Editor’s note: It shouldn’t need to be stated with Joseph Farah’s long history of defending Israel and exposing what he characterizes as “the myths of the Middle East,” but the following commentary is a tongue-in-cheek satire. The writer and the editors of WND want to make clear to France, and particularly the families of the victims of the recent terrorist attack, that we mourn for them as we did our own losses in earlier senseless assaults on our own population.
While the recent deadly attack by French Muslims resulting in the tragic deaths of 12 has many Parisians calling for tighter security and limits on immigration, the path to averting future violence lies in negotiations, redress of legitimate grievances and the right to self-determination.
Let me suggest an obvious endgame: With a teeming population of Muslims in France, the only fair and equitable solution is the creation of two states for two peoples, living side by side in peace and security with Paris as the shared capital.
Nearly unanimously, political leaders and thought leaders the world over, including France, long ago came to this conclusion regarding tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. It only makes sense to apply the same logic to France’s crisis.
Muslims in France, as in many other countries in the world, seek to live by the tenets of their faith, their culture, their laws. That faith, that culture and those laws often conflict with Western ideas about free expression, marriage, the role of women and the free exercise of religion. There exists an irreconcilable divide that is best addressed through physical and legal separation that permits self-determination. The only alternative is a neo-colonial occupation of Muslim-dominated communities in France and the kind of protracted, endless bloodshed the world has witnessed for 67 years in the Middle East.
Occupation is not an optimal solution for either party, as we’ve seen in Israel. Occupation leads to human rights violations, corrupts morally the occupier, fuels violence regionally and worldwide, discourages tourism and in pariah status for the troubled nation. France needs to focus on protecting the state, not policing hostile communities within its borders.
Then there is the issue of demographics: Muslims have a much higher birth rate than native, non-Muslim Europeans. It’s a simple fact that will complicate and exacerbate France’s troubles in the future.
If France wants to protect its democratic institutions and culture, demographics cannot be ignored. Only a two-state solution allows French Muslims and French non-Muslims to chart their own cultural and legal destinies. That’s why the U.S., the international community and most major cultural institutions – from the press to academia – favor a two-state solution for Israel.
Likewise, Muslims favor this kind of independence because it addresses what they see as injustices inflicted upon them during France’s earlier colonial period and during today’s era of “cultural imperialism.”
Further, today’s French Muslim population includes a majority of citizens who have generational roots in the county. They are not all newcomers. Instead, they are in France to stay. It only makes sense then to divide up French land in two with separate Muslim and non-Muslim states with a shared capital.
This will permit Muslims and non-Muslims to establish their own separate economies, languages, governments and cultures. This is what the value of multiculturalism is ultimately all about.
After all, if the whole world, including France, thinks the two-state solution is the way to go in Israel, why wouldn’t it make perfect sense in France?
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
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