An unbridled culture of free speech in France, championed by the country's anarchic far left, is colliding with the religious extremism of radical Islam — a conflict culminating in Wednesday's bloody attack on a satirical Paris newspaper, global threat expert Arnaud de Borchgrave told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
In European countries such as Italy and Spain, "laws prevail against no-holds-barred attacks on religion," de Borchgrave, director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner.
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In France, where Charlie Hebdo magazine routinely mocked Islam and the Prophet Muhammad in cartoons and articles, de Borchgrave said
: "It seems to me the right to offend, in this case, comes from anarchists of the far left — way left of the Communist party — and there is no limit to extremism in their philosophy's bottom line."
That extremism — which he said "triggers a variety of hot button issues, especially religion" — is Charlie Hebdo's "whole modus vivendi," said de Borchgrave, a
former resident of France, and a recipient of the Legion of Honor, the country's highest civilian distinction.
Charlie Hebdo's extreme irreverence met with a deadly response on Wednesday, when 12 people including cartoonists and the publication's top editor were killed by gunmen proclaiming "God is great" in Arabic.
De Borchgrave said that the massacre will anger the French and other Europeans in the short term, and produce an immediate "backlash" against Islamic extremism, but he expects that life there will quickly settle back into an old routine.
"Here we have
12 people killed in Paris," said de Borchgrave. "Appalling though it is, it is not unique in the history of such events in the past two or three decades in western Europe."
"We've all been through terrible crises, every western nation has. Look at the UK — the UK's been through terrible times," he said, alluding to the 2005 London transit bombings.
"But these things tend to blow over until the next crisis comes down the pipe, and I really don't see this one having a longer lasting impact than the previous ones," he said.
De Borchgrave also said that a failure to help Muslim communities in France assimilate into the country's larger political and social culture has contributed to mutual hostility.
In some French cities, he noted, police and local authorities have effectively conceded governance, "block by block," to Muslims within their heavily segregated neighborhoods.
"That is happening to a very large degree," he said.
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