For years, French daily Le Monde was one of the pillars of France's large-scale campaign of silence around the greatest problem the country, Europe and the West in general have with radical Islam: Faced with increasing violence on the part of large immigrant Arab and Muslim communities in the Parisian suburbs, France's elites and the local establishment have preferred to create an alternate reality in which one cannot call the problem by its name, and if truly left without any choice, diminish it through the help of all kinds of socio-ethnic explanations the public at large is unable to digest.
Terror wasn't really terror, but a reflection of an inferiority complex, cultural differences and challenges to assimilation. The constant cause of Muslim violence was eternal colonialism. Muslims could not be murderers and criminals because they were forever destined to remain victims of Western supremacy and sovereignty. And of course, the murder of Jewish men and women by Muslims is never an expression of Muslim anti-Semitism but the result of temporary insanity brought on by the excessive use of drugs or the unexplained onslaught of a psychotic attack.
With the trauma of Notre Dame Cathedral fire still burning fresh in the nation's collective mind, Le Monde appeared to change direction and dared to publish the findings of a government report that determined that in 2018, France saw another dramatic increase in the number of anti-Christian attacks, including the desecration and destruction of churches and cemeteries.
In 2018, France recorded 1,063 anti-Christian attacks compared to 1,038 the previous year. Over 1,000 attacks per year, Le Monde emphasized in its report, meaning an average of three attacks perpetrated per day. This is in contrast to the 541 reported anti-Semitic and 100 anti-Muslim incidents reported over the same time. The report notes that in a majority of these incidents, churches, it was Christian structures and statues that were desecrated, though there were also a few dozen break-ins and incidents of property theft at churches across the country.
The reasons for these anti-Christian attacks vary, according to the report, and they are often perpetrated by satanic cults, anarchists and neo-Nazis. But there is also evidence of anti-Christian activity by Muslim factors.
It should be noted that France's Christian conservative media reported on the government's finding two weeks ago, prior to the Notre Dame fire. Le Monde's decision to reference the report at this time is a sign that outside the right-wing segments of French society, the realization that silencing serious social and security problems does not help resolve but rather exacerbates them is beginning to seep in. The French may have fought to separate church and state, but that does mean they intend to bury their religion.
The lesson here should be fairly straightforward: Those who remain silent on the murder and persecution of Christians in distant countries like Nigeria, Syria, Algeria, Indonesia and Sri Lanka will find themselves persecuted at home. While there is no evidence that the Notre Dame fire was a deliberate act of malice by Muslims, the incident has opened a Pandora's box for the silencers and the silent and sparked a public debate over the persecution of Christians in the very heart of Catholic Europe.
This discussion should not stir hatred, but it must redraw the borders of what French society is and is not willing to tolerate. Those who want to immigrate to France must adjust themselves to French society, and not the other way around. To the chagrin of our supposedly liberal media, this should also hold true for the rest of Europe and Israel as well.
