France plunged into an incredible debate. The Minister of Higher Education, Frédérique Vidal, asked the National Center for Scientific Research to conduct an investigation into the presence of Islamo-leftism in French universities.
Critics are raining in from all sides. The universities fear that the minister threatens academic freedom. Groups on the left are protesting against this catch-all label which would only serve to discredit them. Muslims yell at Islamophobia.
The term is more than awkward. He is an oxymoron, meaning a contradiction in his terms. Indeed, the left is traditionally rather atheist or at the very least very critical of religious powers.
Historically, the term has been used to mark a similarity between the struggle of the proletarians and that of the Muslims. The word has evolved a lot, to finally designate appeasement towards political Islam. Islamo-leftists have become those who defend Islamist practices in the name of the fight against structural racism and against Islamophobia.
Danger in schools
That a minister calls for an investigation into the hold of an ideological current in the universities can only be worrying in a free society.
But a part of French society is sinking more and more into a communitarianism that benefits fundamentalists. Hundreds of suburbs are now controlled by the Islamists who make them reign a puritan totalitarianism.
High school students challenge science teachings in the name of Allah. They threaten the professors who stand up to them and who try to denounce the religious nonsense of the Koran.
Religious fundamentalism is not only anti-Republican in essence, but also anti-academic.
Worrying reality
As regrettable as the term is, Islamo-leftism nonetheless covers a worrying reality.
The problem could be formulated otherwise: when the republic and democracy are threatened in their foundations by a political ideology, is a government justified in taking extraordinary measures against this ideology?
The answer is yes.
It is never desirable for governments to come to universities. But at the same time, it is clear that in France the professors of certain faculties are terrified at the idea of confronting religious fundamentalists.
It is precisely this terror that justifies elected officials to interfere with university education. The debates no longer pit theoretical chapels against each other. They pit Islamists against other French people. Islamists who have started to build a state parallel to the French state, in France itself. An Islamic state. The fight is not academic, it is political.
Quebec is not immune to the ambition of the Islamists. Fortunately, Quebec Muslims, who have suffered from the abuses of the Islamists, are fighting with us to avoid this drift. Unfortunately, our courts, which do not understand much about political battles and which are too subject to the charters of rights, risk becoming de facto allies of the Islamists.