“If we are so troubled and perplexed, if we search for the right words and bite our tongues, this is because these three elements are constitutive parts of our situation and the great fact of Islam that is at the center of our struggles, for Muslims and for non-Muslims, together or separately.” Pierre Manent, Beyond Radical Secularism
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Manent, in his book Beyond Radical Secularism, suggests that the Islamic phenomenon presents three distinct and yet interdependent elements which must be addressed by Europe and, I suggest, ultimately by the U.S.: Muslim immigration, Muslim settlement and mosques financed by Gulf States, and Islamic terrorism.
How do we as a nation begin to address the three elements? Do we call others “Islamaphobic” or “Xenophobic” and content ourselves with pointed fingers and huffing? Do we act like a Jesuit I know and parse out isolated Scripture from the Bible to push the Progressive notion that to be a good country one must have Open Borders and welcome all comers with no conditions placed on refugees/immigrants while hoping things will all work out, while not taking into account the unintended consequences for both parties and without accruing any personal cost? Or, do we as a people living within the Kingdom of God on earth address the complex issue at hand? Do we acknowledge who we are as a nation and our Christian heritage and also acknowledge Muslims?
I suggest Manent’s Beyond Radical Secularism is a good place to begin looking at the matter before us.
Several months have passed since I read though Pierre Manet’s twenty essays, essays encapsulated in his book Beyond Radical Secularism. Before too much more time passes I wanted to record what I learned from the essays along with my reflections.
This is not a book review. Rather, this post is me trying to understand the Islam situation facing the U.S. and doing so through the eyes of French academic and political scientist Pierre Manent whose own country of France is having to come to terms with the Muslims. My thoughts are interspersed with Manent’s words.
From the book’s Introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney:
“In this, his latest book (originally published in France as Situation de la France), Manent brings together his considerable theoretical and practical concerns with rare spiritual depth. He reveals the failure of Europe’s humanitarian civil religion and pleads for a restoration of prudent judgment, rooted in a searching exploration of the theological-political problem. He reveals just where the de-politicization and de-Christianization of Europe has led the continent and his native France. Refusing to despair, and not content with literary politics and facile criticism, Manent lays out a practical philosophy that shows Europe and the West that deliberation and action remain as available to us as they were to Pericles and St. Paul.” (Emphasis mine)
As noted above, Manent writes from a French perspective. Yet, his home turf insights can provide significant direction for U. S. immigration policies addressing the “three elements” noted above.
In Manent’s assessment of the current political situation, he sees both France and the West looking weak:
“As rich as we still are in material and intellectual resources, we are politically without strength. Doubtless this has not escaped the attention of those who now attack us.” (From the Preface)
France and the West, Manent points out, are capitulating to radical secularism–a stripping of the national landscape of political and Christian milestones, earmarks and boundaries. Both are refusing to either fight their enemies or to love their enemies. Both are handing out subjective rights which further divide the nation state into individuals against one another. In so doing, the political regime
“…makes every constraint appear to be useless and arbitrary, in a word vexing, whether civic or in private life. As each letting go justifies and calls forth the next, governments are motivated to tout themselves no longer by the guidance and the energy they give to common life, but by the “new rights” they grant to individuals and to groups.” (From the Preface)
Though not mentioned by Manent in his book, it seems to me that the French philosopher Foucalt’s deconstructionism has gone a long way in educational circles toward emptying words and historical narratives of the meaning they once held. This vacating of meaning has led to intellectual and moral paralysis. We no longer know what to do because we no longer know what to think, Manent posits.
At the end of his Preface, Manent elaborates:
“Our irritated and vacant souls are full of a jumble of historical references, positive or negative, which our experience no longer shifts or orders, and of which we make use in the most frivolous or self-interested manner.”
Later, in essay seven, he writes about France,
“The major fact of our situation, one that has important consequences in all domains that concern us, is the radical loss of authority by the main and decisive instrument of modern politics, that is, the State, or if you will, in the specifically French context, the Republic. One might say, in the language of political physics that the republican State no longer has the power either to reduce the constituent groups of France to citizen-individuals, those primordial elements of modern politics, nor to offer these individuals something to hold in common substantial enough to allow them to be true citizens, that is, members of a larger whole…we tend to return to the pre-modern situation… One of the distinctive features of the situation was the absence of any border between the interior and the exterior.”
Here in the U.S. Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America was by many accounts a proclaimed and implied look-down-his-nose disdain for America’s history, its Constitution and its ways of life. Obama even apologized to other nations for America’s ‘faults’ as he saw them. As we are finding out, Obama’s administration didn’t just disparage America it also colluded against America and its ally Israel with a South American drug cartel to help Iran advance their nuclear program. Obama along with the likes of Noam Chomsky and a host of “intelligentsia” sought to shame and deconstruct America and to remake it in their own Progressive promise-of-the-future image. Enter a carnival mirror reflection.
Donald Trump comes along and promotes an uber-nationalist fundamental retransformation after his own ribald image. But neither administration has addressed the Muslim situation other than making polarizing comments.
Manent, as he views France, sees their common life dissipating from the loss of State authority due to the people’s lack of faith in government’s trustworthiness and also a loss in faith in Providence, a special concern for a nation with a Christian mark. Add to these weakening influences globalization–the absence of borders within and without, the purposeful loss of historical meaning and context, the placation of individuals and groups with subjective rights by the government, and the neutralizing of the mark of Christianity on a nation. All such effects of degeneration on the common life undermine “a stable and coherent disposition” toward Muslim immigration. You shouldn’t welcome someone into your common life if your common life is on life support. More degeneration occurs.
Our own common political life is being redefined as the ‘indeterminate and limitlessness of individual rights” and interests, just as Manent described France’s political life. Our nation, already fragile, is questioning its identity as it sees itself through the media lens of “fundamental transformation” pushed by Progressives. Our education systems, Progressivism’s training grounds, focus on identity politics and refuse to reinforce a national common life, seeing it as a formulation of power structures from the past that must be done away with.
We are weak and getting weaker and we are inviting in a people, some of whom are at war with us.
Manent talks about the effects of the transformative “equality”, values” and “secularism” criteria in his own country:
“I have emphasized repeatedly… — that our political regime has progressively brought about its own paralysis by the ever narrower and more unilateral way it has understood its principles. The rights of man have been separated radically from the rights of the citizen and, instead of freeing members of society in order to make them capable and desirous of participating in what is common, they are now supposed to suffice to themselves, and public institutions are nothing more than their docile instrument. We are probably the first, and we will surely remain the only people in history to give over all elements of social life and all contents of human life to the unlimited sovereignty of the individual.”
A solution and warning;
Manent writes that France has the tools to deal with the influx of Islam: a history of a neutral secular State coupled with a people with a “Christian mark.” Yet, France and the Europe Union are in depoliticizing mode with their eager acceptance of globalization and open borders. Even more debilitating, they are negating, via radical secularization, all religion from public life and particularly Christianity. Manent warns that these divesting actions will cripple and paralyze any proper response France must take in accepting Islam into the common life of France.
Manent talks of a “politics of the possible” between French Muslims and the civic body. Two principles would apply. First, Muslims are to be accepted “as they are” without seeking to modernizing them or conforming them to others in the society.
Second, preserve and defend the sanctuary of secular government and the characteristics of its regime which holds them as citizens first, Muslims second.
For a shared life Manent suggests that acceptance of Muslims into French society would need to be balanced by elements of France’s “ancient constitution” in order to prevent a Muslim transformation of France. And this acceptance must not advance as “secularism.”
There is a need to address who we are when speaking to those who a seeking to live with us. There is also a need to address Muslims as who they are and then to go forward together, each recognizing the other.
Beyond the foundation and bulwarks of an “ancient constitution” Manent suggests that France (rightfully) impose two restrictions on entering Muslims: no polygamy and no burqa. Such parameters, he posits, would protect the social fabric of the nation and the political freedoms in place.
For the U.S. I would impose the same restrictions along with not allowing sharia law to become law. Muslims immigrants must submit to the laws of our republic. They must not ‘rule’ themselves separately in opposition to a common life. They also must understand that we are a nation with a Christian mark and one which does not impose its Christian beliefs onto others via the government. Here, the individual is self-governing within the full extent of the law. Here the Christian influences government but is not authoritarian, despite Leftist characterizations to the contrary.
As I see it, we must define our relationships beyond individual rights. We must define who we are in common. A neutral secular State will support groups which support the common life of the State. It will respect each group and allow each group to function on its own without imposing laws specific to a particular group.
A Radicalized secular state, on the other hand, will, by its vacuous nature, delegitimize its people and their religion. But don’t expect Muslims to become secular and that tensions will float away. They won’t (though many Progressive Christians have) and the tensions won’t magically dissolve because you opened your borders. Radical secularism pretends that we are just citizen-individuals with nothing to offer but our individuated ‘diverse’ presence. The State only has authority and powers we give it. If we give it nothing but demand only rights we suck the life out of our common life.
An open border de-politicized nation will continue to splinter off. A de-Christianized nation will have no means to influence and support the neutral State. And, Christianity has for centuries fostered and supported secular authority. But Islam, as you know, is theocratic in its politics. To live in common, Islam must separate political and religious life in its citizen contract with the State.
And that State? I see the government’s primary responsibility as promoting the common good by maintaining the rule of law, and preserving basic duties and rights. A neutral secular government offers protection, security and the motivation for the common good. A radicalized secular nation has nothing but individual ‘rights’ to offer a people who then become increasingly alienated.
With more than just rights to offer, a shared life in the U.S. is possible–and desirable–if we remember and “they” learn who we are and why we are – a nation with a Christian mark seeking a common and secure life. It is within this context that the Islamic phenomenon’s three distinct and yet interdependent elements must be addressed.
I recommend Manent’s book, Beyond Radical Secualrism to you. 
Pierre Manent is a French political scientist. Or, as they say in France…
Pierre Manent est directeur d’ etudes a l’ Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, membre fondateur de la revue Commentaire.
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English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton also has something to say about the above:
https://twitter.com/Scruton_Quotes/status/942682334209478658
https://twitter.com/Scruton_Quotes/status/942683659500425216
https://twitter.com/Scruton_Quotes/status/942681842834202625
https://twitter.com/Scruton_Quotes/status/942687422252449792
Cindy Wity 
Juxtaposed! News ™ NYC and Nigeria
June 29, 2025 Leave a comment
24 years post 9/11, New York City welcomes Jihad
New York City, home to about one million Jews, voted in the Democratic mayoral primary for a Shia Muslim deeply critical of Israel.
Zohran Mamdani wants to “globalize the intifada” – a slogan used by pro-Palestinian activists that calls for worldwide support for Palestinian resistance against Israel and Jews involving violence. Mamdani does this with the handwashing tact of standing up for Palestinian human rights.
Mamdani supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
The hook for NYC’s wealthy champagne socialists who need to virtue signal eyes away from their wealth and for the young and restless urbanites who can’t afford rent in NYC: Mamdani is a 33-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Andrew Cuomo dominated the voting among those making under $50K, but Mamdani beat Cuomo by 20 points among voters earning more than $100,000 a year.
Why did New Yorkers vote this way? Sean Ring at https://www.rudeawakening.info/ had this to say:
Mamdani’s campaign was a symbolic war against the status quo. Today’s left doesn’t organize labor. It organizes narratives.
And that’s why wealthy, well-fed urbanites feel perfectly comfortable voting for a candidate whose policies might, in theory, hurt their pocketbooks.
Because in 2025, feeling good beats doing good. . .
Welcome to the revolution, brought to you by people who can afford it
See also Karl Marx Moving Into Gracie Mansion and
Zohran Mamdani Admits He Hates Capitalism… Allied With Socialist Operative Linked To Marxist Terror Group:
Americans were stunned last week when foreign-born, self-proclaimed socialist Zohran Mamdani used CNN as a platform to denounce capitalism—the very system that transformed this country from frontier towns into a global superpower. Capitalism has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, built a middle class, and fueled rapid technological innovation—outcomes impossible under socialist regimes, as evidenced by an imploding Europe adopting welfare-state models or failed communist states like Cuba.
Like all communist organizers (cf. Obama), the 33-year-old progressive democratic socialist promises an anticapitalism world (with no rising seas or costs) if you just give up all common sense and any understanding of free-market economics (I, Pencil provides understanding) and vote (and pay dearly later) for the revolution. (It’s no secret that capitalism’s profits pay for socialism’s follies.)
Mandani, in order to control costs (read seize the means of production and central planning), says that he wants to freeze rents and provide free transportation and universal childcare, create city-owned grocery stores and construct 200,00 affordable housing units.
He also wants to raise New York City’s minimum wage to $30 by 2030, thereby pricing people out of jobs.
How will Mandani fill the coffers of socialism? With racism: NYC’s Mamdani Wants Higher Taxes for ‘Whiter Neighborhoods.’
“Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods.” – Zohran for New York City policy memo.
Mamdani, using the narrative of the left, wants to defund the NYPD and abolish prisons.
NYC’s new Marxist messiah wants to empty the jails and crown criminals as victims…
He promises to work against U.S. laws to continue Welcoming the Stranger/Fellow Traveler from other failed socialist countries. He will double down on sanctuary city protections for illegals and end cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Welcome to the revolution.
Like fellow travelers Tim Waltz and Kamala Harris, Mamdani defended the Black Lives Matter riots in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020. He described the violence (read intifada struggle) as necessary and grounded in racial justice solidarity.
Not only will Mamdani work against U.S. laws, he will also work against nature itself. He’s Pledging $65 Million for Trans Health Care.
Did NYC Democrats not see the destruction of the palisades and LA by the incompetent leadership of California’s Governor Gavin Newsom and inclusion’s DEI hire Mayor Karen Bass? With this recent vote, do NYC Democrats also approve of the wholesale destruction of their blue city?
Do Democrats in NYC not remember Gavin Newsom eating without mask or social distancing at the French Laundry during the COVID lockdowns? With this recent vote, do NYC Democrats also approve of the hypocrisy of a society that claims to promote equality while allowing a ruling class to dominate?
Mamdani was born in Uganda and briefly lived in South Africa. He became a U.S. citizen in 2018. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Africana studies from Bowdoin College.
No doubt the 33-year-old has been steeped in the anti-American anti-Capitalism rhetoric and Islamic Jihad teaching. It appears that he knows nothing of American history or of Communism’s deadly and destructive track record.
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana
Welcome to the revolution. Welcome To Crazy Town – New York Commits Political Suicide
Welcome to Jihad.
From Welcoming Jihad in NYC to Globalized Intifada – The Holy War Against Christians in Nigeria
I’m sure you’ve heard the following reported in the main stream media.
But then again, the reactionary MSM is busy defending the globalist Jihad of the “Welcoming the Stranger” open borders narrative and dissing the law-and-order activity of the Trump administration done to secure the integrity of the United States and the wellbeing of its citizens.
(No doubt some, including some Christians, believe that the morally relativistic “social justice” is a permissive that allows them moral authority to break laws created by representatives of our Republic’s Democracy to maintain order and the common good.)
What’s happening and been happening in Nigeria is Jihad. But it’s not the ghetto-uprising kind of a NYC socialist Jihadist. Here are five articles describing the horrors of Islamist Jihad:
Beneath the silence of the Western press, a genocide is unfolding — one that has claimed the lives of over 3,100 Christians in Nigeria this year alone. And yet, for all the blood spilled, for all the churches burned and children slain, one would be hard-pressed to find even a whisper of coverage from CNN, the BBC, or The New York Times. The slaughter of Christians, it seems, is not newsworthy in today’s media economy. (Emphasis mine.)
Western Media Silent As Slaughter of Christians Intensifies in Nigeria
In a horrifying escalation of violence, between 100 and 200 Christians were murdered by Fulani jihadist herdsmen in Nigeria’s Benue State, according to multiple sources. (Emphasis mine.)
Jihadis butcher 200 Nigerian Christians in fresh massacre
Jihadist violence continues to escalate in Nigeria, and Christians are particularly at risk from targeted attacks by Islamist militants, including Fulani fighters, Boko Haram and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province). These increased under the rule of former president Muhammadu Buhari, putting Nigeria at the epicentre of targeted violence against the church. The government’s failure to protect Christians and punish perpetrators has only strengthened the militants’ influence. (Emphasis mine.)
Nigeria · Serving Persecuted Christians Worldwide
Nigeria, the most populated country in Africa, faces a harsh reality for its Christian population. Since the early 2000s, over 62,000 Christians have lost their lives to violence driven by extremist groups like Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Fulani militias. (Emphasis mine.)
The Silent Slaughter: Christian Persecution in Nigeria and Central Africa
[Bishop Wilfred Anagbe] added that for his people, their experience today “can be summed up as that of a Church under Islamist extermination.” (Emphasis mine.)
‘This is genocide,’ charity says as ‘barbaric massacres’ target Christians in Nigeria
Nigerian martyrs cry out in a loud voice, “Holy and true Master! How much longer are you going to put off giving judgement, and avenging our blood on the earth-dwellers?” -Revelation 6:10
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No more word games. How are we to understand intifada and jihad? As merely a personal struggle against, say, cigarette smoking? As a struggle against an oppressor? As a non-violent ghetto uprising involving work stoppages, boycotts and demonstrations that might involve small weapons such as rocks or Molotov cocktails, and on some occasions firearms or grenades?
Are we to understand intifada as the October 7th attack on Israel when Gaza militants fired thousands of rockets towards Israeli towns killing more than 1,400 people, including civilians and soldiers, and took up to 150 hostages.
Some, like Daniel Lefkowitz, consider “intifada and genocide” in the same sentence to be “an unreasonable stretch.” But looking at what happened on October 7th and at what has been happening in Nigeria, is it a stretch?
“Globalize the intifada” is a call for a Muslim holy war or spiritual struggle for the propagation or defense of Islam that involves genocide and now wants to employ the unholy terror of Communism.
The New York mayoral Democratic primary candidate defends “Globalize the intifada.”
(I don’t hear pro-Israel war hawk “Tel Aviv Levin” decrying the violence done to Christians in Nigeria by Jihadists.)
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AI – Act Now Before the Bill Passes!
Email your senators and ask them to remove a 10-year moratorium on enforcing state and local artificial intelligence laws from the GOP’s megabill. The moratorium infringes on states’ rights.
Removing the 10-year moratorium on enforcing state and local artificial intelligence laws
-will protect citizens from the harm the technology could cause, and the lack of “thoughtful” public debate over the measure.
-will protect our citizens from the misuse of artificial intelligence.
17 republican governors tell Thune to cancel AI rule
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Now Playing:
Takemitsu_ Paths (In Memoriam Witold Lutoslawski)
Toru Takemitsu (1931-1996) was a self-taught Japanese composer who combined elements of Eastern and Western music and philosophy to create a unique sound world.
(I played the trumpet for many years. My ears perked up when I heard Paths.)
Witold Roman Lutosławski was a Polish composer and conductor. He was one of the major composers of 20th-century classical music.
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Iran Abandoned, and Blue Cities, Too
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Filed under 2025 Current Events, anti-Semitism, central planning, Christianity, Communism, cultural Marxism, Democracy, democrats, Mideast, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, social justice Tagged with Christianity, Democratic mayoral primary, democrats, Donald Trump, intifada, Islam, Israel, Jihad, New York City, Nigeria, Palestine, politics, progressivism, social justice, Trump, Zohran Mamdani