Jewish Political Studies Review 19:1-2 (Spring 2007)
Prophet of Muslim Doom or Farsighted Politician?
Les mosquées de Roissy: nouvelles révélations sur l’islamisation en France (The Mosques of Roissy: New Revelations about Islamization in France), by Philippe de Villiers, Albin Michel, 2006, 233 pp. [French]
Reviewed by Michelle Mazel
“France has virtually been taken hostage but does not know it yet”: that is the message of Philippe de Villiers, a well-known political figure, who heads the rightist Mouvement pour la France (Movement for France) and is a deputy in the French National Assembly. A prolific writer, Villiers has published more than a dozen books on some of the issues at stake in French society today.
Lately, Villiers has focused increasingly on what he calls the Islamic threat. In an interview to France’s Channel 1 on 15 July 2005, he said: “I call on all French politicians to leave their cowardice behind, to stop being afraid and to dare to look squarely in the face of Islamization, the Islamic threat, so that they may refuse the continuing Islamization of our schools, airports, neighborhoods…. I cannot accept polygamy, forced marriages….”[1]
Disturbing Trends
In this book Villiers offers a behind-the-scenes tour of Islamic France. His starting point is Roissy Airport in Paris, France’s largest airport and one of the busiest in Europe. A scant few years after the destruction of the Twin Towers, he notes, stringent security measures are being implemented there-yet dozens of baggage handlers with proved links to terrorist groups have access to the airport’s most sensitive areas. Forty-three percent of the eighty thousand employees of private companies working in the airport area are Muslims.
“I don’t object to the fact that they are Muslims,” Villiers remarks, “but these employees are more susceptible to Islamic propaganda. Indeed we know that the Muslim Brotherhood is well represented among them and has managed to set up more than fifty clandestine or official prayer halls.” Evidently he is not the only one to worry, because concerned members of the security services leaked him the official documents on which his research is based. These documents appear in the book’s appendix.
Villiers goes on to survey the situation in other sensitive sectors. One is education, where, he notes, Muslim pupils dress and behave differently. Girls opt out of fitness classes and swimming, singing, drawing, and all artistic activities; Muslim boys demand separate bathrooms and locker rooms. School is no longer the melting pot it was for generations but rather a place where two societies clash. Everything seems to lead to confrontation-such as religious festivals, which prompt protests against traditional Christmas trees in schools, or demands that the fasting month of Ramadan be respected and that cafeterias observe Muslim dietary laws. Classical texts and history, too, give rise to disputes.
Any criticism, overt or even implied, of the excesses of Islam triggers such an uproar that many are cowed into silence. From the pulpits of an ever-growing number of mosques, extremist imams preach radical Islam. If nothing is done, adds Villiers, the immigrant population’s higher birthrate will alter the fabric of society. France is threatened with dhimmitude; its indigenous population could become a minority treated as second-class citizens while sharia reigns supreme. All who believe, Villiers warns, in the emergence of a new, moderate French Islam are deceiving themselves, as did the Dutch until the murder of Theo van Gogh opened their eyes.
Rescuing France
Villiers asserts that it is not too late to reverse the trend. Immigration of populations that cannot be integrated into French society must come to a complete halt. French culture and tradition must be promoted and history must no longer be distorted. “France must not integrate into Islam but rather Muslims must integrate into France” (215). Civil order must be restored. “To be French is to accept an inheritance, that is, a language, a history, and a way of life” (218). “It is a question of life and death.”
This book is one of a growing number of works that address the Islamic threat in France.
Its publication created a stir and may have impelled the government to become more attentive to this issue. Several illegal prayer halls at Roissy were closed, and a number of workers there had their security clearance revoked. Some are appealing the decision. Eighteen imams have been expelled from France since 2006 began.
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Notes
[1] From the author’s blog in English, https://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html.
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MICHELLE MAZEL is a graduate of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and the Faculté de Droit of that city.
