By depriving me of a large part of my legitimacy to criticize the advocates of Islamophobia that is proudly asserting itself in today's France, Jocelyne Cesari's June 15 article, published in Orient XXI on June 15 with the title “Islamophoia and culture wars: the Florence Bergeaud Blackler affair” causes me (as well as Souhail Chichah, who cosigned the incriminated article J. C. thought she could ignore) caused considerable harm. Without prejudging the need to criticize more thoroughly an “analysis” written in manifest ignorance of this French debate and national a scene from which she has been separated for several decades, I would like to react here very briefly. (I rely here solely on her public statements, without considering the explanations given later to me by J. C. about “what she really meant”.)
Right of reply
Like Hollywood productions that sent cowboys and Indians back to back or, more recently, Hamas rockets and Israeli army missiles, her article, which for the most part actually relies on the narrative of only one of the two “camps” of what J. C. has called a “dogfight”, is tainted both by a gross distortion of the reality of the balance of power between the two “camps” and also of the nature of their respective agendas, namely anti-racism and… racism.
The article is in fact based on an analysis of the conflicting forces which affirms that the work of FBB would have triggered “a (...) cascade of criticism, insults, censorship and death threats against (its author)”. But this could not be more factually false. On the contrary, the book was praised by 85% of the print and audio-visual media (as well as, again contrary to what FBB wrote, by an overwhelming majority of social network posters) who literally unfolded a red carpet in front of her without the slightest critical distance. The critics --Souhail Chichah then Rafik Chekkat were for a long time the only ones with me - did not find (apart from the happy exception of Orient XXI and the site Lundimatin, as courageous as they are marginal) the slightest media space to express disagreement. In that concert of praise, only four titles (Politis, Liberation, then La Croix and Le Monde) have, very belatedly, introduced a critical note. The reading of the affair by J. Césari nevertheless restores, without in the least verifying its veracity, the narrative of a “cascade of censorship” which is in fact only based on the brief, and actually justified, postponement (it was exam season) of a conference at La Sorbonne, which was delivered a mere few weeks later. Not content with inventing a censorship that did not exist, J.C. ignores or dramatically underestimates, on the other hand, the very real, extensive, and durable censorship which has been hermetically imposed on others, myself included, for years already. Her erroneous assessment ignores in particular the total exclusion of all audio-visual media inflicted on the critics of FBB. In a program on France Culture, however entirely dedicated it was to the “debate” on the case (“Le grand debat”), the host even specifically asked the participants (from one camp only, of course!) to “not mention nouns". It was simply a question of preventing any possibility for the “accused” to ask for the slightest right of reply! In her months of media presence and scores of appearances, this was the one and only contradictory debate, a brief one of about 30 minutes, FBB participated in.
The Orient XXI article also unilaterally and uncritically reproduces the dominant narrative of the “death threats” allegedly received by FBB. On the other hand, this totally ignores the massive, cynical and systematic instrumentalization, as unilateral as it has proved to be blinding, of this/these “death threat/s” which caused me to be publicly, explicitly, and repeatedly accused ad nauseam of having - according to the formula used by Patrick Cohen on the high-profile talk show “ C'Avous” on La 5, “painted a target on the back of her CNRS colleague” . Namely, I wanted her to get killed! The article also inexplicably evacuates the fact that I am myself the target of far more numerous and terrifying death (and other) threats, in particular that my fate as a “collaborator” will soon be "settled"
The article then endorses, without nuance, the essence of the crudely erroneous presentation of my attitude in this affair. My role and my arguments are thus exclusively reduced to a double “violence”. The first is constituted by the use (in one of the two articles co-authored with Souhail Chichah) of the concept of “scientific racism”, itself widely used in social sciences. The second is the reference made to the theory of the “Great Replacement” of R. Camus to qualify the fact that FBB credits the Muslim Brothers with the desire to establish in Europe nothing less than an Islamic Caliphate. The most virulent supporter of FBB (Erwan Seznec, ex-collaborator of Marianne, now in Le Point) has, for his part, found in my social Networks postings no other "insult" than the fact that I reproached to FBB “to knowingly not read the authors she slanders”.
To illustrate the support of Muslims for the law on separatism and therefore the fact that the question divides the French Muslim community, JC only manages to cite two persons who are part of Minister Darmanin's close entourage: the initiator of the said law and - should we cry or laugh - the minister himself, elevated to the rank of actor on the Muslim scene solely because of the Algerianness of one of his ancestors.
- C. then examines at length (to criticize it but just as much to support it) the arguments of FBB, but of FBB only. It thus completely evacuates the content of my criticisms, and in particular the evocation - although published in an American academic journal (Jadaliyya) - of the powerful geopolitical coalition and its interest in fueling European Islamophobia.
Regarding the balance of power in the academic field, the paper reproduces two more serious distortions. First of all, very imprudently without the slightest verification, the thesis of the “support (to FBB) of 800 academics”...of which 600 (Boualem Sansal in the lead) turned out to have no relationship whatsoever with the academic profession and research! It then unforgivably omits to recall the clear position adopted by the CNRS during the false debate initiated by Minister Frédérique Vidale on Islamo-leftism.
FB
PS: Others than myself may ask the questions raised by that improbable “scientific consensus” that JC nonetheless sees in the refutation of the concept of Islamophobia as “not allowing criticism of Islam” (in the line of the thesis of Caroline Fourest and FBB) . Finally, others than myself (and no doubt Souhail Chichah who also has American academic experience) may take it upon themselves to tell J. C., regarding a field that is not mine, that her euphemization of the “Muslim problem” in the United States after 9/11 is fragile, naive, not to say frankly dishonest.