And so the strength — the weight — of France’s national identity has become a problem. It only heightens the discontent of young people with foreign origins, especially North Africans or their descendants, all the more so because the Maghreb’s decolonization occurred in pain and humiliation: When France withdrew from Algeria, it left behind hundreds of thousands dead and created scars in the collective unconscious that remain to this day. British decolonization seems almost painless in comparison. [emphasis added]
So Moslems in France are embracing Islam because France is aggressively secular? So where are the militant Christians and Jews killing civilians, if that secularism is a cause?
And if France should abandon that policy to welcome Islamic practices, explain why that would end terrorism. If embracing Islam protects you from Islamism, why are most terrorism casualties in Moslem countries? Why does Saudi Arabia experience any jihadi terrorism?
More to the point in my amazement that the author is given a platform in a major paper, the Algerian war of independence more than half a century ago still angers young men not even born then to embrace Islamism in France now?
The long and bloody Algerian government fight against jihadis during the 1990s didn't work to delegitimize Islamism as a way of life?
And what's with the notion that British decolonization was almost painless in comparison to Algeria? Was the division of the newly independent subcontinent--despite the lack of a war of independence--a walk in the park?
And why isn't Russia rather than France the target of jihadis given Russia's brutal fight against Chechens and the Soviet Union's brutal fight against Afghanistan? What about those far more recent scars on the collective unconscious?
I guess I'm not ready to take foreign policy advice from a French sociologist.
