just as the Muslim recipients of so much government largesse lavished upon them show no gratitude, only a handful of Muslims – to the extent that they reject Islam – are willing to integrate into the larger society. Muslims, who are taught that they are the “best of peoples,” see no point in trying to integrate into a society that is run by the French Infidels who, like all Infidels, are “the most vile of created beings.” Furthermore, even simple friendship with the French is discouraged by the Qur’an, which tells Muslims that they “must not take Jews or Christians as friends, for they are friends only with each other.”
Mendoza says that the Muslims do not have the same opportunities “to progress and succeed as the native population.” He has things backwards. Government programs in France offer special vocational training courses to Muslims that are unavailable to the indigenous French. A French version of affirmative action makes allowances for Muslim “under-performance” at school to help push them forward nonetheless. Special programs at every step give Muslims a leg up on their French classmates. Some deficiencies cannot be helped. Muslims who grow up in families with ten children (meaning each child receives less attention from the parents than do the children in French families, where two children are the norm), where the mothers are often illiterate, where French is not spoken at home, have special classes in language offered to them for free. French universities take in Muslim students who, strictly on merit, would not qualify for admission. Local governments are encouraged to hire Muslims to work in their offices. Yet Mendoza claims that these coddled Muslims do not have the same opportunities “to progress and succeed.” He has things upside down: the Muslims have opportunities that are far more extensive than those provided to the indigenous French.
What about that “ghettoized community” that Mendoza complains of? It is the Muslims themselves who choose to live together, and in so doing, they gradually push out non-Muslims who find living among those Muslims both unpleasant and dangerous, as they are constantly harassed by their new neighbors. So neighborhoods throughout French cities are gradually transformed until no non-Muslims are left; they have fled for safer quarters. Thus are the hundreds of “No-Go” neighborhoods created, where non-Muslims fear to tread. Even the firemen have to enter such areas accompanied by the police, and the police themselves dare enter only in force. A “ghetto” implies that a population has been forced to live in a certain area, but no one forces the Muslims. They want to live in Muslim-only neighborhoods.
Mendoza claims that with the recent riots that “France’s forgotten communities are showing that they will stay forgotten no longer” is absurd. The Muslims in France are not “forgotten.” They are the main topic of political discussion, on radio and television, in the newspapers, in the speeches of politicians at every level. And from the right and left come different answers to the question of “what can be done with such a hostile population now living in our midst?” These are not, as Mendoza claims, the “forgotten communities” of the Republic.
“France’s forgotten communities are showing that they will stay forgotten no longer.” Also sprach Alan Mendoza. Yes, setting fire to schools and libraries and hospitals is a most effective way to remind people that you exist, and that you deserve far better. Who would not want to do more for Muslims after having seen the way their condition practically forces them to turn to pillage and arson? Mendoza speaks of the “simmering rage in the banlieues” where Muslims live, but does not ask himself if that “simmering rage” is justified. Beyond the tens of billions of dollars spent on these Muslims by the French state, to provide them with everything they need, and to bring them up to the level of the French themselves, what would Mendoza have the French government do? At some point, the government must ask itself why no other immigrant group — not the Chinese, nor the Vietnamese, nor the black Christians from Africa and the Caribbean, nor the Hindus from India — behaves in such a violent and hostile matter as do the Muslims.
