THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL ARAB NATION:

I was intrigued by Nelson Ascher's March 24 post at Europundits suggesting that the European and Arab mindsets were converging:

I don’t know how the antiwar Europeans will react to Anglo-American-Australian victory, but one thing is sure: they won’t identify with it and from this to a feeling of also having been defeated is just a small step. Their sense of impotence after so many protests might be overwhelming. I wouldn’t be too surprised at seeing the Western European psyche beginning resemble, in many significant ways, the Arab one....

Actually, it is the two psyches, the European and the Arab, that are on the move, a convergent move.... I also think (though this would need factual research) that the pro-Palestinian European left's influence on the Arab masses, giving legitimacy to anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism, has been at least as decisive as the rather cruder propaganda one finds in the Arab press and the mosques. It is easy to note that, when speaking in Western languages, the Arabs use the left's anti-Zionist vocabulary and are conscious of politically correct conventions. Thus, it is not a simple matter of Europeans influencing Arabs or vice-versa, but rather a case of two convergent mentalities discovering through anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism lots of common ground as well as what Goethe would have called their "elective affinities".

I have always felt there were strong affinities between all philo-tyrannic ideologies. In his brilliant The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek pointed out that in the post-WWI era Nazis and Communists united to drive out all that was liberal, and recruited members from among each other's ranks. They only turned upon one another once liberalism was defeated and the question was who would rule. The European left and the Islamofascists may be uniting in a similar fashion today.

The observation of Muslim-European convergence, particularly in France, is appearing elsewhere:

Hating "l'Oncle Sam" (Christopher Caldwell, Weekly Standard, 3/31/2003)

Chirac ... has long been something of a hero in the Arab world.... Palestinian families have begun to name their newborn boys "Chirac." When he visited Algeria early this month, crowds estimated at over a million turned out to acclaim him. And a new book that arrived in Paris bookstores last week--"L'Orient de Jacques Chirac," written by the Egyptian journalist and literary critic Ahmed Youssef--compares Chirac to Alexander the Great and Aladdin. Indeed, Youssef meekly expresses his hope that he might serve as Cicero to Chirac's Caesar, or Stendhal to his Napoleon....

French public opinion has come into sync with the opinion of its Arab immigrants and their children. On such matters as American militarism and the Middle East, its poll numbers resemble those of an Arab country. When the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) asked citizens whether they approved of the American attacks on Iraq, the answer was Non, by 87 percent to 12 percent. Voters do approve of Chirac's position by 92 percent to 8 percent. Under such circumstances, Muslims feel themselves much more part of the country.

I do not think this is just a temporary war-driven phenomenon. Iraqi citizens are united with American soldiers to drive out Saddam, but they are clearly suspicious of us and believe our interests will diverge at some point. There seems to be no such suspicion in the Muslim fondness for Chirac.

France abandoned Christianity long ago. Will it embrace aspects of modern Islam? It is possible that France will soon be the world's most powerful Arab nation.

Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 28, 2003 9:56 AM