With Islam versus modernityFerghane Azihari is enjoying considerable publishing success. Yet, strangely, a large portion of the media are ignoring it. Reviews can certainly be found in The Point ou Le Figaro but not a word in Libération¸ Télérama or New ObsThere was also total silence from public broadcasting, across all stations and channels. And if Le Monde finally devoted an article to it (on March 22), it was mainly to emphasize the author's allegedly dubious background.
This silence raises questions, especially on such a sensitive and explosive subject as Islam. It's as if we've gone back to the Cold War era when it was forbidden to discuss books that sought to reveal the hidden side of things, the dark face of paradise.
A trial without compromise
It is true that Ferghane Azihari pulls no punches. Very hard indeed. His portrayal of Islam is scathing. The analysis is merciless: in his eyes, nothing is worth saving. The argument is all the more formidable because it is systematically sourced and supported by evidence, and because it comes from someone who himself comes from the Muslim world (he is originally from the Comoros).
To say that Ferghane Azihari challenges conventional wisdom is an understatement. In reality, he meticulously dismantles all the clichés patiently constructed by a more or less naive Orientalism that sought to cast an optimistic or indulgent eye on Islam. He reverses the victimhood narrative: far from having been oppressed by a predatory West, Islam was a conquering religion built on violence and exploitation, perpetually enslaving, profoundly intolerant, and today overrepresented in wars and persecutions against minorities, while underrepresented in science and education.
Not only has this religion contributed little to the progress of humanity, but it has destroyed the civilizations that pre-existed it, particularly in Persia, Egypt or the Maghreb, civilizations which were by no means backward, contrary to what the Muslim historiographical vulgate claims.
Closed to outside influences and fiercely suppressing all dissenting voices, Islam proved impervious to the cultural and intellectual advancements of the societies it encountered. It remained deaf to Greek political thought and, later, to the values proposed by Europeans, preferring to cling to the intransigence of Islamic law rather than embrace the benefits of education and democracy. It is this visceral hostility toward innovation and modernity that has led to its decline in the face of a West that, for its part, has prioritized reason and openness.
A book that disturbs
Ferghane Azihari's book is undoubtedly destined to become a landmark. Those who expect a mediocre, hastily written, and poorly executed pamphlet will be sorely mistaken. The book is brilliant, meticulously crafted, and above all, thoroughly researched. Ferghane Azihari has read extensively and thoroughly. He makes abundant use of quotations and references, both literary and academic; he deftly traverses the centuries, exploring both long-term history and recent events.
Normally, such talent put to the service of such a ferocious cause should have caught the media's attention. mainstreamBut our era is anything but ordinary, and for those who remain entrenched in ideological or activist stances, silence is still the least risky option. This is understandable. Refuting such a book requires a costly effort. And it will be difficult to explain why an author of liberal sensibilities and Muslim culture, a highly educated man to boot, would arrive at such bleak conclusions, even with supporting evidence.
Because Ferghane Azihari doesn't do things by halves. Speaking without filters, he doesn't hesitate to drop real bombshells: the distinction between Islam and Islamism is a sham; the Islam of Enlightenment is as illusory as a " Stalinism with a human face "The Daesh fanatics were simply applying Islamic texts." Perfectly In short, Islam is not only suffering from a passing crisis: its flaws are congenital, and that is why Muslims are hardly mobilizing to fight against the obscurantist tendencies that are developing within it.
An underestimated danger?
The conclusion of this book is therefore dire: Islam represents a danger to Western societies because, far from having evolved positively through contact with them, it is sinking deeper into a rejection of modernity. It even threatens to erase their main achievements, such as the acceptance of homosexuality, women's freedom, and the superiority of science.
This is why Ferghane Azihari argues for radical measures (p. 326): determined fight against Islamization, closure of immigration, expulsion of populations hostile to the values of modernity, banning of the Muslim Brotherhood and all fundamentalist organizations which work covertly with the complicity of the "useful idiots" of Islamization.
Because he is a lover and connoisseur of French history, Azihari cannot help but wonder: why has the Republic, once so uncompromising with its own historical religion (Catholicism), become so lenient with " an imported superstition that is much more dangerous "? He suggests that school curricula should incorporate, in the name of the scientific approach, a process of deconstructing the Quran.
Of course, such a deconstruction is unlikely to happen, but it would nonetheless be necessary to encourage Muslims to critically examine their own dogmas. Otherwise, it's hard to see how Ferghane Azihari's grim prediction—that the Muslim presence in France will only exacerbate tensions and polarization—could fail to come true.
Excerpts pp. 19-24.
The author of these lines cannot bear to see the world from which his ancestors came remain mired in utter decay. He will therefore celebrate the day when the East defies this prediction; when Pakistan rivals Canada for the title of champion of minority rights; when French columnists condemn the excesses of feminism in Afghanistan; when Algeria is overwhelmed by visa applications; when Sudan becomes a haven for arts and letters; when Switzerland protests against the exodus of its talent and capital to Mauritania; when Mayotte requests its annexation to the Comoros to benefit from their wealth; when Iran lectures America on its prudishness towards blasphemers; when the Maghreb taunts Israel by boasting of being home to a hundred times more prosperous Jews than the Jewish state has Arab citizens. But he is outraged to see that this day is far off, that the conditions for it to happen are not met, and that bloodthirsty superstitions obtain the vote of Muslims in the rare moments when they can go to the polls.
Worse still, not content with having ruined the East and transformed the cradle of civilization into its tomb, Islam exports obscurantism to societies that took centuries to free themselves from it. In Europe, diasporas are reintroducing the customs their ancestors fled and, through their faith, are degrading the edifice built after so many sacrifices and for which so many exiles lost their lives. “Part of the Muslim immigration in Europe suffers from oikophobia, hatred of the place where one lives,” observes the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Marx asserted that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. The pressure that Islam exerts on the West echoes the slow alteration, before disappearance, of ancient Greco-Roman and Eastern civilizations following Muslim expansions. European complacency in the face of this obscurantism is all the more appalling.
“The great phenomenon of our time is the violence of the Islamic surge,” prophesied the writer and resistance fighter André Malraux, comparing it to Soviet totalitarianism, while deploring our tendency to underestimate it. Blinded by religious amnesia, Europeans underestimate the danger of Islam, when they don't expect the native to remain this “noble savage,” frozen in a backward setting, to satisfy a contemptuous thirst for exoticism. They have erased from their memory the era when religion dictated every facet of life and refuse to believe that the devout could destroy our societies. Lulled by the comforts of prosperity and modern freedoms, Westerners consider them immutable gifts from heaven. They forget the virulence of past struggles to wrest them from the clutches of superstition and theocrats. Who remembers when Montesquieu bluntly proclaimed that "the Muslim religion, which speaks only of the sword, still acts upon men with the destructive spirit that founded it"? The irreverence that philosophers displayed toward the most dangerous religions makes contemporary nationalist and secular activists seem far too moderate. Our societies lull themselves with the words of Marx, for whom religion is merely "the sigh of the oppressed creature," not the howl of the oppressor. But history abounds with emancipated peoples under the banner of wisdom: absurd beliefs are not the only remedies for the trials that all prosperous peoples have had to overcome. It is still necessary to destroy the barbaric relics and other myths "that condemn enslaved and superstitious nations to baseness and ignorance."
This “Islam of Enlightenment,” which our storytellers keep harping on about, is as illusory as Stalinism with a human face. Although championed by well-intentioned activists, this project gives too much weight to superstition, leading Muslims astray from the truth: like many religions, the message of Islam is not the work of a god, but of forgers who lived between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, in the vicinity of the Arabian Peninsula. “Linguistics, critical history, philology, and archaeology are indeed all fields that contradict the religious idea that the Quran is a perfect and divine text.” Let us heed the advice of the writer Boualem Sansal and relegate these fetishes to a museum. The Orient has not always been Muslim. He would do well to open his eyes to the cataclysm of the irruption of Muhammad's followers, who stole him away from more refined worlds. By freeing himself from the deceptions of the one Diderot called "the greatest enemy human reason has ever had," he would not only be doing the world a service, but he would also attain the true peace to which societies yearn. All that is needed is to send the false gods and prophets back to the nightmares from which they sprang.
Illustration : Portolan chart of the Mediterranean
