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A Warning of Two Reformist Algerians:
“Le Grand Replacement” (The Great Replacement)

Bassam Michael Madany

28 October 2021

The following article deals with the Impact of the presence in Europe of unassimilable people, resulting in the “Replacement,” of the local culture, by a radically different one.

The beginning of a mass movement of peoples from the former European colonies to Europe, began in the aftermath of WWII.  Helped by the United States Marshall Plan, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other Western countries, for lack of a local labor force, invited labor from the former colonies to do the work. First, only men were admitted as “guest-workers.”. Eventually, their families joined them. The Governments failed to consider the demographic and political baggage that accompanied the settlers from Islamic lands.

I dealt with this subject in the past in an article entitled, The West’s Predicament: Unable to Heed Warning Signs. ⁱ 

Here is a link to book on this topic: The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent ⁱⁱ   

In October 2021, two North African intellectuals wrote about “Le Grand Replacement” (The Great Replacement) 

“An Interview was conducted by the French BFM TV with Fawzi Benhabib, a resident of Saint-Denis, who said ‘that since his arrival from Algeria 25 years ago, he found in France the ideology from which he was fleeing in his former country, adding that For the Islamists, it is a question of Islamizing modernity, not of modernizing Islam.’ 

The second interviewee was an Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, who expressed his concern about the level of Islamization in the French journal,  L'Express

“Where Islam takes hold, it is forever. Islamism is based on Islam, which no one has the right to criticize. But in your countries, it also plays a role in democracy and in the rule of law. Islamism exploits these values. Since democracy recognizes all opinions, from the far right to the far left, it is obliged to recognize Islam as well. All those who do not commit attacks or violent acts are, in principle, protected in a state of law. Islamism thus immediately finds itself in a conquered terrain. It is necessary to fight Islamism from the beginning. Because it is like humidity in a house. Initially the threat is invisible, it penetrates the walls which, little by little, crumble. When you realize the extent of the damage, it’s too late! You must destroy everything to clean up. It becomes a mission impossible. France is at stage where it has just discovered that Islam is eroding her home".

To consider my writing on this subject as motivated by Islamophobia, cannot be sustained. This topic was first discussed by Algerian nationals of Muslim countries. Like other Reformist Muslims, they long to the see the day when Islam would have joined the global community of nations grappling together to find concrete solutions for several  existential problems! 

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ⁱ The West’s Predicament: Unable to Heed Warning Signs - Middle East Resources (www.unashamedofthegospel.org)

ⁱⁱ The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent By Peter Gatrell
Reviewed by Andrew Moravcsik November/December 2019 

This important book puts today’s levels of migration to Europe in historical perspective. Far from being unprecedented, large population movements have been the norm since World War II, after which over 12 million people fled Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. From the 1950s on, Eastern Europeans steadily left the Soviet bloc. In the 1960s, decolonization led millions to head for metropoles in the West, and guest workers came northward to Germany from countries such as Turkey (although the vast majority of these Gastarbeiter returned home). The end of the century saw further displacement caused by wars in the former Yugoslavia and waves of economic immigration. The author, a demographic historian, concludes with a dose of idealism: Europe should embrace immigration and diversity, which have made the continent what it is. Yet this seems to ignore political reality. Recent migration rates are the highest Europe has seen since the postwar movement of Germans. The percentage of foreign-born people in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom is substantially higher than it was decades ago. In a period of low economic growth, European societies are grappling with tricky questions of cultural integration and difference. This book does surprisingly little to illuminate how many governments today face the political pressure to restrict immigration.