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The Redeker Affair Christian Delacampagne Retour € l'Accueil The Redeker Affair Christian Delacampagne his past September, Robert Redeker, a French Laden) Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi. In Egypt and T high-school philosophy teacher at Saint- Tunisia, the offending issue of Le Figaro was banned. Orens-de-Gameville (a small city near Toulouse) As for Redeker himself, he soon received a large and the author of several scholarly books, published number of threats by letter and e-mail. On an Is- an op-ed article in the newspaper Le Figaro. The lamist website, he was sentenced to death in a post- piece, a response to the controversy over remarks ing that, in order to facilitate a potential assassin’s about Islam made a week earlier by Pope Benedict task, also provided his address and a photograph of XVI, was titled “What Should the Free World Do his home. Fearful for himself and his family, Redek- in the Face of Islamist Intimidation?” It was a fierce er sought protection from the local police, who critique of what Redeker called Islam’s attempt “to transferred the case to the national counter-espi- place its leaden cloak over the world.” If Jesus was onage authorities. On their advice, Redeker, his wife, “a master of love,” he wrote, Muhammad was “a and three children fled their home and took shelter master of hatred.” Of the three “religions of the in a secret location. Since then, they have moved book,” Islam was the only one that overtly preached from city to city, at their own expense, under police holy war. “Whereas Judaism and Christianity are re- protection. Another teacher has been appointed by ligions whose rites reject and delegitimize violence,” the French Ministry of Education to replace Redek- er, who will probably never see his students again. Redeker concluded, “Islam is a religion that, in its own sacred text, as well as in its everyday rites, ex- s a long-time friend of Robert Redeker, I alts violence and hatred.” A was, of course, deeply disturbed by these Having been posted online, the article was read events and worried about his and his family’s safety. all across France and in other countries as well, and My distress was only compounded by the reaction was quickly translated into Arabic. Denunciations of to the Redeker affair of the French establishment. Redeker’s “insult of the prophet” spread across the Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was virtu- Internet. Within a day after publication, the piece ally the only public official who took an honorable was being condemned on al Jazeera by the popular position, declaring that this “fatwa” against a on-air preacher (and unofficial voice of Osama bin French intellectual was “unacceptable.” A group of Christian Delacampagne, a new contributor, is a pro- centrist intellectuals, including Pascal Bruckner, fessor of French literature and philosophy at Johns Hopkins Alain Finkielkraut, André Glucksmann, and University. Educated at the Sorbonne, he has taught in the Bernard-Henri Lévy, also issued an appeal on Re- French educational system and worked in the cultural sections deker’s behalf and in defense of France’s “most fun- of several French embassies. damental liberties.” [25] Commentary January 2007 But the vast majority of responses, even when remains an ongoing problem in these areas, with couched as defenses of the right to free speech, were their large populations of Muslim, French-born in fact hostile to the philosophy teacher. The Com- young people of African or North African descent, munist mayor of Saint-Orens-de-Gameville, echoed and fear of another conflagration has steered the by the head of Redeker’s school, deplored the fact French political class away from anything touching that he had included his affiliation at the end of the on the subject of Islam. article. France’s two largest teachers’ unions, both More puzzling is the complicity of the French of them socialist, stressed that “they did not share media. Naturally, they too wish to avoid being per- Redeker’s convictions.” The leading leftist human- ceived as adversaries of the Muslim community. But rights organizations went much farther, denouncing they have gone beyond the mere exercise of cau- his “irresponsible declarations” and “putrid ideas.” tion. In the wake of the riots, major newspapers, A fellow high-school philosophy teacher, Pierre Té- magazines, and news shows have shown little inter- vanian, declared (on a Muslim website) that Redek- est in the sociological reality of French Islam, espe- er was “a racist” who should be severely punished by cially the rising influence of Islamist propaganda. his school’s administration. Even Gilles de Robien, Thus, it was not a journalist but the extreme-Right the French minister of education, criticized Redeker politician Philippe de Villiers who drew attention for acting “as if he represented the French educa- recently to the Islamization of the workforce at tional system”—a bizarre charge against the author Charles de Gaulle airport. This phenomenon was of a piece clearly marked as personal opinion. hardly a secret—the airport is located in the mostly Among members of the media, Redeker was Muslim département of Seine-Saint-Denis, and hires scolded for articulating his ideas so incautiously. On locally—but no respectable publication saw fit to the radio channel Europe 1, Jean-Pierre Elkabach in- investigate it. In the face of Islamic militancy, vited the beleaguered teacher to express his “regret.” French journalists as a class would seem to have lost The editorial board of Le Monde, France’s newspaper their nerve and compromised their professionalism. of record, characterized Redeker’s piece as “excessive, As for the French academic world, that is a more misleading, and insulting.” It went so far as to call his complicated story. Working on sensitive issues re- remarks about Muhammad “a blasphemy,” implying lated to race and religion has never been an easy that the founder of Islam must be treated even by choice for a French scholar, especially one whose non-Muslims in a non-Muslim country as an object views fall outside the conventions of the academic not of investigation but of veneration. Left. During the 1950’s, the great historian Fernand To be sure, Redeker’s language had not been gen- Braudel tried to discourage Léon Poliakov from tle. But since when has that been a requirement of writing a Ph.D. on anti-Semitism, a subject about intellectual discourse in France? One can often find which Poliakov would go on to compose many dis- similarly strong language in, say, Les Temps Modernes, tinguished books. Years later, I too was steered away the journal founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and on from the subject of anti-Semitism by well-inten- whose editorial board Redeker has long served. Yet, tioned people concerned about my career prospects. to judge by the response to his “offense,” large sec- Having ignored their advice and published a book tors of the French intellectual and political estab- titled L’Invention du Racisme (1983), I was unable to lishment have carved out an exception to this hard- find a job at the university level. Happily, I have won tradition of open discussion: when it comes to fared better in the United States. Islam (as opposed to Christianity or Judaism), free- Today in France, research on the most contest- dom of speech must respect definite limits. ed issues of race and religion is taboo unless one How did France reach this point? exhibits the “right” politics. To speak at confer- ences or to be considered for important posts, a he first and most immediate explanation is scholar must be prepared to describe the colonial T that the country is about to enter an impor- era in French history as nothing less than an exer- tant electoral season, with races for the presidency cise in genocide and to denounce American policy and legislature scheduled for May of this year. As in the Middle East as barbaric cruelty. Those who many as five million Muslims reside on French ter- refuse to comply find themselves shut out. ritory, and most of them are citizens eligible to A notable instance of such blacklisting occurred in vote. No political party can afford to be caught in a 2004, when a scholar applied for a three-year posi- serious confrontation with this growing communi- tion at the prestigious Collège International de ty. Moreover, memories are still fresh of the riots Philosophie. His credentials were formidable, but that roiled the suburbs of the largest French cities when his “pro-American” views became known to in the fall of 2005. Similar if less dramatic violence one member of the committee (the candidate, it [26] The Redeker Affair seemed, was not completely opposed to the war in as a classic anti-Semitic trope about the supposed Iraq), a quiet but effective campaign was organized Jewish thirst for power. It was de Gaulle’s signal of to deny him the post. Details of the case were re- a new turn in French foreign policy—going be- ported in the weekly newspaper L’Express. The name yond close relations with the Arabs to an embrace of the unjustly treated candidate was Robert Redeker. of the anti-Zionist cause. De Gaulle’s shift reinforced other ideological ne can point to many explanations for these trends in French society that were already strong O extraordinary, interlocking biases, but I am at the time and remain powerful today. The first of convinced that their origins lie in the complex his- these was the long-standing resistance of French tory of the relationship between France and the Catholics to seeing Palestine—the Holy Land, the Arab world over the past 150 years.
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