The massive violent protests in France after the death of a 17-year-old boy of Moroccan and Algerian descent should be seen as an example of Pavlovian conditioning. Morally supported by Leftists and liberals, Islamists and their thuggish cronies tried to set France afire, resulting in the worst riots for almost two decades. Assisted by the mainstream media, they have been able to magnify and distort a mishap — which was, at worst, a case of excessive but not unprovoked police action — into some version of the 1884-1906 Dreyfus affair.
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army captain in the French Army, was charged with treason in December 1894 for allegedly selling military secrets to the Germans. A military court found him guilty in September 1899. It was found that the charges against him were fabricated, so the French president pardoned him. In July 1906, a civilian court of appeals set aside the judgment. But the army remained unconvinced; it was only in 1995 that it publicly accepted his innocence. That was systemic racism.
Nahel Merzouk suffered no such ignominy or discrimination, though he has been presented as a martyr. The fact is that he was accused of juvenile delinquency in the past. While the police version has been disputed, what is beyond doubt is that Nahel, a minor, was dangerously driving a car. Worse, he ignored the warning issued to him by the cops. One of them later shot at him. That he succumbed to the bullet injury is unfortunate, but this was clearly not a case of systemic racism. Delinquent behavior of any boy — white or black, French or African, Christian or Muslim—could have had a similar ending.
But liberal politicians and intellectuals are so fond of the term systemic racism that they use all the time. By the way, it is only in the context of Western nations and societies. The implicit assumption is that there is no discrimination based on ethnicity, faith, gender, or sexual orientation in Muslim countries. Besides, if racism and bigotry are systemic in Western societies, why do so many Muslims (and also non-Muslims) want to migrate to Europe and the United States?
Liberals and intellectuals ignore the reality that in no Muslim-majority country human rights and civil liberties are cherished as much as in Western countries. It is also a well-known fact that in many Muslim countries discrimination is doctrinally justified and systemically and systematically enforced. For instance, the atrocities against Hindus and Christians in Pakistan.
Muslims and other religious and ethnic minorities in France and other Western countries enjoy not just greater freedom but also much better living standards than the people in the countries where they or their parents came from (In fact, for non-Sunni Muslims, Western countries are much safer than most Muslim nations). This is the reason that Muslims want to go to Western countries, often using illegal means.
All manner of lies were spread by people about Nahel Merzouk’s death. Everyone else is responsible for the death but the delinquent himself and his family. “I lost a child of 17-year-old, they took my baby,” his mother said in a TikTok video. “He was still a child, he needed his mother. This morning he gave me a big kiss and told me he loved me. I told him to be careful and I loved him.”
And yet, she did nothing to stop her “child” from driving a car. In France, as in India, the minimum age for legally driving a car is 18. “According to his mother, they both had left the house together,” a report in The Independent said. “While he went to get a McDonald’s takeout, she left for work.”
It looks like she knew that he would be driving the car, but didn’t stop him. Yet, she is not blamed for being an irresponsible parent—and the entire French government is. His grandmother said, “I will never forgive them. My grandson died, they killed my grandson. We are not happy at all, I am against the government.”
It is not just Nahel’s family and Muslims are blaming the police and the government; the self-loathing, guilt-ridden liberals in the West keep blaming their own countries, indeed the Western civilization, for intellectually fashionable sins like Islamophobia and xenophobia. The Western mainstream media, by indulging in self-flagellation, provides moral and intellectual support to the Islamists who are increasingly gaining in strength and acceptability in Europe and the western hemisphere.
Islamists and their thuggish collaborators are able to capitalize on the death of a teenager, who died primarily because of his own recklessness. This is exactly what they did after Nahel Merzouk’s death. This also gave them an opportunity to indulge in vandalism, arson, and loot; the pretext is protest against ‘systemic racism.’ “When you loot a Foot Locker, a Lacoste store or a Sephora boutique, there is no political message,” Olivier Véran, the French government spokesman reportedly said.
But robbers and goons just need pretexts, not political stimuli, to act; and they don’t deliver any message. In general Muslims in France cling to the most regressive practices of Islam, oppose the imperatives of modernity, and refuse to join the mainstream. It is their own self-caused ghettoisation that keeps them separate and relatively low on the educational and economic indices. And yet, they blame others for their own attitudes and actions.
With the help of Leftists and liberals.
The author is a freelance journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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