Finkielkraut was one of the staunchest defenders of the controversial law prohibiting head-coverings in schools, which has roiled France in recent years.
Well, if you oppose religious freedoms and hinder people from doing things which are extremely important to them personally, and not so important to others, you will create resentment. It's wrong to bar people from wearing crosses or otherwise expressing their religious beliefs anyway and it creates exactly the kind of tension that Finkelkraut is being interviewed on.
Some more quotes from him:
First of all, they say that one synagogue has been attacked. But I think that what we've experienced is an anti-republican pogrom. They tell us that these neighborhoods are neglected and the people are in distress. What connection is there between poverty and despair, and wreaking destruction and setting fire to schools? I don't think any Jew would ever do a thing like this
"I don't think any Jew would ever do a thing like this"...this is a big source of the problem. Terrorism is what "they" do, not us, "us" (whoever "we" are: americans, Israelis, christians, germans, anyone). Wreaking destruction in order to rebel against established political discrimination is exactly what happened not too long ago in Israel. The connection between poverty and despair, and violence, I think is pretty darn well establshed...in the US included. "We don't do this" sentiments are a good way to blind yourself to your own closet-skeletons as well as to grounds for dialogue with whoever you're calling "them."
I think this interviewee is also off on the wrong track because he's identifying what is happening in Israel and Holland with what has happened with France. That to me involves a wholesale denial of what's gone on in Israel and in Algeria since World War II. Here's his framing of the problem:
This problem is the problem of all the countries of Europe. In Holland, they've been confronting it since the murder of Theo van Gogh. The question isn't what is the best model of integration, but just what sort of integration can be achieved with people who hate you
The problem with this is that the vast majority of the "people who hate you", ie, Muslims, aren't aligned with and couldn't care less for the people who murdered Van Gogh and who continue to murder people in the middle east daily. Most Palestinians are more like the Lebanese (read that, more secular) than they are like Al Zarqawi, and ignoring that fact serves only to blind us to the very real possibility of compromise. Even Hamas leadership is on record claiming that its stated (in its constitution, not its religion) goal of destroying Israel is negotiable...East Jerusalem seems to be the linchpin even for most of the radical groups. That link is here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9424469/
Any attempt to turn such divergent events as attacks in Israel and riots in Paris into some kind of worldwide "Islamic expression" will produce failed policies that, in my mind, will only endanger Israel and other minority groups in the middle east in the future. The more muslims worldwide are treated as uniformly violent and uninterested in terrorism, the more they will be discriminated against. I think it's entirely possible that in the next 50 years, the US and Europe will return to the pre World Wars era of not really caring about Jews or persecution against Jews...and then what will happen to the Israelis when the Arab world, remembering all that discrimination and daily muslim bashing in the west, can act out without any concern for Israel's western supporters?
IMO, It is a recipe for disaster to fail, at this point, to develop a way of identifying the differences in the muslim world and to deal specifically with each case. The sooner we can admit that violence is motivated by specific historical causes that differ between the various middle eastern locales, the sooner we'll be able to address effectively what's going on in Israel and in Europe. Focusing on the fact that most of these people are Muslim doesn't tell us anything more than focusing on the fact that most south american drug runners are Christian, as are most Americans, would tell us about how to deal with the social problems in South America.
