This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/1271
Andre Glucksmann: "Negation is a form of integration" Bernard Henri Levy "talks should not express hatred or mistrust"
November 14, 2005
MIM: Readers can also click on the url below and take the poll which asks the question:
'Will the Paristinian Uprising last longer than the French did against the Germans?
*Hell yeah, we're only talking about a month, they're halfway there!
*No, they are running out of cars to burn.
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MIM: In France the stench of European decadence and decay is often covered by a veneer of sophistication and a spritz of the appropriately titled 'Eau de Toilette' .The French reputation for arrogance and pretentiousness, was best summed up by British interview who began his piece on one of the most well known French intellectuals with :
"Bernard Henri Levy's right nipple is small,hairless and hardening. He is leaning back, sipping black coffee, and telling me about Jean- Paul Sartre..." http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=359
Comments on the riots by Bernard Henri Levy, and Andre Glucksmann, two of the leading French intellectuals, could be included under what Chirac termed 'The French Malaise', and are indicative of an intellectually and morally bankrupt society which has lost it's way.
Instead of condemning the radical Islamist rampages as an attack on democracy and the rule of law, Levy opined that 'the movement will end only when it has reached the end of it's own intoxication' and warned that talks "should not express hatred and mistrust".
For his part Andre Glucksmann's explanation that "integration is negation", and that immigrants are "integrating themselves by the act of setting people alight",are so appalling, that one can only hope that the real meaning was lost in translation.
Both Levy's and Glucksmann's comments seem even more jarring in light of their previous work, which involved radical Islam and, in the case of BHL involved writing a book called "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?" which reconstructed the last weeks of the journalists life in Pakistan. (Critics claimed that the investigative/novel, which included fictional details, was more proof that Levy was relying more on hype then proving his hypothesis) Both Levy and Glucksmann were also outspoken critics of the fundamentalist Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan, and worked to expose his terrorist agenda behind his moderate facade.
Since translation mistakes do not seem likely, one can only consider Glucksman's romanticising, and Levy's intellectualising the riots in France, to be a reflection on how European secularism, moral relativism, and prolonged exposure to socialism, has apparently led to a reluctance to state that those who practice barbarism have forfeited their claims to humanity.
Both Glucksmann and Levy have been labelled "civic humanists", and their remarks indicate that the term is accurate. Traces of their youthful flirtations with Marxism, the European intellectual version of hepatitis, still linger, compounded by their present condition as members of the wealthy elite.
In Levy's case his reluctance to condemn the violence could simply be a case of vanity, and unwillingness to admit that his "anti racist group" whch he funded to "empower Arab and black people in France" now seems a pathetic and naive exercise in the "kumbaya" school of social reform. Levy's dire warnings about the dangers of Jean Marie Le Pen, also ring hollow with many French, who are more concerned by the very real perils of being confronted by angry immigrant Muslims.
Another explanation for Levy's and Glucksmann's skirting around Muslim accountability for the riots, was provided by Bernard Henri Levy himself, when he explained to an interviewer how the fact that his tutor, the Marxist philospher Louis Althusser, had been committed to an insane asylum after murdering his wife. This did this not prompt Levy to question the validity of his conclusions, nor cause him embarrassment at the public exposure of his intellectual mentor being pyschopathic killer. On the contrary, philosopher Levy shows that rearranging one's perception of the reality means never having to admit one was wrong in their accessment of anything :
' 'I came to reinterpret the silences I had taken to be philosophical and the gaze I had thought meditative as expressions of his mental disarray. It's one of the great mysteries of the French intellectual scene how this man of unbridled insanity could have taught us rigour and rationality.' http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&tab=nw&ie=UTF-8&q=bernard+henri+levy&sa=N
Both Levy and Glucksmann's failure to condemn the riot as an Islamist Jihad against Western values, seems to be a textbook case of 'an intellectual being someone who has been educated beyond his own intelligence',and also indicate that the slogan 'Vive la France' can now be viewed as a rhetorical question.
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By Sabine Glaubitz and Nicola Wanner Nov 10, 2005, 20:44 GMT
France, Monday 07 November 2005. EPA/THIERRY BORDAS
Paris - French intellectuals have maintained their silence, despite more than 6,000 burnt-out cars, wrecked schools and vandalized creches and the one death resulting from the riots that have raged since October 27.
Now at last the philosopher Andre Glucksmann has spoken out with a provocative thesis: The disturbances are not the result of alienation but a sign that the young rioters are becoming integrated.
'They are integrating themselves by the very act of setting cars alight, even by the fact that they are setting people alight,' he told the German newspaper, the Franfurter Rundschau.
According to Glucksmann, negation is a typical form of French integration.
'All parties in France, business, the workers and so on, believe that something can be achieved by violence,' he told the leftist daily.
By this view, young people are integrating through their behaviour. Glucksmann believes that a 'nihilistic atmosphere' predominates currently in France and extends well beyond the banlieus.
Aside from this essential French aspect, there is the global phenomenon of terrorism.
'The youngsters in the banlieus are saying: 'Today Baghdad is here.' They see it on television and they like it,' Glucksmann says, attributing the driving force behind the violence to hatred.
Essayist and journalist Bernard-Henri Levy takes a similar view: 'Black energy of pure hatred. A nihilistic brew of violence that is meaningless, purposeless...,' Levy writes in an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal.
The movement will come to an end only when it has reached the end of its own intoxication, according to Levy.
He calls for talks, insisting these should not express 'hatred and mistrust', but rather equality, civil rights, consideration and respect.
France's rappers, who have been telling of the conditions in the ghettos in their songs for years and who warned that violence would erupt, are criticising the way young people are excluded.
'They let us go to school and to university only for us to end up working for the refuse collection department. We are also French,' said Mac Kregor of the group Tandem, perhaps the best known of the French rapper groups.
His partner Mac Tyer stated: 'The government's combative statements won't help, only understanding and sympathy.'
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MIM: It appears that French 'intellectuals' like Levy and Glucksmann do not find terrorism aesthetic enough to report on it without 'elevating it to an art form and creating a new literary genre in the process. Bernard Henri Levy's 'novel' entitled "Who Killed Daniel Pearl" was claimed to be part novel and part reportage, with a large dose of Levy own musings thrown in . Andre Glucksmann essay "The World of Megaterrorism" which appeared in the Wall Street Journal is so pretentiously literary and full of obscure allusions, that one is left with the question 'what the heck was that supposed to be about?'
The World of Megaterrorism
Mad is the European who thinks himself immune to terror for having opposed Saddam's overthrow.
BY ANDRE GLUCKSMANN
Sunday, March 21, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
PARIS--Read carefully the statement that claimed responsibility for the Madrid massacres. Al Qaeda puts everyone, from the Crusaders to the Jews, all countries who sent troops not just to Iraq but to Afghanistan as well, in their gun sights. In other words, all of Europe--Berlin and Paris, no less than Rome, London or Warsaw. France merits special condemnation for its ban on the Islamic veil in public schools.
Mad is the European who thinks himself immune for having opposed Saddam Hussein's overthrow. No accommodation provides insurance against attack. No public building, no train platform, no sidewalk is spared by the Islamist butchers. "Death train," "death's black smoke," "the wind of death," the bleak metaphors fly over the borders in the name of al Qaeda. The bombs in Madrid, they say, are the "answers to the crimes you have committed worldwide . . . in Iraq and in Afghanistan."
In manipulating the Spanish election, terrorism proclaims its gospel and applies it in practice. The perfect timing of March 11 is the monstrous example. Little does it matter that the 201 dead and the 1,500 wounded were working-class people, most likely opposed to an intervention in Iraq--as were some 90% of the Spanish. The "human material" has no value for the terrorists who prove the strength of their convictions and the power of their weapons with the murder of the disarmed, whoever they may be and whatever they may think, whether believers or not. It was an encore, as everyone said: On this March 11, 2004, Europe lived its own September 11, the horror of Manhattan all over again.
Except this time the assassins can proclaim they have won. It took them three days to sway popular opinion. The Popular Party of Jose María Aznar, the expected winner, got trounced. "Punished!" they said. But by whom? What's the point of political campaigns, meetings, reports, programs and debates if within a few hours, the bombing of packed train cars can reverse the result? This final landslide, which no polls had predicted, is entirely due to the Atocha station catastrophe and the terror it spread. How could the terrorists not assume that they are the decision-makers, and that terrorism is now stronger than democracy? If the Socialists brought to govern Spain keep their pledge (made before the massacre) to withdraw from Iraq, they will confirm the killers' innermost conviction: Crime pays--and the greater the horror, the more efficiently.
"But of course not," object the wishful thinkers, Mr. Aznar lost because his alliance with George W. Bush was unpopular. Nonsense! The alliance was just as unpopular three days before the elections, but the Popular Party was still favored then, and his opponents did not hope to win back many "antiwar votes." Without the bombs, without the bloodbath, the shouts of "Aznar assassin" would have sounded ludicrous. But Madrid's ground zero panicked the minds and awoke the demagogues, ready to invert responsibility. Were there not already weak minds--Lenin's "useful idiots"--who eagerly claimed that Mr. Bush and the CIA had planned the fall of the Twin Towers?
With hundreds of dead, more than a thousand wounded and the threat of another imminent terrorist attack, Mr. Aznar did not see, know and understand everything within 24 hours. Should a head of government be blamed for not being God? Should he be imagined plotting a Machiavellian scheme to cheat his people without cheating himself, as some kind of extra-lucid devil pulling the strings of a conspiracy as huge as it would be absurd? Stop this delirium.
One rule, one and only one firm rule must impose itself on Europe after this tragedy. In the event of another electoral hijacking, voting must be immediately postponed. The governed and the governing must both be given the time to recover their right minds. They must be able to assess and address the horror, its antecedents and its consequences; cool down before undertaking an informed vote. Let a people abruptly thrown in the abysses of hell maintain the suspense for a fortnight or two, so that it can exercise its sovereign power with sovereignty!
Right at the moment, fearing to confront the true culprit, a virtual culprit was caught in Spain. Mr. Aznar replaced Osama bin Laden. A magic trick--an exercise in exorcism. With no grip on the true mastermind, some voters find imaginary guilt and decide to symbolically kill through the ballots their own head of government. Illusionists arise to face the blackmailers, a consoling witchcraft dreams of itself as a worldwide antiterrorist operation. In front of the candles lighted for the victims, banners cursed the demons: In small case the Basque terrorists "ETA," then "bin Laden," in bigger letters "Bush," while the huge letters spelled "Aznar." The world is upside down.
"Not in the least," object the sincere or the false naïfs: The conservative government destroyed itself by hiding the truth and pointing to ETA instead of al Qaeda. What a miserable alibi. As soon as the news broke, every single Spaniard--backed by 20 years of bloody memories--including the Socialist winner Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and even a majority of Basques, were inclined to follow the ETA trail. Within 48 hours, the police, the intelligence services, the press and the ministers rectified their initial assumptions. As they were going to the ballot, the voters had heard of everything that was known, and Spanish democracy and its institutions had worked.
But some of the protesters were still waving around the lie of a "state lie;" and numerous voters, perfectly well informed, changed their minds and chose to bow down without regrets to the blackmail of their fellow citizens' assassins. A minute of silence, followed by a night of rejoicing for the electoral winners. What a short memory. Al Qaeda--oh sorry! "the Arab resistance," to use the words of the spokesman of Batasouna/ETA--has waged its elections campaign with corpses, and the ballot box has granted its diktat. Whether we like it or not: "Welcome to the world of megaterrorism!"
Time has come for decisions. Either Europe unifies to resist the engineers of the apocalypse, following Tony Blair. Or it poses as an opponent of the United States, following the pseudo-"camp of peace" led by Jacques Chirac, Vladimir Putin and the hesitating Gerhard Schroeder. The "viva la muerte" chanted by the Islamist legions vindicates Tony Blair. But the terror they spread, petrifying European citizens, threatens to lead to resignation after resignation.
Rome, Paris, Athens, Warsaw, Berlin . . .? Don't ask who's next! "Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Hemingway the anti-Francoist was quoting John Donne, an 18th century poet. Bin Laden's mercenaries take their inspiration from the Spanish fascist Millán Astray: "You want life, we want death." Will Mr. Zapatero find the voice of Miguel de Unamuno, the independent thinker of Salamanca who denounced the fascist general's "cry of necrophilia," and stand up to today's nihilist killers? It is never too late to prevent a disaster.
Mr. Glucksmann is the author, most recently, of "Ouest Contre Ouest" (West Against West), published in Paris last year by Plon.
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MIM: It is not just French intellectuals who have brought the discussion of militant Islam into the realm of a philosophical question of to be or not be - Dutch parlimentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali has proven what Dr. Daniel Pipes referred to as the 'primitiveness of the debate' about radical Islam in Europe when he commented on the book written by Oriana Fallaci:
"...La Rage et l'Orgueil like a number of other European attacks on Islam find a wide and receptive audience; really what they show is the primitive nature of the public debate about Islam in those countries..." http://www.danielpipes.org/article/489
MIM: Hirsi Ali has brought the primitive nature of the public debate to new depths.
In this interview in Denmark where she inanely talks about making a film about the sex life of Muhammed ala Monty Python's "The Life of Brian".
Below :Some gems from Ayaan Hirsi Ali - which prove that anyone who has to call themselves an intellectual isn't one.
"....To Hirsi Ali Muhammed comes across as a person with many contradictions. He was always buzy with some intrigue, but there are also stories that he could be kind and magnanimous.
In many ways the prophet can be compared to Yassir Arafat, who always managed to present himself as a hero and restistance fighter despite all his bad characteristics. If you want to get a sense of the kind of preson Muhammed was, Hirsi Ali recommends an article on Arafat in the September 2005 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
"When I read that - with my special background - I thought: That is so typical. He had it from somebody..."
"... Could you mention some books or works of art that have inspired you?
"First of all there are the philosophical books that you have to read when you take political science. I didn't like Plato. Everybody is crazy about Plato. I thought that Aristotle was really boring. I loved Mill. I like Popper very much. He writes in very short sentences and all his thoughts are linked. He doesn't forget one step. Sometimes it is difficult to read the other German writers like Weber. Another writer I like - though you have to take your time reading him - is Norbert Elias. Then there is of course Locke.
Spinoza has influenced me through his political end ethical writings. His technical stuff is completely inaccessible to me. But his personal story and his fight with the synagogues have also inspired me. Spinoza was cursed and the wording of the curse is exactly the same as in islam. It is almost the same words Khomeiny used to curse Salman Rushdie.."
MIM: According to Hirsi Ali - if only Muslims would be able to laugh at their religion, and see Mohammed as a lusty old goat with a penchant for underage girls, stop viewing as the Koran as sacred, and change the sexual rules, Islam would be revealed in all it's warm fuzziness.
"...Are you optimistic about the prospect of reforming the islamic majority countries?
"Yes, if we remove the sacred stamp from the Koran, if we review the prophet Muhammed's role and if we change the sexual morals, then yes, we could do it very easily. Because muslims are also human, and humanity has shown that it can change and that it can humanise and modernise its way of life..."
http://www.sappho.dk/Den%20loebende/hirsi_english.htm
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali nurtures a dream of making a muslim "Life of Brian" with all the juicy details of the prophet Muhammed's life as a conqueror and womanizer - and if possible in Denmark. All they have to do is call
By Helle Merete Brix and Lars Hedegaard
Photos: Steen Raaschou
Disturbing questions about the massive muslim presence in Europe are becoming more urgent by the day: It it possible to integrate muslims to become part of Europe? Will we have a liberal version of islam? And if not, what is there to look forward to? Civil war? Dissolution? An islamic take-over?
If your head is full of such nagging thoughts, it is a solace to meet Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the liberal Dutch politician and originally muslim immigrant from Somalia. Since the murder of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, for whose strongly islam-critical film "Submission I" Ms. Ali wrote the script, 
she has been under constant police protection. That was also the case when Sappho.dk interviewed her during her recent visit to Copenhagen.
But in spite of death threats and constant vilification the slender woman has by no means lost heart. She still waxes eloquent when she talks about the issue that concerns her the most: The defence of European civil rights and particularly freedom of expression.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes across as a genuinely European intellectual of the kind that is becoming increasingly rare as our home-grown cultural personalities and opinion leaders are buzily discarding our intellectual heritage.
The strength of art
Why does this thoroughly political person with her background as a political scientist express herself through an artistic medium?
"Because sometimes art is much more powerful than words. Art is accessible to many more more people than if you write a piece on an op-ed page. To understand art you don't have to know how to read and write," says Hirsi Ali, who then turns to the international furor caused by the twelve drawings of the prophet Muhammed recently published by the Danish national daily Jyllands-Posten.
"It is absolutely necessary for liberal European countries like Denmark to protect free speech. I've been in Holland for 13 years, and in a very short time I have learned how Europe came to be what it is today. And part of that was a huge conflict of religion. It started with the Reformation and reached its climax during the Enlightenment. If you refrain from making cartoons of Muhammed to accommodate Islamic intolerance, then you will go back to the time of Christian intolerance."
- Have you had any support among Dutch artists for your position?
"Yes, most of them do not agree with the style of what I have to say, but they find that I have the right to say it. I'm going to make a film called "Submission II", and the people who want to help me make it think that it is my decision what I want to say. I'm so happy about that. It's a big relief because at first I was afraid nobody was going to help me. The next challenge will be who is going to broadcast it. Which TV-channel, which cinema? But we will cross that bridge when we get to it."
A muslim "Life of Brian"
- You have said that you would like to make a muslim "Life of Brian".
"Yes, Muhammed is a much more colourful personality than Jesus. Such a film could be a learning instrument for muslims. There are some islamic films but they don't show the image of Muhammed and they are not really about him. They are more about how islam was established. I would really like to make a critical film about him. I could write a script very quickly."
- Would you dare to put in some of the details of his life such as the affair with Aisha, who Muhammed married when she was six and had sex with when she was nine?
"Oh yes. When I say colourful, Muhammed was of course a messenger of God like you read in the Bible about Noah and Moses, and you could make a beautiful film about that. But it would be much more interesting to describe that he was also a conqueror. He was superstitious. Every time he would need the support of his people, he would go to the cave to listen to the angel Gabriel. Putting that in a film would be very colourful, because whose voice is it going to be? Who could act as Muhammed?"
"Muhammed had many wifes. He was a sensuous man. He talked lot about sex and sexuality, about women. You can read that in the Koran and in the Hadith. They are very detailed on the sexuality business. For the Americans it might be too much but I'm sure that the Europeans would find it very colourful. I would put all of that in there in graphic detail, but also the moral dilemmas. Muhammed had adopted a son who was married to Zaynab. He fell in love with Zaynab and wanted her, but morally, of course, he could not demand to have her although his adopted son said that he could have his wife. So Muhammed had to go the cave and came back with a message that it was all right."
Why not in Denmark?
In fact Muhammed always seems to have received a divine revelation whenever his private affairs required it, says Ms. Ali. He also had one when some of his followers refused to annihilate other tribes. The Arabian tribes were constantly fighting each other but there were limits to what they 
would do. It was all right to kill off the men but you let the women live. There were also unwritten tribal rules about the confiscation of property. Muhammed broke many of these rules and defended his decisions by means of revelations that he had conveniently received.
"The Koran is a compilation of all the voices from the cave. I would just love to make a film about that. I would love to direct it. But who can I persuade to make such a film?"
- Does it have to be made in Holland?
"No"
- Would you make it in Denmark? We have a Film Institute financed by the state which would probably be prepared to fund an exciting and controversial film.
"All they have to do is to give me ring, and I'll come."
To Hirsi Ali Muhammed comes across as a person with many contradictions. He was always buzy with some intrigue, but there are also stories that he could be kind and magnanimous.
In many ways the prophet can be compared to Yassir Arafat, who always managed to present himself as a hero and restistance fighter despite all his bad characteristics. If you want to get a sense of the kind of preson Muhammed was, Hirsi Ali recommends an article on Arafat in the September 2005 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
"When I read that - with my special background - I thought: That is so typical. He had it from somebody."
The European inspiration
- Could you mention some books or works of art that have inspired you?
"First of all there are the philosophical books that you have to read when you take political science. I didn't like Plato. Everybody is crazy about Plato. I thought that Aristotle was really boring. I loved Mill. I like Popper very much. He writes in very short sentences and all his thoughts are linked. He doesn't forget one step. Sometimes it is difficult to read the other German writers like Weber. Another writer I like - though you have to take your time reading him - is Norbert Elias. Then there is of course Locke. Spinoza has influenced me through his political end ethical writings. His technical stuff is completely inaccessible to me. But his personal story and his fight with the synagogues have also inspired me. Spinoza was cursed and the wording of the curse is exactly the same as in islam. It is almost the same words Khomeiny used to curse Salman Rushdie."
-Are you at all influenced by any muslim thinkers?
"I have read Ibn Khaldoun, but he was not introduced to me through islam but through westerners who had translated his works. I have heard about Taha, who was hanged in his native country of Sudan for demanding changes. I'm influenced by Ibn Warraq, who is not a good writer but a good thinker. So to answer your question, there are muslim thinkers but they just don't have the opportunity to come forward. Like Ibn Warraq. If he would be giving interviews, be on television, giving talks, he would be more elaborate than me because he knows more than me. But of course he has to be careful."
Among fiction writers of muslim background Hirsi Ali mentions Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji.
"Unfortunately there has been no muslim Popper, Mill, Hayek, Kant or Locke. Before 1100 they were always killed. It's your life or your thoughts."
Nothing is sacred
- The Egyptian novelits Somaya Ramadan, who no longer considers herself a muslim, 
has said that the Arab language is difficult to work with because it is considered sacred. For that reason you cannot play with it.
"Oh yes. It is as if I woke up one morning and said that Evian Water is sacred. No language is sacred. To claim that is a non-violent way of stifling freedom of expression. If the Arabic language is sacred, how can Arabs ever think creatively, how can they express themselves? It is nonsense."
"I was recently together with some Arab journalists and I took out a Koran from my bag and put it on the ground. A Turkish girl who didn't wear a headscarf and seemed in every way secular, said: I demand that you pick up the Koran and put it back into your bag. I answered that it was my copy and that I would do with it what I liked. What is happening now is that you cannot analyse the content of the Koran because everything about it - the cover, the letters, the ink - is sacred."
- Are you optimistic about the prospect of reforming the islamic majority countries?
"Yes, if we remove the sacred stamp from the Koran, if we review the prophet Muhammed's role and if we change the sexual morals, then yes, we could do it very easily. Because muslims are also human, and humanity has shown that it can change and that it can humanise and modernise its way of life."
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/1271