Kipling anticipated French schools

When Kipling wrote his poem If, little did he know that 130 years later one of its metaphors would acquire a literal meaning in France.

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…” has become a day-to-day challenge in French schools. For Muslim pupils and their parents have bombarded French teachers with over 130 death threats, some tastefully illustrated with videos of beheadings.

To balance the rather archaic nature of the threats, they are laudably communicated with the use of the latest achievements of Western digital technology, including the schools’ own websites. This incorporation of tradition into modernity should please every champion of the latter.

The threats are eminently credible. In the past few years a Paris teacher has been beheaded with a cleaver, and many others have been stabbed, one fatally. A veritable open season on teachers seems to be under way in France, and to understand why, next time you talk to a French teacher ask how laïcité (secularism) is working out for him.

That law was introduced in 1905 to finish the job started by the Revolution or, more broadly, by the Enlightenment. Stripping that outrage of its misnomer title and attendant cant, it represented an attempt to destroy Western civilisation and replace it with some other.

The first part has proved easier. Christianity has been successfully relegated to the status of a quaint personal idiosyncrasy, and many generations of Frenchmen have been educated in the spirit of laïcité, with few complaints heard – from Frenchmen, that is.

The trouble is that many pupils are French in name only. Instead of praying at the altar of laïcité, they worship Allah and his prophet Mohammed, with their promise of 70 virgins in heaven. That just may be the only place where that number can be found, what with French schools practising laïcité in the full range of its benefits.

Having despaired of finding so many unsullied maidens in French schools, and reluctant to look for them in heaven just yet, Muslim pupils still cling to the outer paraphernalia of their creed, such as headscarves, abayas, burkas, skullcaps, all presumably accessorised with cleavers. Alas, in 2004 the government passed a law banning not just cleavers but all such symbols, along with religious services and instruction.

Lest it may be accused of discrimination, the French government reconfirmed its commitment to égalité by also banning the display of symbols associated with other religions, such as Jewish kippahs, Sikh turbans and large Christian crosses. Predictably, exponents of these creeds meekly acquiesced. Just as predictably, the Muslims didn’t.

Since they tend to express their grievances with cleavers, some teachers have resigned, choosing life over career. Most, however, still defy danger, displaying the spirit of audace, so highly prized by Napoleon.

To protect those brave souls, armed guards have been posted at dozens of schools. The reports I’ve read fail to mention what they are armed with, which is a lamentable omission.

Is it just pistols or are French schools bristling with the barrels of assault rifles, machineguns or perhaps field artillery? Napoleon, after all, showed the riot-dispersing potential of grapeshot that French educators would be ill-advised to ignore. Even if the existing level of threat doesn’t justify reliance on such ordnance, it never hurts to prepare for the future.

For the problem is only going to get worse. France has by far the greatest Muslim population in Europe, both in absolute numbers and in percentage terms. There’s no excuse for this, but there is an explanation.

Some French colonies, such as Algeria, were integral parts of France politically and administratively. When de Gaulle agreed to make Algeria independent in 1962, a huge influx of technically French Muslims inundated France, a torrent that has since gathered strength.

Unfortunately, France did even a worse job than Britain (which is saying a lot) trying to incorporate the Muslim population into society. Rather than trying to combat Muslim particularism, the government fostered it by banging millions of Muslims into downmarket suburbs and laying vast amounts of emoluments on them.

As a result, young Muslims sneer at France, a country that they say has left them behind. “Nique la France!” has become the battle cry of riots regularly illuminating the country with burning cars, shops and restaurants (the verb in the slogan has a sexual meaning I’ll let you guess.) At least our rioters wield their torches without at the same time spewing hatred of Britain.

The problem, not only in France but throughout the West, has far-reaching implications. These bring into question the very survivability of the ersatz civilisation brought in to replace Christendom. Fault lines have appeared, and the fissure seems to be getting wider everywhere, not just in France.

All modern Western states are informed by Enlightenment fallacies, one of which is equality all around. The old principle of reductio ad absurdum has come into play, and the absurd has become ridiculous. Discrimination has lost its erstwhile positive connotations to become the worst vice, nay crime, in the scripture of modernity.

No one charged with it can defend himself without leaving the strangulating confines of the new ideology. Thus the 2004 ban on religious symbols in schools was really put forth to limit the Islamic colonisation of education. But, in the good modern tradition of lumping all religions together, the French had to extend the ban to Christian crosses and Jewish Stars of David for otherwise they would have been accused of discrimination.

They thus decommissioned the only weapon that could conceivably defend France against Islamisation: a clear and proud statement of Christian heritage. Neither France nor any other Western country can say – in fact, lie – to its population it’s a Christian country. You don’t have to be a Christian yourself, but in public at least you must conform to Christian standards of dress and behaviour. If that’s unacceptable, you know where the door is.

Mandated, institutionalised secularism goes against human nature. Deprived of religion revealed by God, people have to seek ideological cults revealed by assorted villains.

Muslims, whose religion allows for no reformations or free thought, combine evil ideologies with their traditional faith to issue an open, often violent, challenge, to host societies. And what can our societies offer in defence? Multicultural transgender efforts to save our planet from internal combustion?

I’m not sure we still have what it takes to survive. Read Faust, ladies and gentlemen: “Of freedom and of life he only is deserving who every day must conquer them anew.” Words to live by – and a test we seem to be failing.