The state of free speech in France

In this month's issue of Commentary, Christian Delacampagne gives the reader some interesting context in "The Redeker Affair." This, for those of you who may not have followed the story, Robert Redeker is a French highschool teacher, who published an op-ed in Le Figaro, in which he posed the question, "What should the free world do in the Face of Islamist intimidation?"

To make a long story short, because Redeker called the Prophet Muhammad a "master of hatred" and said that Islam, unlike Christianity or Judaism, "exalts violence and hatred” he was widely denounced to the point of receiving death threats. He and his family were forced to go into hiding, at his own expense but under French police protection.

According to Delacampagne, the only French leader who would vociferously defend Redeker's right to free speech was Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin who said the fatwa calling for his death for having insulted Islam was “unacceptable.” Most officials and human rights advocates simply tried to distance themselves from Redeker's remarks. Le Monde, France’s leading newspaper, summed up the prevailing reaction when it characterized Redeker’s piece as “excessive, misleading, and insulting,” and blasphemous.

Redeker's tale reminded Delacampagne of his own painful history in France. He says that because he published a book on what is considered to be a politically incorrect topic in France, anti-Semitism, he too was shut out of an academic career in France. Though he eventually found work in the United States, he claims the situation in France has only gotten worse over the years: "[Now] to speak at conferences or to be considered for important posts, a scholar must be prepared to describe the colonial era in French history as nothing less than an exercise in genocide and to denounce American policy in the Middle East as barbaric cruelty."

Beginning with Charles de Gaulle, he says the French have taken a distinctly "pro-Arab" stance in order to gain back the political capital they lost during the Algerian war and their other colonial activities in the Middle East. Zionism, or support for the state of Israel, he says is now seen as "just a form of Western colonialism, now backed by the brute strength of an imperialistic United States."

Delacampagne tells of an email he received from Redeker a few weeks after he had gone into hiding. “I never thought that such a thing could happen in our old Republican France,” he wrote his friend. "Neither did I," Delacampagne writes, "But things have changed. What was once unthinkable in France has already come to pass."