June 3, 2004
HARD ON THEM DOESN'T MATTER IF SOFT ON US:
CAN DE VILLEPIN CHANGE HIS SPOTS?: France's surprising new hard-liner. (Michel Gurfinkiel, June 7, 2004, The Weekly Standard)
DOMINIQUE DE VILLEPIN offers remarkable--and unexpected--evidence that leopards can change their spots. Last year, as foreign minister of France, he torpedoed U.N. support for the war in Iraq. Today, as France's minister of the interior, he has transformed himself into a hardliner in the war on terror.The new Villepin emerged on April 21, when Abdelkader Bouziane, an Algerian fundamentalist imam of a mosque at Vénissieux, near Lyon, was deported to his native country, without benefit of a trial. The expulsion order had been signed two months earlier, on February 26, by the previous minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, but not put into effect. Sarkozy and the entire French cabinet were busy with the regional elections, which took place on March 21 and March 28 and ended in disaster for Jacques Chirac's conservative party.
On March 31, Sarkozy, seen as the least politically damaged senior minister, was moved to the finance ministry, while Villepin, a staunch Chirac loyalist, took over at interior. Villepin was under no obligation to heed his predecessor's decisions. Still, he saw to it that Bouziane's deportation was carried out. The Vénissieux imam was well-known among Lyon-area Muslims as a polygamist, a theorist of women's God-ordained inferiority, and an advocate of the Sharia-sanctioned right of husbands to strike "rebellious wives." He had been explicit about this in an interview with Lyon Mag, a local monthly. Moreover, Renseignements Généraux, France's domestic intelligence agency, had determined that he was preaching rebellion against the government of France and racial hatred towards non-Muslims in general and Jews in particular. Still, Villepin, like Sarkozy, could have postponed the expulsion. He chose not to.
The simple reality is that Islam poses little threat to America but is Europe's likely future. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 3, 2004 5:40 PM
So the guy was preaching "racial hatred" against non-Muslims? Funny, I didn't know that non-Muslim was a race. Just another example of the ever-expanding use and collapse of meaning of the word 'race'.
Posted by: GG at June 3, 2004 6:06 PMNo contradictions, of course. France has always had a strong anti-terror attitude towards terror committed against France. Ask the Paris subway bombers-- oh wait, they've been locked in a jail without benefit of trial for a few years. France pretty ruthlessly goes after its own interests, pretending to be multicultural and multilateral only when it suits her. Ask Greenpeace why their current boat is the Rainbow Warrior II.
Posted by: John Thacker at June 3, 2004 6:19 PMAbdelkader Bouziane apparently wasn't paying his protection money to France regularly, like Saddam did.
Posted by: Brandon at June 3, 2004 7:36 PMWell his hero is Napoleon, no; or is it Boulanger,
Talleyrand or Fouche. 130 years of occupation (in
the case of Algeria) are hard to live down. One
must remember that the French establishment, is
as deeply inmeshed in the oil for food scandal, as
a predecessor regime, was in the Panama affair of
the 1890s (hat tip to Zencey's Panama)
Taking the position that Islam in it's virulent form is no threat to America internally is wrong. The stupider the fad, the more heartily it will be embraced by certain population segments here. Watch out for "Survivor: Burkha Patrol."
Posted by: M.Murcek at June 3, 2004 11:40 PMGosh. That' impressive.
Now, if only he'd write a poem about it.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at June 4, 2004 7:41 AMHere's one case where we should rightly emulate France: deport radical Muslims.
Posted by: Paul Cella at June 4, 2004 7:52 AM