by Giulio Meotti
“Why should we only target Islamism, when we should be interested in the Society of Saint Pius X and the zealots of Hare Krishna? Because you have to be seriously radicalized to walk the streets of Paris in the middle of winter, with a shaved head, wearing a saffron-colored sari, playing the tambourine and chanting mantras … “. This question and answer, with no little irony, is the opening of “Sept pas vers l’enfer” by Alain Chouet, the former number two of the DGSE, the very powerful French counter-intelligence service.
The book is a deadly indictment of the suicide of the European elites.
“Western elites and media thought they had detected the joys of a democratic transition in Arab and Muslim countries under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood perceived as a kind of local Christian Democrat. On this ideological basis, all American and European strategies were built in the first two decades of the 21st century, culminating in support for the Arab ‘springs’.” But these short-sighted interferences quickly turned into wide open doors to the only political organizations that survived the dictatorial powers, “the Salafist organizations that had benefited for decades from the protection and support of the petromonarchies.”
Chouet attacks “a certain intelligentsia” that has brandished accusations of “racism and Islamophobia” to end the debate. “All ill-thinkers have been designated to the revenge of the mainstream press and the hateful contempt of editorial writers. And we found our usual white-shirted philosopher haranguing the streets of Tripoli alongside the president of a transitional government who proudly wore his zebiba (the bump of prayer on the forehead of devout Muslims) while promising bright and fabulous tomorrows. oil contracts to his French friend “. Here Chouet attacks the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and Nicholas Sarkozy, who threw Libya to the wolves, for intellectual naivety and economic interests.
Former spy Chouet recounts incredible incidents. “I have been invited every year to give a lecture on the problems of the Arab world in Molenbeek, a suburb of Brussels by now known as it has become the model of a neighborhood consigned to the control and activism of the Salafist jihadists. One day I was there to discuss issues with Firouzeh Nahavandy, a professor at the Free University of Brussels.”
“We had just started talking when Philippe Moureaux, the city’s socialist mayor and big shot of the Belgian Socialist Party, took the front row flanked by two imposing bodyguards in djellaba, beards and white berets. To the audience, Moureaux said I was not qualified to discuss the Arab world, as I came from a country that had tortured Muslims in Algeria. His reasoning is significant to understand the way in which, since the late 1980s, the European left has allowed itself to be taken by the sirens of militant Salafism. The management of Molenbeek is exemplary in this sense: authorizations granted easily and without any control for the opening and functioning of mosques, Islamic private schools, cultural and sports clubs generously subsidized by Saudi Arabia “.
Following the tragic fire at the Innovation department store that killed 300 people in Brussels in 1967, Saudi King Faisal, then on tour in Europe, pulled out his checkbook to compensate the victims. “In return, the Saudi king asked the Belgian king Baudouin to grant Arabia the monopoly of the representation of Islam and the appointment of imams in Belgium”. The Belgian government officially recognized the Islamic religion. It was the first European country.
And then there was the inclusion of the Islamic religion in the school curriculum. “I accuse political leaders of never wanting to understand the rise of radical Islam and of deliberately ignoring it because of the electorate and wanting to be ‘politically correct'” writes Chouet. “I accuse them of allowing several municipalities to develop jihadist radicalism for years, to the point that a socialist official told me: ‘We know Molenbeek’s problem, but, what do you want, it is an electorate that cannot be neglected'”.
The instigators of terrorism exist. “But there is no need to look for them in some remote corner of Syria, Afghanistan or Yemen. They are legion. They are all those who for thirty years have been calling for revolt and violence against the West and the ‘unbelievers’.”
Under the two crossed sabers of the Muslim Brotherhood coat of arms there is a word in Arabic that can be translated as follows: ‘Be ready!’ “.
Europe is certainly not …