What France’s Intellectual Suicide Reveals About The West

France is burning again. This isn’t new, as France has been stacking it for decades. Civilizations rarely die when the barbarians arrive at the gate. They die when the gatekeepers forget what the gate is for.

In his televised address, French President Macron asked in anguish, “How can French people do this to France?” The question assumes a shared heritage and commitment among “French” people. It implies a clear and precise answer to a prior question: Who is French, and why does it matter?

The reality is that France long ago lost the ability to answer clearly. And a nation that cannot define itself cannot defend itself. France is losing its civilization by policy, not by accident, through four self-inflicted failures.

First, citizenship without assimilation. For at least two generations, France has treated its citizens as interchangeable units, making no distinction between those who inherited the nation’s story and those who merely sought its passports. This fanciful experiment worked as long as newcomers were few and eager to be absorbed, but it evidently collapsed when large, concentrated, uncontrolled communities arrived, many shaped by Muslim particularities that claim a higher law than the French one and see themselves as apart from France, not part of it. Surveys have repeatedly found that large shares of young French Muslims place religious norms above the laws of the Republic. Paper citizenship cannot manufacture loyalty. Only a confident culture that expects assimilation can do that, and France no longer expects it of anyone.

Second, the dogma that all cultures are equal. A nation that cannot say its culture is better at anything cannot ask anyone to adopt it. Cultural relativism sounds humble, but it’s poisonous and, in practice, a defeatist surrender. This “relativism” has met an Islamic worldview that is anything but relativist. The influx of North African Muslims who regard Islamic particularities as superior to French values never helps a society that has forbidden itself to say the reverse. Islam makes no secret of its self-understanding as the final and superior religion, with a Sharia meant to govern all of life. Those who hold this legal understanding close to their heart won’t be shamed out of it by a French elite that refuses to believe in anything. When one side is convinced of its superiority and the other apologizes for existing, the outcome isn’t coexistence. It is hegemony.

Third, manufactured guilt. Post-colonial and Critical Race Theory-style indoctrination of victimhood teaches the native-born to apologize for their own skin color, legacy, and heritage, and empowers newcomers to see themselves as superior creditors to be repaid, not as contributors to be welcomed and partners in building a society. Macron himself has called French colonialism a crime against humanity. When the head of state models national self-reproach, why would anyone aspire to join the nation? Here lies the great irony. Many Muslims immigrate for a better life in the West. They come because of what the West built: ordered liberty, equality before the law, prosperity, safety for women and minorities. Yet the West itself loathes its heritage and no longer cherishes what brought it forward so excellently. Immigrants are rightly drawn to the fruit, while the gardeners curse the tree. A people who despise their roots cannot invite anyone to grow them.

Fourth, shame about excellence. France stopped teaching its own genius: its literature, its faith-shaped cathedrals and art, its Enlightenment achievements, its centuries of intellectual leadership. A vacuum in a civilization’s soul never stays empty. Something more confident is always happy to fill it. That “something” is Islam’s hegemony, advanced by people who don’t cherish non-Muslim values and lifestyles simply because they are non-Islamic. Consider the murders of teachers Samuel Paty in 2020 and Dominique Bernard in 2023, and the massacres of Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan in 2015. Each was a verdict on the French way of life, rendered by Muslims who judged it inferior and worth punishing. The French state’s answer has been a “separatism” law and a great deal of avoidance, but not the one thing that matters: the conviction that what France built is worth belonging to.

Notice what these four failures share: None of them is imposed from outside. Each is chosen by France’s own political, media, and educational so-called elites. They chose universalism over identity, relativism over truth, guilt over gratitude, and silence over pride.

The French civilization isn’t being conquered. Those entrusted with its keeping and defending are abandoning it.

Yes, civilizations rarely die from outside conquest alone. They die when their elites lose the nerve to defend what makes them worth belonging to.

What about America, now?

Americans shouldn’t read this as a fiction about a distant island. The same slogans echo in our universities, our newsrooms, and our immigration debates, and the same temptation is at our door: to confuse welcome with surrender, and tolerance with having no convictions at all. A confident nation can welcome the newcomers gladly because it knows what it is inviting them into. An ashamed nation can only offer them a vacuum. France is a warning. The question Macron should be asking isn’t “How can French people do this to France?” but “What did we stop teaching them to love?”

And America, while there is still time, had better answer that question for itself.

***

A. S. Ibrahim holds two PhDs in Islamic Studies. He is the author of “Sharia Versus the U.S. Constitution: Why Americans Must Choose Freedom” and “Islam and the West.” He has also authored “Muhammad’s Military Expeditions” (Oxford, 2024), “A Concise Guide to the Life of Muhammad” (Baker Academic, 2022), “Conversion to Islam” (Oxford, 2021), “Basics of Arabic” (Zondervan, 2021), “A Concise Guide to the Quran” (Baker Academic, 2020), and “The Stated Motivations for the Early Islamic Expansion” (Peter Lang, 2018), among others. Follow him on X: @al2ostaz