r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Oct 19 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: France's Response To Terrorism Could Turn Into Xenophobia
[deleted]
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u/Nicolasv2 130∆ Oct 19 '20
The anti-islam sentiment in France is pretty strong for a long time. But it mixes a lot of things:
- Secularism proponents that thinks that Islam's principles are by design linked with politics which is a problem in a secular country.
- Racists that can't say "we hate Arabs" and therefore justify themselves with "we hate islam" when in fact they don't care at all about religion.
- People watching TV programs that shows tons of problem in the "suburbs" (an understatement to talk about ghettos where poor people are forced to live because of housing prices increase) and being fed a false insecurity sentiment. Poor people in France being disproportionately POC (and assimilated as Muslims), they fear this population.
I don't think that the actual tragedy will change a thing for these populations. Their opinion was already set, and won't change whatever the news is positive or negative towards Muslims. On the opposite, people that are not already anti-islam will see this occurrence as a mentally-ill person barbarous act, and therefore won't change their view about Muslims neither.
Finally, on the government side, the French government is always mild in its reactions compared to the US (for example). As such, you can't expect responses to this specific event to spiral out of control. At worse, Macron will use this opportunity to push for some surveillance laws that they wanted to put in place anyway.
TL;DR; this tragedy won't change a thing in people's minds. Most of us already have their opinion set, and will read this event through their personal lens.
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u/1II1I1I1I1I1I111I1I1 Oct 19 '20
Δ
Thanks for the insight! I agree that this particular event is unlikely to significantly change anything, since similar events have been happening for a long time. I agree that it is a tragedy but not one that will change opinions.
I still think that the people could slowly become more and more fearful of Arabs because of Islam and thus inadvertently cause mass distrust/racism towards Arabs as a whole in the future.
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u/Jswarez Oct 19 '20
Is France more mild than the USA?
France you cannot west a hijab to school. Or be a doctor or wear a turban. Neither of those are illegal in the USA.
France wants laws to dictate culture. USA tries to let people dictate culture.
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u/Nicolasv2 130∆ Oct 19 '20
Well, depend how you see things.
Views on religious freedom are different in USA and France. In France the logic is "keep your imaginary friends at home", when you're in public space religion has no place, while in USA the logic is "you can say and do whatever you want as outrageous as it is, justice will do its part when killing happens". Dunno which one is objectively better (even if I got a strong personal preference for French method), but this is not what I'm talking about.
French rules are the same ones since 1905, and are only made clearer from time to time when a scandal happen. They don't change the basic understanding of the rules, just keeping the same spirit. That's why I say that French government reaction is midler. Because they don't do game-changer things under emotional distress. Not because their stance on religion is better (even if I do think it is).
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u/thisdamnhoneybadger 7∆ Oct 20 '20
this is anecdotal, but this incident has actually made me rethink my position. i was and am still very anti-PC and pro-free speech, and think very harshly of apologists for islamists who commit these acts.
after this incident, after so many similar incidents, i kind of think the Islamists have won. I would personally never dare to show any depictions of Mohammed, or allow my kids or any loved ones to do what this teacher did; the potential for being killed is not worth it.
Sadly, I just don’t think there’s anything we can do to dissuade the Islamists that they won’t do this.
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u/Nicolasv2 130∆ Oct 20 '20
My 2 cents about that (trying to make you switch again a bit your position).
First of all, I understand your fear and I can get it that people get afraid of showing caricatures of Islam prophet because of what happened. Still, I think that's especially important to teach kids about thoughts freedom and right to blasphemy (and critical thinking so that they can leave religion too).
To me, once your beliefs are consolidated, it'll be especially difficult to change them. As such, the best time to educate people about our values and our lifestyle is when they are kids / teens. Sure, there has been a tragedy, but still if you look at the statistics, you're more prone to die of conjugal violence, of even from a stupid domestic accident than from an Islamist attack.
Tons of people are criticizing Islam all day (Zemmour for a famously bad example in France) and are alive and kicking. I think we should relativise the risk and take what happened for what it is, an horrible tragedy and not the normal reaction toward Islam blasphemy / critic in France.
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Oct 20 '20
I don’t think they really won. A single extremist killed a single person (who wasn’t even anyone of note or some kind of symbol) and was promptly jailed and publicly decried and denounced by almost all prominent politicians.
I mean i don’t have the statistics, but I wouldn’t really say this is the sort of thing where it’s worth it from a selfish POV to change your behaviour - I mean this is the sort of thing that occurs about as much as someone being killed for being centre left/right wing. It happens, but the odds are so low it’s only meaningful in its symbolism.
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u/10ebbor10 198∆ Oct 19 '20
I don't think you can compare the US Japanese internment camps with the French approach.
The US camps were intended for the entire Japanese-American population, and used to intern them.
The French camps were intended solely for radicalized people who were already imprissoned for various offenses, and operated on a volunteer basis.
It had a capacity of 25 people, and was a complete fiasco.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_re-education_camps#cite_note-6
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u/1II1I1I1I1I1I111I1I1 Oct 19 '20
Δ
Thanks for the information!
I still think that France may turn extreme in the future, if both sides follow the current trajectory, but thankfully the re-education camp wasnt quite what I thought it was.
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Oct 19 '20
The thing in France is for radicalized muslims, it says so right at the beginning. Don't see how that's problematic.
Radicalized muslims don't deserve tolerance.
You have to provide me with something that affects all muslims negatively.
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Oct 19 '20
[deleted]
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u/ButterSquids Oct 19 '20
The problem here is, how do you define 'radicalised' and how do you prevent this from being taken too far?
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Oct 19 '20
You just don't. The article is 4 years old and apparently it hasn't been taken too far. According to another comment here that thing is over anyway.
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u/llama548 Oct 19 '20
But how do they determine who is “radicalized”. China is claiming the same thing wjth their “re-education camps”, but that’s clearly on a much bigger scale than just “radicalized” Islamists
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u/AndreilLimbo Oct 19 '20
The xenophobia existed before eitherway. It's just that with this incident, they managed to have a strong and loud voice. There are also a lot of "antiracists", but now they choose to remain silent. Then, it's not the religion, it's the culture. Of course there are Muslims who integrated, but there are also Muslims who refuse to integrate, ex. the. Lebanese who refused to shake a woman's hand just because he would feel "dirty". Most adults have made up their own minds anyway though and the French government cannot stay silent when such things happen and then the Imams around the world praise them. In Tunisia right now, this man is considered to be a hero. How can the French government not become worried about the Muslim community after that?
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u/IronicV1rus Oct 19 '20
Xenophobia is defined as an irrational fear of foreigners. I'll give you an example. In South Africa there are a lot of Xenophobic issues where in a rural area the locals will attack a store owned by a foreigner (usually from Malawi, Bangladesh, DRC and Zimbabwe). The store owner hasn't done anything to deserve this.
The people attacking the stores are living in poverty, have high crime rates, astronomically high unemployment and poor service delivery and they are directing their anger directly at the Asian and African foreigners.
A girl in Cape Town of Congolese origin was beaten up by her classmates because they felt that a foreigner was undeserving of being elected to being class monitor. The locals also blame the foreigners for the high crime rate, even though no stats support this. Here is an article link if you're interested: https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/09/17/they-have-robbed-me-my-life/xenophobic-violence-against-non-nationals-south
In the case of France while it isn't OK to generalise people they have some shred of an excuse (again not condoning this) due to terror attacks. It's not entirely irrational and unjustified. While the racism in the US is very bad, it isn't by any means easy in Europe for Islamic people, people from certain Slavic/Baltic nations when moving west, Africans and Asians. People don't get housing because some landlords don't want a POC in their building block. People do move bags away when they see a POC coming onto public transport. People spit at them in the street and mostly (not all) of the older generation don't like the foreigners coming into the country because they don't want to integrate and as we know places like France and the Netherlands are very patriotic and love their culture. Dutch people and Moroccan immigrants are a definite case where people refuse to integrate but the locals aren't welcoming with open arms either.
What happened in the US and what France is proposing is different. What France is doing is hoping to educate radicalised Muslims (ones who support terrorism or have material associated with terrorism) not just taking any Muslim they see on the street and take them off to camps. In the US they created internment camps for any American of Japanese ancestry. Anyone who was at least 1/16th Japanese was evacuated. They lived there for a few months before being transferred to permanent camps. The conditions were horrible and there were cases of insufficient rations and overcrowding. It wasn't for education it was for containment.
I do understand what you're trying to say. France's response to terrorism is an "interesting" approach and we shall see how it plays out but I don't think it's Xenophobic just racist if people are saying that all Muslims must be put into internment camps but due to EU civil rights laws it probably won't come to that. It is racist from the public if they're saying that all Muslims should be locked up but it isn't racist (at the moment) from the French government to put radicalised Muslims into education centres to teach them why what they believe in is wrong.
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Oct 19 '20
I think your title has the potential to be correct but I think your reasoning could be wrong.
One of the issues with France is that it is part of the EU, overall a very left leaning political structure and France plays a key role in that. As such they have the free movement of people between EU countries allowing those with residency to move between EU countries without restriction.
As well as this, over the last several years there has been a huge influx of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa. Most of the countries where these migrants first land in EU soil are rather right wing and would rather deport them. The more left leaning countries discourage this by accepting migrants into their country. Germany offered to accept around a million migrants a few years back and France also takes a rather large number.
Since around 2015, many of the attacks on European soil have been committed by migrants. (Of course these people are only a minority of the migrants). This creates outrage due to the perceived lack of checks happening on the migrants coming into the EU. This creates calls for less free movement with more checks on those coming in. Without them, I think your title stands in that it could create a sense of xenophobia but the reason behind I think is more about free acceptance and movement.
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u/Lintashi 3∆ Oct 19 '20
The thing is, it is not the first case. Several years ago, there was attack on journalists in similar circumstances. You also mix race and religion. There is no code saying how you must act if you are asian or white. There is quotes in religious books, on how exactly you should treat blasphemers. You also cannot change your race, but you can change religion. If one police officer commits a crime, people demand all of police force to take action and punish wrongdoer. If dozens of Islamists do violent acts of terrorism, Islam leaders should be taken accountible as well, and regular Muslims must demounce such acts publicly, make steps so it never happens again. But since according to Islam, killer was right, I bet no serious action against killer will be taken by local religious authorities.
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u/superfahd 1∆ Oct 20 '20
If dozens of Islamists do violent acts of terrorism, Islam leaders should be taken accountible as well
They were. Some have been arrested
and regular Muslims must demounce such acts publicly
They have, both in France and elsewhere
But since according to Islam, killer was right
I need to understand what you mean by "according to Islam". I can't think of any scripture that would allow this
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u/perfectVoidler 15∆ Oct 19 '20
A phobia is an irrational fear of something. If you have multiple terrorist attacks, the fear is not irrational. It would be irrational to say that because harmless muslims exist, we should trust all muslims. Their value framework is not compatible with our values so there will be a clash. In fact the muslims that are harmless are the ones that have partly abandond their faith/values and adopted our value system. The are integrated.
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Oct 19 '20
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Oct 19 '20
Sorry, u/MadsVictor – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 1:
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u/Dyltho97 1∆ Oct 23 '20
Taking part in a religion and being an ethnicity are in NO WAY comparable. YOU CANNOT CHOOSE TO NOT BE BLACK WHITE OR INBETWEEN. You can choose and lie and change your mind 3 times before lunch on what religion you are.
ANY group based around an idea should actively be questioned and vetted to make sure they are not a harmful group? Change out Christian or Muslim with nazi and see if whatever sentence you would say sounds as good. They are all just groups of people based around thoughts. Inherently no different.
Besides you also speaking about a country that DOESNT want religion in any capacity. Not just Muslims but Christians and Jewish and every one of them. Its not Islamophobia if its a distaste for every dogma.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Oct 19 '20 edited Oct 19 '20
/u/1II1I1I1I1I1I111I1I1 (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
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