Attention, cette chronique de Margaret Wente (Globe in Mail) peut traumatiser les autruches du Québec. Nous leurs recommandons de cliquer ici.

La chroniqueuse répond à ceux qui croient que : les attentats en France sont la faute des Français ; les attentats en Belgique, la faute des Belges ; l’échec de l’intégration en Suède est la faute des Suédois, etc.

Another view of Belgium is offered by Teun Voeten, a photographer who witnessed the aftermath of the Paris massacre. He lived in Molenbeek for nine years, but was eventually driven out by crime, disorder and intolerance. Places to buy alcohol disappeared, and Islamic bookshops spread. “Nowhere was there a bar or café where white, black and brown people would mingle,” he wrote on Politico. “Instead, I witnessed petty crime, aggression, and frustrated youths who spat at our girlfriends and called them ‘filthy whores.’ ” The Jewish shops, which were terrorized by young kids, moved away. So did openly gay people, who were harassed in the streets.

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The debate is paralyzed by a paternalistic discourse in which radical Muslim youths are seen, above all, as victims of social and economic exclusion.

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the Berlin Social Science Center, conducted a study of Muslim attitudes in several European countries in 2013. Most of the people he surveyed were of Turkish and Moroccan descent. He found that Islamic fundamentalism is widespread. Two-thirds of the Muslims interviewed said that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live. Three quarters said that there is only one legitimate interpretation of the Koran.

“Religious fundamentalism is moreover not an innocent form of strict religiosity,” Prof. Koopmans commented. He found that almost 60 per cent of the Muslim respondents reject homosexuals as friends; 45 per cent think that Jews can’t be trusted; and an equally large group believes that the West is out to destroy Islam. He also concluded that Europe’s multicultural policies – regardless of the country – are largely useless.

Why are so many home-grown young Muslims (as well as a few converts) attracted to such a virulent form of faith? The common liberal answer is because they feel excluded. That answer strikes me as pathetically inadequate. A better answer would include a quest for meaning and purpose in a secular, postmodern world, and the attraction of an absolutist faith that offers certainty, structure and a chance for martyrdom and glory.