WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, FA, monde-nouveau: About "A veil on the cause of women" and a few other things - René Berthier (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 A Veil on the Women's Cause was published a long time ago and I no

longer remember the circumstances. It is made up of several articles
which have been brought together in a somewhat heterogeneous manner.
---- The only one that was caused by a specific circumstance and on a
whim is "The French Republic? Brilliant!" I regretted the title a little
because it could lead to confusion: in the circles of the "radical left"
second-handness and humor are not really appropriate. It so happened
that at that time I had come across a text written by Iranian women on
their country's Constitution; a little later I see this veiled kid in a
demonstration, carrying a sign: "My constitution is the Koran". This
really pissed me off. This is what gave me the idea for my article, the
title of which I somewhat regretted after I realized that it had been
cited by Bernard Cassen, founder of "Riposte laïque". I had known Cassen
when I was secretary of the CGT correctors' union, he was a union
delegate at La Tribune, we had the opportunity to collaborate, in short
he was a good friend that I had lost for a long time. view and was
surprised to find that it had somehow gone wrong.

In fact, I have been interested in the Arab-Muslim world for a long
time. It started at Libertarian Radio during the 1990-1991 Gulf War. I
think that the FA had an exemplary attitude at that time, and it must be
said. Those who lived through this period undoubtedly still remember the
atmosphere that reigned at that time. The almost unanimous media had
mounted their war horses and poured sickening warmongering propaganda
onto the population. The media then spoke of the "fourth army in the
world" regarding Iraq, which was absurd. By chance, I had the
opportunity at that time to chat with a guy, a retired soldier who
worked with the Gulf countries for a well-known arms manufacturer.

The story of the "fourth army in the world" made him laugh. First,
industrial countries never sell the latest generation weapons, they sell
weapons that are outdated compared to those they manufacture for their
own account. Then, the guy who knew Iraq well explained to me, if this
country was well overarmed compared to neighboring countries, he was
incapableto carry out somewhat complex combined operations at the same
time, requiring a minimum of coordination between the different arms,
such as for example a movement of troops and armor combined with
artillery fire and air cover. Furthermore, the Iraqi army was
handicapped by serious problems in terms of stewardship, transport and
supplies, which prohibited it from any long-term operation and
completely disqualified it as the "fourth army in the world". Of course,
Western governments knew all this.

At the time of the Gulf War the police exercised constant surveillance
and literally harassed anyone with a slightly dark complexion. The
intellectuals had almost all espoused the theses of the government and
the media. Pseudo-specialists followed one another on television screens
and on the radio to produce crazy analyses. There were not many voices
speaking out against this war then. Among them, Radio Libertaire was
undoubtedly the most important. It was then an incomparable instrument
of counter-propaganda. [1]

The day after the bombings on Iraq, the radio secretariat decided that
it was necessary to mobilize. By circular, the 180 broadcast managers
were informed that if the usual broadcasts (which are far from all
political) continued normally, they had to give way, when necessary, to
news flashes or press releases.

Teams of comrades took turns in the studio, with instructions to
intervene regularly to condemn the military intervention, provide
information on the demonstrations, on reactions against the war, present
analyses, etc.
At that time I held a daily broadcast entitled "The war that we see
dancing along the clear gulfs has silver reflections" - an allusion to
the song by Charles Trénet [2]- which then transformed into "Chronicles
of the New World Order", which I kept until 1997. It was at that time
that I was able to interview a significant number of men and women of
Muslim culture and that I was able to learn a lot of things. But I also
learned that it is not necessarily by questioning direct witnesses to
the facts that we succeed in forming a general picture of the events.

That said, I have sometimes been confronted with some pretty funny
situations. During the civil war in Yugoslavia, which shortly followed
the crushing of Iraq, I had the opportunity to interview a Bosnian
"Muslim". At the time, "Muslim" in Bosnia designated less a religion
than a nationality: the practice of religion was very weak. This guy was
a veterinarian and he had worked... in a pigsty, which showed that a
Bosnian "Muslim" had nothing to do with the image of a Muslim that we
usually have. In any case before the war, because it largely contributed
to Islamizing the country, which became a stronghold of Salafism in
Europe and the object of intense solicitations from Saudi Arabia.

I also once interviewed a Kurdish leader whose name I have forgotten: he
came with a bodyguard who I had the impression of was a sort of
political commissar. The guy hardly opened his teeth and when he opened
his mouth it was to speak in wooden tongues or in hackneyed clichés.
Fortunately, I prepared my shows well and for an hour and a half I sort
of did the questions and answers.

This radio experience provided me with the elements to write a book, The
West and the War Against the Arabs [3]. The title deserves an
explanation. The journal Hérodote had at that time published a text
entitled "The West and the War of the Arabs". This formulation shocked
me because it suggested that the war that had just taken place was a war
that the Arabs were waging among themselves, which in some way
exculpated the Westerners of their responsibility. So I took the title
again but modified it a little to show that it was indeed a war against
the Arabs.

This radio experience also provided me with the material for another
book, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, entitled Israel-Palestine:
globalization and micro-nationalisms [4], and for yet another book on
the civil war in Yugoslavia. , entitled Former Yugoslavia, world order
and local fascism . [5]These three books are essentially a collection of
articles that had been published in Le Monde Libertaire and broadcasts
on Radio Libertaire.

At the time of the Bataclan attack, Le Monde Libertaire published a
special issue dedicated to this tragedy, to which I contributed with an
article entitled "The Closure of Critical Thought in Islam" [6]. The
content of this article might seem odd in the general context marked by
a lot of emotion. I explain that Muslim culture experienced a period of
incredible richness in all areas: mathematics, natural sciences,
medicine, arts. She had assimilated the cultural contribution of the
ancient Greek world but also that of India. Then this incredible growth
came to a halt around the 11th-12th centuries, at the same time when a
little boost was given to critical thinking in the Christian world,
which would lead to the separation of philosophy and theology and begin
a long process of questioning religion. However, this little help was
given by a Muslim thinker, Averroes (Ibn Rushd).

My article attempted to show that the halt to the development of
critical thinking in the Muslim world was caused by the takeover of it
by religious people and that today's fundamentalists are the heirs of
those of the 12th century.

The civil war in Algeria which broke out following the calling into
question of the elections won in 1990 by the Islamic Salvation Front in
the municipal and regional elections, then the victory of the FIS the
following year in the legislative elections, had a lot to do with me. brand.
I then started taking notes between 1994 and 2004 without any particular
intention of writing a book, but to try to see things clearly. This
reflection was carried out in parallel with conversations that I had
regularly with Philippe Garnier, a psychiatrist friend and activist of
the FA, who unfortunately died in June 2003. Our reflections focused on
"the fear of women" in religious societies, all religions combined, and
we hoped to achieve something concrete - articles or book - on this
subject, each based on their own approach, him psychoanalytic, me
political or sociological. His death put an end to this project...and to
my notes. My notes are about 200 pages long, which I titled "The fear of
women and the rise of fundamentalisms",

One day - I think it was in 1994 - a Tunisian friend suggested I do a
program on repression and torture in Algeria, which targeted
intellectuals, writers, artists, trade unionists, lawyers, political
activists and defenders. human rights. At that time, the government had
taken matters into its own hands and repressed all opposition, and in
particular the Islamic Salvation Front, which was the subject of
particular attention from the police and the army. . I told my friend
that if we did this show, we would have to include the Islamists, who
were terribly tortured. My friend expressed strong objections to the
inclusion of Islamists in the project but at my insistence, he finally
agreed. In retrospect, I think my friend was right:

A preparatory meeting was organized at my house, with representatives of
all kinds of currents, including a Nasserist, a lawyer for the Islamists
imprisoned in Algeria and a fundamentalist living in France. My partner,
exasperated by the behavior of my "guests" towards her, decided to slip
away and go visit a neighbor. Perhaps I should have listened to the
reprimands - to put it mildly - to which I received that very evening...

I had asked for the support of a friend who also hosted a program on
Libertarian Radio, an early feminist and strongly committed to the
Palestinian cause. Fortunately she was there during the show because
even though torture in Algeria was denounced, she didn't let the
Islamists slip anything on the condition of women.
It must be said that at that time Islamic fundamentalism did not have
the scale it has today.

To conclude, I was one day very surprised to notice that there was a
sort of "post-modernist" Muslim recovery of anarchism, which I cannot
really take seriously but which I have come to believe. an article
because my principle is never to let nonsense about anarchism spread
without responding, if only to leave a trace. [7]

To return to A veil on the cause of women , in addition to the article
already cited, there were two articles: one entitled "On 'Islamic
feminism'", devoted to this movement which claims to be a feminism
religious and which claims for women the right to reinterpret texts; the
other article, "Feminist theology and social control of women", says
what it means.

The articles contained in this small brochure represent only a small
part of my writings on the Middle East, the Arab-Muslim world and Islam,
three areas in which I absolutely do not claim to be a "specialist" but
in which I believes that every "honest man" in the sense that the
expression had in the 17th century, and every "honest woman" we should
add today, should be interested. To put it more simply, a minimum of
knowledge and interest in these issues would make it possible to counter
both Islamophobia, a term that I do not use as my own and which in
reality serves to sectarianize anti-racism and to simply mask anti-Arab
racism; and Islamo-leftism which is the refuge of the lady bosses of the
pseudo-radical and right-thinking left.

During the Saint-Imier International Anti-Authoritarian Meetings of
2023, A Veil on the Cause of Women was violently attacked several times
by people who accused the book of being "Islamophobic", who denied its
author the right to writing because he was a "white cis-gender
heterosexual male" (sic) ... and who admitted not having read it.

We can measure the incredible regression that thought and intelligence
undergo with this type of attitude.

Notes

[1] See: "Radio Libertaire, the Libertarian World and the Gulf War".
http://monde-nouveau.net/spip.php?article205 .
See also: Félix Patiès, "Radio Libertaire in the mobilization against
the first Gulf War in 1990 - 1991".
https://journals.openedition.org/radiomorphoses/3057

[2] For young people who do not have the same cultural references as the
old "boomer" that I am, it is "The sea that we see dancing along the
clear gulfs has silver reflections. .."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXQh9jTwwoA

[3] Éditions L'Harmattan

[4]Editions Acratie

[5] Editor. No pasaran

[6]http://monde-nouveau.net/IMG/pdf/la_fermeture_de_la_pensee_critique_en_islam_01-08-2020.pdf

[7] "Anarcho-Islam" and post-anarchism, French version:
http://monde-nouveau.net/spip.php?article889 . - "Post-anarchist
Islam?", English version: http://monde-nouveau.net/spip.php?article888

http://monde-nouveau.net/spip.php?article943
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