Jean-Marie Le Pen: A Surreal Interview

The websites have been talking about the latest interview with Jean-Marie Le Pen. It appears in a paper publication called Flash, but some key excerpts have been posted by Bernard Antony. It confirms what (to me) has been fairly obvious for a long time: namely, that he has no problem with Islam, Iran or even Turkey. That he espouses the notion that America has manipulated the Islamic world to make it appear as the new enemy of the West, filling the void left by the defunct Soviet Union. His basic premise is that the U.S. cannot live without an enemy.

The post consists of three elements: Le Pen's words in brown, the words of the interviewer in red, and the editorial comments of Bernard Antony in brown italics. The broken lines merely indicate the passages omitted:

- At the time, Mikhail Gorbachev presumably said to the Americans, right after the fall of the wall: "We have just played the most rotten of all tricks on you. We have deprived you of your most important enemy..." And from that comes the stigmatization of Islamism, a sort of substitute devil?

- JMLP: That's it exactly! Anyway, to what degree is this devil not exploited by the American policies? Its obvious emergence, in my opinion, stems more from demographic, rather than religious, expansionism...

- BA: This is not very clear, because if Islamism is exploited by the Americans, and its emergence was caused by demographic expansionism, are we to conclude that the Americans favored this phenomenon?
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- JMLP: I took an active stand against our breaking the traditional ties of French politics with the countries of Islam, which are very different, and very divided, behind an Umma that is much more façade than reality.

- BA: Of course you have to preserve those ties on the condition of some reciprocity... Jean-Marie Le Pen hardly knows what the Umma is! If he knew, he would know that it is the most fundamental value and reality of Islam immediately after the Koran. According to Mohammed, it is "the best community ever produced for men." It carries within it divine election and the discernment between belief and infidelity, the Good and the Evil. The divine unity - the fundamental principle of Islam, goes hand in hand with the unity of Muslims in their faith. Whatever divisions and conflicts within Islam, the Umma is the factor that transcends them. The Dar al-islam (domain of Islam) is the concrete representation of the Umma. And the believers must conquer the Dar al-kufr (domain of the infidel), in order to install the Umma and its values organized at all levels: religious, social, economic and political. The Umma therefore constitutes, always and everywhere, the fundamental principle of discrimination of Islam: the believers and the infidels, classified as dhimmis if they are Jewish or Christian, or qualified for the death penalty if they reveal their atheism.
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- JMLP: Iran: this is a country that should not be demonized.

- BA: Of course not, but it's the regime that emerged from the bloody revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini that is abominable, adding to the Islamist totalitarianism the dimension of a particular dictatorship of fanatics with its omnipresent police, its repressions, its hangings.
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- When the Americans sell us a ready-to-use clash of civilizations between the West and the East, isn't the real clash rather between merchant and mercantile societies?

- JMLP: Absolutely! This chasm is essentially incarnated by the Anglo-Saxons.

- BA: These remarks are difficult to understand! First, it isn't clear how the Americans are selling us a ready-to-use clash of civilizations. We find once again, the commonplace of exploiting Huntington's title, even though most have never read the book's contents. But a clash between merchant and mercantile societies? That makes no sense at all! Could it be that the Anglo-Saxons are merchants and the Muslims mercantile? I don't understand a word! But what is evident is that Islam, founded by the caravan leader Mohammed was, at least at the outset, a merchant society (or a mercantile society, if you prefer). It is obvious too that the Anglo-Saxons get along very well with Islam! The United Kingdom is, in fact, more and more Islamized and even on the road to dhimmitude, while America with Barack Hussein Obama and his great mosques does not seem to be waging an anti-Islamic war.

- You have been very closely connected to the former Turkish prime minister Necmettin Erkaban. Could you tell us more?

- JMLP: He was not for the entry of Turkey in Europe. He had a different concept of grandeur, more Ottoman than European. It's quite understandable, even if it collides head-on with the Anglo-Saxon interests which, in 1918, tore Turkey to pieces, confiscating all of its oil along the way. They are a courageous and hard-working people. But they have more of an affinity with the Germans than with us, as they used to say in the Foreign Legion. They are masters of iron, wood and leather works. They can master the creation of objects better than we can. To summarize the personality of Necmettin Erbakan, you should know that he is religious, a profound believer, convinced as I am that Islam runs the risk of being corrupted by frequenting or coming into intimate contacts with a decadent West.

- BA: Quite an insane evaluation from Jean-Marie Le Pen! Turkey was not torn to pieces. Rather - here is the nuance - it was the peoples of the Ottoman Empire that were liberated. Did Jean-Marie Le Pen have too much to drink that day? After all, he was not one of the first sailors to navigate the Turkish coastlines. There had already been many before the Trojan War. We should note the great solicitude of Jean-Marie Le Pen for the purity and integrity of Islam. It's very touching.
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- Let's speak frankly. Is there an incompatibility between the pillars of the Muslim faith - profession of faith, five daily prayers, ramadan, Friday charity, pilgrimage once in a lifetime to Mecca - and the French way of life?

- JMLP: In my opinion, none. Theoretically, the Christian religions were religions of peace, fraternity and love. That did not prevent Catholics and Protestants from slaughtering each other through the centuries, as they do even in Ireland today. Likewise, the fact that there is a peaceful Islam does not mean that it will always be that way. And in matters such as these, one must not overestimate the religious ingredient. The Algerian War was never a religious war. It was a secular, nationalist and socialist movement.

- BA: It should be noted that the third pillar is not "Friday charity" but alms (zakat). I'll move on. Jean-Marie Le Pen's response is astounding. The profession of faith (shahada) - "there is no God (Allah) but God and Mohammed is the envoy (rasoul) of God" is a veritable war cry eternally hurled back onto those whom the Muslims call associationists, or polytheists, referring to Christians who, according to them, associate two other gods to God. According to the Koran, this is the only crime that can never be expiated. For her part, the great Jewish historian Bat Ye'or declares that she is obliged to consider that when Christians massacre, it is not in accordance with the examples in Christ's teachings; but when Muslims slaughter, it is not in violation of the example set by Mohammed. A reminder that Mohammed himself ordered the massacres of a thousand Jews of Medina and the torture of Oklite Christians.

Note: I was not able to identify "Oklite" Crhistians. If anyone can help out, please do.