Alex Alexiev, vice president for research at the Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C.;
The resounding rejection of the EU constitutional project in France and the Netherlands has triggered much frenzied hand-wringing and anxious bickering about the future of Europe, though it appears to tell us more about the pervasive angst of the continent’s elites than about its future. Completely unnoticed in this noisy brouhaha there appeared in France a short survey that tells us more about what Europe’s future will look like than the collective wisdom of its chattering classes. Innocuously entitled “Signs and Manifestations of Religious Affiliation in the Educational Establishments” and headed by the inspector general of French education Jean- Pierre Obin, the study was actually finished last year but remained unpublished until leaked on the Internet a few weeks ago.
It is easy to understand why the French government was unwilling to publish it, for the survey is a devastating indictment and an anxious wake-up call at the same time. The result of extensive research and five months of field interviews in numerous schools in 20 French provinces by a distinguished group of educators, the Obin report documents the extensive Islamization of French schools in the vicinity of Muslim ghettoes and the imposition of strict conformity with Islamist dictates through violence and intimidation. Having by and large completed their takeover of the Muslim ghettoes, often by “targeted violence” against non- Muslims and moderate Muslims alike, and turned them into “anti-societies,” the Islamist fanatics are making great progress towards achieving control of the educational system as well.
As usual, girls are the first victims of religious extremism. The “big brothers,” as the Islamists are known in school, enforce a strict Islamic dress code which prohibits make-up, dresses and skirts, forbids any co-educational activities and makes going to the cinema, the swimming pool or the gym all but impossible for Muslim girls. The punishment for refusal to conform is often physical violence and beatings. And this, says the report, is a relatively protected environment compared to “what girls experience outside of school.” Such as forced marriages at 14 or 15, for instance.
No less disturbing is the picture Obin paints of the spread of the kind of religious obscurantism that one associates with Wahhabi zealots, but would find difficult to envisage in a public school in the heart of Western Europe. Thus, Muslim students often refuse to study Voltaire or read Madame Bovary, acknowledge even the existence of other religions, or sing, dance, draw faces or right angles because they resemble the cross. English, on the other hand, is hated as the “language of imperialism”.
