Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, and writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.
The French République is submitting itself, neighborhood after neighborhood, bistro after bistro, with the same elegance with which it once guillotined its kings.
The Enlightenment has been digested in a single Ramadan and the nation that invented the rights of man and secularism is turning itself halal without even the modesty of an explicit conversion. It is a creeping surrender, bureaucratic, commercial, smelling of fear and terminal goodism.
Even fast-food chains are adapting to sharia: locals in Lyon with rooms to pray to Allah.
All that was missing was the République en djellaba turning itself into a catering service for Islamization.
In Submission, Michel Houellebecq has a character say: “Old Bat Ye’or is not wrong with her phantom of the Eurabia conspiracy."
“Eurabia is not a conspiracy!" Bat Ye’or boldly replied this week in the Journal du dimanche:
“Eurabia is not a conspiracy. The Euro-Arab fusion policy became official with the Barcelona Pact (1995). The denial of public and established facts does not prove a conspiracy, but an equally established concealment. At the time, I perceived in Europe social behaviors that evoked those of dhimmitude, but I did not yet see the pathways or networks that were implanting in the heart of twentieth-century European societies social schemes dating back to the Muslim Middle Ages and conforming to sharia.
"Still active today in most Muslim countries, these dynamics derive from jihad, a set of theological and legal directives dictating relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. We are living through a transitional period: that of the passage from a European country of Judeo-Christian culture to an Islamo-Christian state, a stage toward its Islamization."
In Vienna, Islam is now the majority religion in public schools. They tried twice to conquer Vienna (and Europe) militarily; now they are entering step by step.
Anyone entering certain suburbs and town centers today has the impression of having landed in another civilization, except that nobody had the courage to declare the change of sovereignty.
In Lyon, now 30 percent Islamic, Alexandre Dallery announced that his bakery no longer sells pork-based products. No more salami, ham, lard, or bacon. On Facebook, Dallery spoke of “various pressures over several months to make everything halal. To calm things down, we no longer sell ham. Otherwise they burn everything down."
In Vaulx-en-Velin, also near Lyon, even non-Muslim schoolgirls confess that they feel the pressure of sharia. Sara, a 15-year-old student, tries every day to look pretty when she goes to school: she wears makeup. This displeases some of her Muslim friends of the same age. “When they see a girl wearing makeup, wearing short clothes, they say you are not a Muslim, you have no right to do that, you have no right to dress like that, you have no right to wear makeup like that, you must be discreet."
In Paris, an Algerian restaurateur stopped selling alcohol following a raid organized by Muslims adhering to Quranic prohibitions.
In Ardèche, cinemas refuse to screen the film “Persepolis" so as not to upset Muslim students.
In Blanc-Mesnil, the bar near the mosque gave up organizing the music festival, considered “impure" by the neighbors.
In Montpellier, a bar behind the station receives visits from an Islamist making sure that “no alcohol is served."
In the historic center of Bordeaux, an Afghan stabbed two people, killing one and seriously wounding the other. He had reproached them for “boire un coup," drinking alcohol, on the day of Eid al-Fitr, the celebration marking the end of Ramadan.
It was the beginning of Ramadan when the Evian brand published an apparently banal message: “Retweet if you have already drunk one liter of Evian today." The advertisement unleashed a hate campaign against the Danone subsidiary. Evian was accused of “Islamophobia." And it decided to apologize. In France, not in Iran.
In Seine-Saint-Denis, the book “Inch’allah" by Le Monde journalists Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme recounts the testimony of the Equal Opportunities official Fadela Benrabia:
“The first halal butcher, the second halal butcher, the third halal butcher, then the religious bookseller and the Muslim stylist selling niqabs… Entire neighborhoods are under halal influence. Yes, Islamization is at work in Seine-Saint-Denis. Pastry shops no longer use pork gelatin."
A principal is threatened with death for asking a student to remove her veil in class.
A veil in the classroom? Yet municipalities use it in advertising to symbolize “progress."
In Trappes there are no more mixed hair salons and people go to school without jeans or makeup, but with veils and gloves.
In Nanterre, hair salons are reserved for veiled women.
In many municipal swimming pools, there are only separate hours for women and men.
There is no need for anyone to officially declare the imposition of sharia in certain neighborhoods: there, social control is already pervasive.
When Secretary of State for Equality Marlène Schiappa decided to move for three days to the city of Trappes to demonstrate attention toward cities with high immigration rates, she tried to stop at a bar “where women are not welcome." The prefect invited the minister to continue on her way “to avoid an incident."
A report by the broadcaster France 2 also denounced the disappearance of female presence from bars in French neighborhoods with Muslim majorities. Nadia Remadna and Aziza Sayah, two activists from the Brigade des Mères (Mothers’ Brigade), entered a café in the Paris suburb of Sevran. “It’s better to wait outside. There are men in here; this bar is not mixed," a customer told them. Another said: “In this café there is no promiscuity. Here there is another mentality. It’s like going back home."
The Algerian poet Kamel Bencheikh denounced what happened to his daughter in Paris’s nineteenth arrondissement. “She was waiting for the bus with a friend. When it arrived, the driver stopped, looked at them, and drove away without opening the doors." The driver told Bencheikh’s daughter, who was wearing a miniskirt: “Dress properly."
In Perpignan, a halal supermarket seeking new employees wants them to be Muslim and male.
In Bordeaux, shops have emerged asking “sisters" to come on Saturdays and Sundays and “brothers" on weekdays.
Secularism, once a sharp weapon against Catholic clericalism, is still invoked in official speeches, but in practice it is sacrificed on the altar of “living together" and the fear of being accused of Islamophobia.
At this moment, 179 new mosques are under construction in the country. There will be a great deal of “diversity" in the future.
Today Muslims in France are 10 percent, perhaps more. 9 million, according to former prime minister François Bayrou. It means 14 percent of the total population.
What do we think will happen when, within a few years, they become 20-30 percent?
200.000 Jews have already left France in thirty years.
The presidential elections of 2027 will be the last opportunity to stop French suicide (and perhaps it may already be too late).
Meanwhile Europe watches from afar the war that will decide, among other things, its own future, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, with the glazed stare of someone who has already abdicated his sovereignty. It is not neutrality, it is paralysis: they are hostages to a demographic and cultural blackmail they cultivated for decades with foolish short-sightedness.
The banlieues of Paris, the neighborhoods of Molenbeek, the suburbs of Malmö or East London, the “difficult areas" of Turin and Milan, are potential powder kegs. Politicians know it. Intelligence services know it. Citizens sense it but are silenced by the ritual accusation of “Islamophobia." The media self-censor.
Meanwhile, General de Gaulle’s house has gone up for sale.
De Gaulle told an aide in 1959: “Do you think the French political body can absorb 10 million Muslims, who tomorrow will be 20 million and the day after 40 million?"
De Gaulle added that his village, Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, would be renamed “Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées."
Today, around Colombey, there are not two mosques, but three.