The following essay by the French writer by Jean-Gérard Lapacherie was posted in German at Forum Romanum. It’s not clear where the original French version was published.

JLH, who translated the piece for Gates of Vienna, includes these notes:

It is somewhat long and it lectures in places — but it is very informative in a way that Fjordman’s early pieces are. One also has to forgive some francocentrism and a bit of cultural snobbery in places. But he is a thinker, again reminiscent of Fjordman.

He is also cleverly snide as only the French can be. It may well fit in with your article on the Dutch and laïcité.

The translated essay:

The Islamic Scam
by Jean-Gérard Lapacherie

November 18, 2004

We know little about Islam in France. The bits we are allowed to know — thrown to us by accommodating orientalists like Berque; by leftists Kepel and Etienne, who look on complacently as radical Islam continues the criminal undertakings of Pol Pot, Lenin, Mao, Trotsky, Stalin and Castro to which they have attached themselves; by the Turkologists Lewis and Veinstein, experts in the denial of the dual genocides perpetrated on the Armenians in 1894-96 and 1915-16; by the sage, Roy, who Friday at prayer predicted the defeat of political Islam; or by “enlightened” Muslims like Arkoun, Ben Cheikh, Meddeb, etc. The goal is not to enlighten us, but to let us simmer in the dark juices of ignorance.

1. Method

Like every intellectual worthy of that description, let us be skeptics. When we tried to understand National Socialism, we began with intellectual conceptions. In vain, until we saw the bodies. Neither nationalism nor socialism nor any combination of the two explains what National Socialism is. It is the emaciated, shrunken, martyred bodies, the heaped up corpses, the wounded, burned, tortured, suffering flesh turned to ash. What people say is not important, but what they do. Communism is not to be found in the sacred texts of Marx, Lenin, Engels, Mao, Trotsky, Pol Pot, etc., but in the wasted, starved, martyred bodies which were incinerated behind the barbed wire; in the heaps of bodies and frozen corpses in Siberia. The truth comes from the prisons, the torture chambers, the gulags and the laogai — the death camps — not from The Communist Manifesto and not from Mein Kampf.

It is the same with Islam. The throats cut at Tibhirin [Algeria], the genocides in Timur or southern Sudan, the children sold or enslaved in this region, the human remains retrieved with a small spoon from the ruins of DC 10, or of UTA or the RER cars, from the towers in New York or from Bali — this is what defines Islam. The reality is the wasted bodies. Islamic countries show themselves to be pure, in the sense that all their residents belong to Islam, but also — except. paradoxically, Saudi Arabia and the emirates on the Persian Gulf — they were all purged: the impure, infidels, foreigners, or any deemed to be such, were eliminated or driven out.

In 1940, about 1 million Jews lived in Muslim countries. Today, a few thousand survive. In May of 1948, several hundred Jews living in the Cairo ghetto were killed in pogroms. In the Cairo Fire of January 1952, buildings and businesses belonging to Jewish families were set ablaze. There were infidels living in Muslim countries, both of native origin and foreign — citizens of European powers, or Italian, Maltese, Greek guest workers. If there still are any such, they are keeping their heads down and not letting themselves be seen or heard.

For centuries, criminal acts have been a part of the rhythm of Islam:

• 1860: massacre of Greek Catholics in Damascus in response to a jihad called by Muslim authorities.
• 1861: massacre of Christians in Lebanon, who were saved by the armies of Napoleon III,
• 1894-96, at the time of the Dreyfus affair: massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman empire.
• 1915-16: genocide of Armenians throughout Turkey. Forced conversion of children, women and girls impregnated as “war booty,” to create genuine Muslims.
• 1923: expulsion of all 1 million Greeks from Turkey.
• 1948: pogroms in Cairo.
• 1952: burning of Jewish properties in Cairo.
• 1952-1961: cleansing of Egypt; emigration of all “foreigners”.
• 1956: emigration of all “foreigners” and Jews from Tunisia.
• 1954-62: emigration of foreigners from Algeria. War was jihad. In the years from
• 1960-1990: mass flight of Christians from the Near East (Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Iraq). At the end of the
• 1960s: organized emigration of Jews from Morocco.
• 1970-80: foreign population (Italian, French, Maltese, Spanish) in Morocco was reduced to one-quarter — its percentage fell after the “moroccanization” of available employment. Assets and businesses fell from 400,000 to less than 100,000.
• 1978-90: Copts massacred in their own country.
• 1980-90: genocide of Christians and animists in Sudan (1 million dead); prisoners enslaved.
• 1976-96: one fourth of the population of Timur eliminated by Muslims. The
• 1980s and 1990s: massacre of Christians in Indonesia, and in the southern Philippines.
• 1990s: Murder of “foreigners,” either native residents or those who had entered as tourists, in Algeria, Egypt, etc.
• 1990 and following years: pogroms against mostly Christianized Chinese and Indonesians.

And so it goes on.

When the facts are established, they can be connected to the Manifesto, Mein Kampf and the Koran, to determine what it is in these basic texts that moves the faithful to kill those who do not share their faith. The Manifesto of the Communist Party — the sacred text of Marxism — and other “Korans” of Marxism, justify the extirpation of the noxious classes. Mein Kampf — the basic Nazi text — maintains the imagined superiority of a people. The Koran leaves no doubt. It affirms the superiority of the chosen race of true believers who are adjured in the name of this superiority to kill, throttle, murder, torture the “infidels” to make them pay the “jizya”. Muslims explain: “There are 123 verses in this book that command killing and making war.” The best-known is “Kill the infidels everywhere where you find them.”

2. Islamic Civilization

Muslims and their accomplices constantly regale us with the beauties of Islamic architecture, the social and intellectual contributions of Islam to the Western world, or the greatness of the civilization whose driving force was, or is supposed to have been, Islam.

In 2002, the development program of the UN published a report by Arabic experts on “Human Development in the Arab World.” In 22 Arab countries (280 million people), over 50% of women are illiterate. The percentage among men is less, but greater than what has been observed in the other countries of the world. Production of goods and services trends to null. In one year in these countries, 330 books were translated, that is, a third as many as in Greece alone. “The Arabs have translated fewer books in a thousand years than the Spanish in one year.” And these illiterates — proud of their ignorance — are supposed to have created a civilization! Seriously — the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, whence Islam has expanded mightily, were illiterate nomads, organized in tribes and supporting themselves by raiding. For centuries “spontaneous generation” explained the rise of life, until Pasteur cured us of that. In regard to civilization — universally valid texts or laws, moral principles, institutions created by people, structures erected by them, and other palpable facts of civilization — the adherents of Islam still want to explain everything by spontaneous generation. No one ever learned mathematics, algebra, principles of monumental architecture, philosophy or medicine by magic. It takes time to create all that. Illiterates living from plunder did not civilize whole peoples at one stroke. This farce is being served up for us in the “fast food” of Islamic civilization.

In the Near East, in Iraq (the former Mesopotamia), in Syria, in Palestine (the fertile crescent of our older history books), in Egypt, there existed a splendid civilization, but it was not Islamic. Without Allah’s inspiration, the Arabs from the desert would have accomplished nothing, would not have annexed the huge territories that had been the cradle of those glittering civilizations of the Byzantines, the first Christians, the Assyrians (who were neither Arabs nor Muslim) and of ancient Egypt. On what they had expropriated and partly plundered — what had been created by others, they impressed the adjective “Islamic.” They made architects, scholars and philosophers, doctors from Byzantium, Damascus, Alexandria, Babylon and Thebes serve their reputation. Algebra, reckoning, mathematics and astronomy were created by the Assyrians, the so-called Arabic numbers — including zero — by the Hindus, geometry and architecture by the Greeks and Egyptians, science by the Greeks and Byzantines. Furthermore, five or six centuries of plundering — of “tabula rasa” — of Islam destroying these nations and devastating the Near East, made them just as destitute as the Arabian Peninsula of the seventh and eighth centuries whence the Islamized Arabs erupted to conquer the world. Had the Nazi armies in 1945 not been defeated, but extended their grim domination over Europe, we and our progeny would in the future recall the brilliant “Nazi civilization,” including the Eiffel Tower, the palace at Versailles, Racine, Hugo, film, Diderot, the spirit of the Enlightenment, Pasteur, the automobile and the discovery of radioactivity. “Islamic” as a designation for the contributions of the Near East to the history of humanity is inappropriate. The same is true of “civilization.” For “Islamic civilization” to be a legitimate term, there is a prerequisite: Islam must regard itself as a civilization. But that is not the case. Civilization is different from the forest where the wild things live and from the desert where nomads wander. It is a process of urbanizing a farm worker or a nomad. Civilization is not a condition but a metamorphosis. It presumes an end that is different from the beginning — changes, transformations. Civilization is a unique thing: the word should only be used in the singular. Factually, Huntington’s thesis on the conflict of civilizations makes no sense. There is instead a rejection of civilization, an express desire not to be touched by this process. It is people’s right, as it is for Islam.

Islam is undergoing a historical moment which has nothing in common with our own. We are in the year 2003. They are approximately in 1420. Calendrical calculation does not measure only time. It is also a history which has a beginning and an end. For us, the human being is the ultimate end of our actions, whether we are Christians, humanists, infidels or liberals. The only agent of civilization is the human being, who is lord of his own fate and of nature, which he shapes to his own purposes. In Islam, the human being is nothing. There are only members of the “umma,” the encompassing All, which forecloses individual destinies and history, and is topped by Allah or, if we do not translate this word as “God” but “He” or “He who,” the one who is the source of everything, the principle on which everything depends, beginning and end. What does not come from Allah does not exist, or if it should happen to exist, it is destined to disappear. The process of civilization is moving forward. Deprived of everything, the human being learns to find or to create his survival in nature and to create what is required to satisfy his needs. In Islam, this story is an unlikely fairy tale. Those who belong to the umma subject themselves to the will of Allah. In Islam, the human being is a “prostrator.” He touches the ground with his forehead and acknowledges that he is nothing and “He” is everything. In 1989, because two or three countries declared themselves free of Communism, Francis Fukuyama predicted the end of history. Seen from the perspective of Islam, this prediction is insane. Since the night of the (alleged) revelation, “Lailat al qadr” on the 27th of Ramadan, history has no more reason to exist. There is only Allah, whose will can only be fulfilled by fanatic forced Islamization. Civilization no longer exists in Islam.

Between Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, first among the Assyrians and then in the cities of Egypt, the state, writing, monotheism, later agriculture and husbandry were invented, freeing human beings from the unpredictability of hunting and gathering and allowing them to settle in one place. City, state, writing, monotheism: that is what we Europeans are. This history was integrated into our history. We have made these people our ancestors, not on the basis of blood, but of culture, for they taught us the process of civilization — what we perceive as civilization, for we are what we are. In Islam, there is only the unfulfilled triumph of Islam, that is the Islamization of the world — which many pursue like the second coming of Christ.

3. Playing the Victim

Muslims and their accomplices continually repeat that Islam was the victim of the Crusades of the 11th-13th centuries and in the 19th and 20th centuries the victim of Europe (colonization). It is not about denying the perverse nature of that colonization, but remembering that the colonization of Muslim lands did not last so long as the colonization of Europe by Islam, and that it was without doubt less destructive and less cruel. France (unjustly) colonized Algeria for 132 years; it (unjustly) made Tunisia a “protectorate” for 70 years and Morocco for less than 50 years; it took over the League of Nations mandate in Syria and Lebanon for 20 years. What are these decades compared to the eight centuries that Islam oppressed Spain, the three centuries of Islamic colonization of Sicily, the four centuries of Islamic and Ottoman tyranny that almost eliminated the Greeks, the Albanians, the Serbs, the Rumanians, The Bulgarians and other south Slavs from the face of the earth. Power that misuses colonization: that is Islam. In this area, Europe was an apprentice.

We will not go into the slavery the Americans were involved in two and three centuries ago, and we too, delivering them laborers and maids. But that was nothing in comparison to the slavery imposed by the Arabs and Turks. Some Arab states still practice it. Furthermore, women in many Islamic states are to some extent in bondage, deprived of rights and treated like beasts of burden, judged by their work value. There is still the question of the Crusades. For Marxists, the Crusades were an expression of the imperialistic greed of Western countries.

Of course, that is not true. In the 10th and 11th century, the Near East came under the heel of the Seljuks — Turkish colonists from the far distant highlands of Central Asia, who came to plunder the still thriving regions which Arabic conquerors could not administer, to lay an even more tyrannical yoke on the Christian population. The Crusades were to help these threatened peoples and sought in vain to free them from foreign occupation. They collapsed at the same stage where the Americans succeeded in 1917 and 1943-45 in giving us back our freedom.

Lies explain the grace which is shown to the parallel between jihad and the Crusades. The two phenomena have nothing in common. Jihad is inseparable from Islam. It appeared as early as 622. Without jihad and war to the death, Islam would have remained confined to the Arabian Peninsula. All militant Muslims, no matter where they live, share the view of a world divided into Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. Evidence of that is the popularity enjoyed by Bin Laden and his murderers. On the other hand, “crusade” does not appear in any fundamental Christian or Jewish text. This phenomenon was a defense against jihad, ten centuries ago.

4. Abasement

Muslims and their accomplices justify these crimes and acts of violence by their humiliation. As Muslims, they feel humiliated by the (vulnerable) wealth of the West, by everything that Western peoples have done and conceived. We are supposed to be responsible for the backwardness they deny. To be sure, translating fewer books in a century than Spain in a year is reason to be ashamed. If Muslims actually have the feeling, then the humiliation is voluntary. Aside from hatred directed at women, foreigners and infidels, this religion has contempt for the person who is nothing and prays to Allah, to whom he subjects himself (Islam means “submission”) and who is everything. There may possibly be a question of humiliation, but it is Islamic. Furthermore, humiliation is an inexhaustible, immense psychic power. People who are humiliated from cradle to grave, for whom humiliation has become second nature, can be made to commit serial killings and perform absolute miracles of cruelty, even if only to give themselves the impression that they are someone. The humiliated man takes revenge on his wife and his daughters and then, if he has weapons, on those who have no weapons and who have rejected the war conducted against them. This is how people in the Near East, who had achieved a high level of civilization, have descended into the depths.

5. War

Islam is supposed to be a peaceful religion. Muslims and their accomplices claim that the term “salaam”, meaning “peace”, was derived from “Islam.” That is, it expresses subjugation under Allah. It comes from the same linguistic root (salaam aleikum). Actually, there is peace in Islam only between Muslims, and outside Muslim countries there must be war by Muslims against non-Muslims and against any who do not wish to subject themselves to Allah. That is the thesis of the “missing commitment” (the sixth pillar of Islam) supported by respected theologians, among them the Egyptian Qotb, who died two or three centuries ago. In the 8th century, you see, the world is divided into two zones: Dar al-Islam (house of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (house of war). The “people of the book,” whether Jews or Christians, are separated into “dhimmis” if they live in Dar al-Islam and accept the domination of Islam, and “harbi” if they live in a “war zone.” Besides Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, there is a third zone — the lands where there is a truce, or interrupted war, and the truce is temporary and may not last longer than ten years. For Islamic theologians, therefore, the world is defined by jihad. Muslims must take on this “effort” to Islamize the world, to bring all lands into Dar al-Islam and subjugate all of humanity to Allah’s laws. In Arabic, “harbi” derives from “harb” (war) and is used as a name for those against whom war is being waged and who are defined by this war. There is no equivalent in French for “harbi.” The concept is alien to our thinking. It is not acceptable to us that human beings should be reduced to existence as “harbi.” Only the exhortation Simon de Montfort when put on his warhorse during the war against the Albigensians can illustrate the status of those who are “harbi”: “Kill them all. God will recognize his own.” The concept “harbi” is only inexactly rendered by “enemy.” It is possible to have enemies without making war on them and after a war, these enemies can become allies. “Harbi” is not a passing condition, but a state of being which only ends with the extinction of those it applies to. For those who are making war, the “harbi” is what the Jews were to the National Socialists in 1939-1945 in any lands occupied by Nazi armies. Only the concept “exterminate” offers a sufficient idea of what a “harbi” is. For Islam, peoples who are not Muslim are to be exterminated. There can be no other justification for mindless murder.

6. Tolerance

Muslims and their accomplices also say that Islam is tolerant. Of course, everything belies this claim. In Arabic, “dhimmi” is congruent with the concept “tolerates.” A dhimmi is a Jew or a Christian whose presence Islam tolerates in conquered territory . “The laws of sharia concerning dhimmi are many,” writes Bat Ye’or. They are liable to special taxes. They are forbidden to build, enlarge or restore religious buildings (churches or synagogues). Their religion is not forbidden, but it must be discreet (no ringing of bells). Their witness testimony against a Muslim is not recognized. They are condemned to death if they marry a Muslim woman or display a desire to convert a Muslim, They cannot assume any honorary office. They are required to contribute financially to the jihad to conquer new lands. Their country is called “fey” and it is war booty. Victorious Islam decides which “rights” are allowed to the dhimmi. Negotiation is not possible. The dhimmi is an erstwhile harbi who has accepted the triumph of Islam. In return, he is “protected” against the laws of jihad — slavery, massacre, plundering and division of booty. It is from this “protection” that the accomplices of Islam have formulated its “tolerance.” If the dhimmis act up and become rebellious, they become harbi and the laws of jihad apply to them. Existence as dhimmi, subjected to the most unjust system there has ever existed in the world, is spreading everywhere across the Western world — among the intelligentsia, in the leadership councils, among those who advise the most important people in the world, in the references to Islamic “tolerance,” in the tempting of Christians to break with Jews, in their agreement with the assumptions of Hamas, of jihad and of Fatah which are nothing more than an expression of the thousand-year Islamic assumptions, and in their mania to make of Rabbi Joshua of Nazareth not a heterodox Jew, but a Palestinian or “Philistine” (identical concepts) or the leader of militant Palestinians. In the second century by our time reckoning, a bishop in the Near East had already called upon Christians to reject the Old Testament, to break the continuity between Judaism and Christianity and to erase the connection between Jew and Christian. His doctrine, known as Marcionism, achieved great recognition among Christians in Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries and prepared them for accepting that, in time, this theological break would transmogrify into an ethnic negation.

7. Unfair trade

Islam, say the Muslims and their accomplices, is suffering from unfair trade with the West. Let us examine this fairy tale. Islam has natural resources which the West does not have, especially oil and natural gas. Cost of production is about $1 US per barrel — at most $3 — if you include the necessary capital expenditure, taxes, etc. It is sold for $20-40 US — a price that is ten times the actual cost of production. The West does not sell grain, cars or mutton to Muslims at a price that is ten times its cost to produce them, even if you add 30% to reimburse investors. The West trades with Islam, accepts millions of Muslims, gives them asylum, work, welfare, education and civil rights. In comparison, Islam offers nothing. Muslims accept a thousand times fewer “foreigners’ or “infidels” in their lands than the West accepts of Muslims. People who live in Islamic areas have no access to any of the advantages offered here to Muslims (subsidized housing, free medical care, etc.). Seen this way, the West is the victim of unfair trade, but no one questions this lack of parity and what it means. This actual, palpable, verifiable policy is a contrast to the hostility which Islam and the Muslims display toward Christians, Europeans and the harbi.

— Jean-Gérard Lapacherie