How can the French Left, including President Hollande, insist that terrorists who kill civilians while crying “Allah Akbar” are not motivated by religion [“ça n’a rien à voir”]? This astonishing paradox is explored by Jean Birnbaum, editor of the newspaper Le Monde’s book section, in a compelling essay "A Religious Silence" ["Un Silence Religieux", Seuil, 2015]. Eighteen months and several murderous attacks later, public discourse has evolved but denial is still an issue.
Birnbaum’s book was born of the Charlie Hebdo and HyperCasher attacks in January 2015 as specialists in different disciplines found an extraordinary range of non-religious explanations; foreign policy geeks, criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, demographers, techies and communications specialists identified the killers as products of Western imperialism, pathologically violent, fragile personalities, children of problematic suburbs, inspired by humanitarian NGOs, suffocating in an aging society, unduly exposed to internet, or simply seeking media stardom.
The paradox, Birnbaum argues, can best be understood through the prism of Algeria’s war of independence (1954-62) which marked an entire generation of French intellectuals engaged alongside the National Liberation Front (FLN). The FLN was seen as a revolutionary movement throwing off the yoke of colonial oppression on behalf of a weak and disenfranchised native population. With Marxism struggling to progress in the West and Stalinism in the East, hopes were high for the Left in Algeria.
Despite numerous signs, Birnbaum writes, most French activists saw no trace of Islam in Algeria’s nationalist revolt or remained silent about what they did see. Only years later did some leading figures like the secular Pierre Vidal-Naquet, whose parents perished in Auschwitz, recall that the leading newspaper was El Moudjahid meaning “Fighter for the Faith”; nationalists referred to each other as “brothers” but foreigners were “infidels”; bearded religious Algerians were arms factories overseers; European writers took Arab pseudonyms and some converted to Islam; young women committed suicide to avoid forced marriage and homosexuals were assassinated; education after independence was Islamised and the new constitution proclaimed Islam the religion of the state and the nation’s spiritual force.
The same refusal to recognise religion’s role was evident nearly 20 years later when the Shah of Iran was overthrown. The Left saw a revolt against imperial oppression and economic injustice while the ayatollahs’ rule would be a temporary phase leading inevitably to a secular regime. Birnbaum tells this story through the experience of the major philosopher Michel Foucault who visited Iran twice in 1978 and reported for a major Italian daily. Foucault quickly grasped the messianic power of “political spirituality” that was moving millions of Iranians across the country to call for restoration of an all embracing Islamic way of life (sharia) and to reconnect with Iran’s glorious history and civilisation. But Foucault’s analysis was ridiculed in France by intellectuals right and left, even after 9/11 in 2001.
Birnbaum faults the French Left for failing to see the autonomous and global power of religion, blinded he says by still unquestioned certitudes: that religion is irrelevant or ephemeral, a mere distraction from true underlying causes or a temporary phase destined to evaporate. He criticises a misplaced obsession with the United States and post-colonial racism as enemy number one, overlooking the tolerance for debate and political activism in liberal democracies and the suppression of those freedoms in communist and theocratic states. The author recommends revisiting Marx who took religion so seriously he was convinced it was communism’s main competitor. He also suggests re-reading Derrida, Benny Levy and great Enlightenment philosophers to re-discover religion’s essential contributions to ethics, law, economics and politics. Birnbaum sees room for reason and religion in tomorrow’s world. What a great conclusion for Judaism!
Reuven Levi has been a Paris resident for 35 years. He was married in the United States and is a father of three, grandfather of six, and an active volunteer in the Jewish Community.