The main cause is the rejection by the ruling elites of the values on which Western civilization was founded, not immigration.
“I suspect that our intellectuals who admire Islam would be horrified if Islamic norms were imposed on them”, declares this week Rémi Brague, a medievalist at the Sorbonne and one of the leading experts on Islam.
Last Friday it was enough to go to Le Pontet, 17,000 inhabitants on the outskirts of Avignon. The stadium fills up, in a phenomenal time lapse that says a lot, if not all, about how one religion falls and another takes its place. It is the great Islamic prayer that marks the end of Ramadan.
Avignon, the “city of the Popes”, in the Paris Match investigation today has become “the city of the Salafis”. “Most of the passers-by look alike, black veils for women, baggy afghan pants for men,” says Paris Match. “Most of them wear the believer’s beard, long and sometimes dyed with henna, as in the time of the Prophet. It seems to go back fourteen centuries. Gender segregation is respected: hairdressers for women, inaccessible to men; bars full of men, inaccessible to women. They serve coffee, tea, lemonade… Everything, except alcohol. It is a mini-Islamic republic”.
