En français on les qualifie aussi d’intégristes.

I'm not familiar with that term. What does it mean? And does it have historical, technical, or esoteric connotations?

On another thread I objected to Gerges' easy assumption that Islam can be separated from the ummah's politics or political structure. That is, fanatical Islamists being criticized for improperly using jihad to get their political way; traditional Islamists being excused (celebrated?) as having separated their religious concerns from their political program.

It sounds as if "integrisme" -- inoffensive or fanatical, 18th or 21st century, French or Islamic -- calls for the collapse of politics into religion (religion as the sole superstructure?).

The question for me is whether "fondamentalisme" is, at bottom, calling for anything different.

And your english translation is where?

I can find a way to get a bit of French text into each week’s TPM Book Club.

As a way to make the rest of us feel inferior or what?

Voteless In DC

"Voteless" asks if the French passages  in the post were used to make him feel inferior.

     Considering that the small children of a Lebanese grocer in a rural village in the Chouf will usually be trilingual in Arabic, French and English and that a tenth-grade farmer’s son in Norway will likely be trilingual in Norwegian, German and English, perhaps you really should feel inferior.

      I can work professionally in six languages from three continents, and I am regularly put to shame by colleagues in international organizations who are proficient in many more. I was recently at a conference in Berlin where a young Thai colleague, perhaps 30 years old, made his interventions in German, and also took questions in French and English.

     A 50 year-old pal of mine at the Japanese Finance Ministry reads Simenon mystery novels on his Tokyo commuter train in order to maintain the French skills he acquired in high school in Japan.

     If I were "voteless" I would be somewhat chagrined not to be able to read a couple of paragraphs written at a level that a 9th grade French student at an American secondary school should be able to breeze right through.

    One of the reasons Americans are often not well-liked around the world is that we don't bother to gain proficiency in foreign languages.

      Even more importantly, one of the reasons that we don't do better at understanding Al Qaeda and other groups that challenge us is that we can't understand what they say and what they write.

       Whining about not being offered translations of a half-page of simple French prose is emblematic of a nation that may not be up to the challenges of the 21st century. "Voteless" is a sad example of a serious lacuna in our society.

 "Ellen" encountered a term in the text with which she was unfamiliar and asked for exegesis.  As a teacher that is exactly the intellectual spirit one hopes to see.   Learning takes effort on the part of both parties. 

Professor John Stuart Blackton

You're usually a model of reason and good posting etiquette, but here you're being pointlessly condescending. You should have posted a 2-sentence precis of each entry in English. I also speak 6 languages; but had I chosen Spanish in high school like a sensible American instead of French, I might have had trouble with your post.

"When God ariseth, and when he visiteth, what shall we answer!" - Rev. Benjamin Hancock

Vazeny pane profesore,

Jakozto expertu na cizi jazyky vam jiste nebude nasledujicich par radku cinit nejmensi obtize.

Francouzky text bez jakehokoli prekladu na exkluzivne anglicky mluvicim blogu nejen odporuje netikete, ale je hlavne vysoce neprakticky. Argument, ze kazdy vzdelany clovek zna nekolik cizich jazyku, je smesny. Proc zrovna francouzstina? Proc ne nemcina, rustina, latina, cinstina, arabstina nebo estonstina? Tyto stranky by mely slouzit k diskusi a komunikaci mezi lidmi (a mozna i narody), nicmene se obavam, ze Vas prispevek slouzi spise k nedorozumeni nez k porozumeni.

------

Everyone understands what I wrote, right? It's nothing a third grader couldn't comprehend... as long as you're looking at the right country.

Professor Blackton,

The two passages you cite from Paul Balta strike me as rather conventional boilerplate explications of the sort that have appeared in the introductory chapters or glossaries of innumerable books on Political Islam, Islamic terrorism and jihad that have appeared over the past decade, and particularly since 9/11. We are all by now quite familiar with the admonitions against translating jihad as "holy war"; with the information that the term signifies "effort" or "striving" in the way of God, with particular emphasis on the inner spiritual component of that effort; and with the tidbits about the unorthodox, minority opinion in the Muslim world that regards jihad as the Sixth Pillar of Islam.

The same goes for Balta's nutshell account of Political Islam, or Islamism, which contains the standard emphasis on its novel and miltant nature, and its divergence from other varieties of committed Islamic belief and practice, including traditionalism or fundamentalism.

I can't really believe you thought you were advancing the discussion by posting these commonplaces. If you remain determined to press forward with your vain displays of francophone erudition, at least have the courtesy to select more interesting passages.

Warum nicht Deutsch? Der Text war auf Tschechisch.

Die story mit Peter dem Groessen glaube ich nicht. Polnisch oder Serbokroatisch kann ich nicht ganz verstehen, und Russisch nur weil ich es in der Schule gelernt habe, und auch nicht so gut.

BTW Estonian, as a Finno-Ugric language, is Greek to me - in fact I'd probably understand much less of Estonian than of Greek (which I never attempted to learn but which is at least related to other Indo-European languages).

I was being deliberately condescending

And, frankly, you continue to be condescending. Don't think I haven't noticed that your apology was directed to Brooksfoe and not to me. I was the one targeted by your self-aggrandizing rant after all.

I should not have taken the bait in the first place

As others here have noted, you shouldn't have had such bad blog etiquette in the first place. Don't blame me for that.

Voteless In DC

Novels can also switch between first, second or third person narrative, jump around in time and space, and generally play all sorts of mischievous games and spring jolly surprises on the unsuspecting reader.

But all that is utterly irrelevant, because blogs aren't novels.

Incidentally, if you're going to be a language snob, you shouldn't mangle grammar like you did with "Cliff's Note's".

 Codegen86 caught my typo, and  made a faux pas in reporting his/her catch:

 "Novels can also switch between first, second or third person narrative, ..."

Properly: "...also switch among first, second or third person ...."

I remain curious as to the source of various posters' convictions about the rules of blog etiquette. Two that have been cited with great conviction are:

1) the blogger must provide a translation when she/he uses a foreign language

2) the stylistic conventions allowed to the novelist are denied to the blogger.  So no Magical Realism is allowed in blogging.

Where are these rules to be found?  I searched at length for the one about language and did not find it.  What I did find is that bloggers outside America don't follow this rule.

As for the second, it strikes me as absurd.

Pending further evidence, my working hypothesis is that both "rules" reflect the cultural limitations of the majority of  America's lumpen blogetariat. 

Professor John Stuart Blackton

I'm not American at all, so you can stow the insults.

As for among vs. between, I'll be the first to admit that I could have gotten that wrong as English isn't my native language. The usage note at

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=between

only tells me that the "correct" usage isn't very clear-cut (with a remark about "widely repeated but unjustified tradition"). If anyone can explain to me precisely what the distinction between "among" and "between" is and why one or the other should be used, I'll appreciate that.

As for foreign language usage, all it takes is common sense and courtesy. Since well over 99% of all content on this blog is in English, it is safe to assume that all its readers understand English. It is not safe to assume that they understand any other language in particular -- in fact it's a good guess that there is no other language besides English that all readers of this blog understand.

If the purpose of a blog is to communicate information and ideas, it is a no-brainer to select a language and form that the blog's readers will understand. If such language or form is not chosen, the purpose is... what exactly?

Dan K thinks it a matter of common sense and simple courtesy to use French at TPM cafe. Perhaps so.

I suppose this might actually be true if I believed  that the majority of TPM readers were monoglot members of the lumpen blogetariat.

Consider the blog below - a Danish blog that discusses Islam. The bloggers shift easily in an out of Danish and English without translation

Why do the bloggers do this?  Because the writer assumes cultural  literacy on the part of their readers.

This is apparently an "educated" site, not a "lumpen" site. I do TPM the courtesy of making the same assumption.

Of course there will always be some elements of the lumpen blogetariat who wander into every site, but perhaps one need not lower the bar to their level.

  Mist aldrig håbet, for Allah skænker os, hvad vi beder Ham om, sålænge vi er tålmodige slaver. Allah er lyset til alt, selv i mørke tider, hvor man intet lys ser omkring én, er lyset i vores hjerter, al-hamdu lillah wa subhanAllah. Allah ta'ala nûr og atter nûr intet overkommer Hans nåde. Han sendte en velsignelse til menneskeheden for at redde os fra ignorance, arrogance og uvidenhed. Han sendte os den komplette vejledning, gennem Sit elskede og velsignede Sendebud, må Han overøse ham med de ypperste fred og velsignelser. Jeg vil hermed jævnføre nedenstående vers fra al-Qur'an og ahadith om dette. Allah ta'ala, Den Nådige, Den Almægtige og Barmhjertige, har sagt, "And your Lord said: Supplicate to Me, I shall answer you." (Sura Ghafir, 60) Uden tvivl besvarer Allah vores kald - og endvidere også på forskellige måder. Vores mørke hjerter, vores syndige øjne, har svært ved at opdage Allahs svar til os. Allahs elskede, Allahs fred og velsignelser være med ham, har sagt, "There is not a Muslim upon the earth that calls to Allah with a supplication except that Allah gives it to him or He removes some evil of equal proportion from him, so long as he doesn't supplicate for something sinful or to sever family ties." Allahs sendebud, Allahs ypperste fred og velsignelser være med ham på denne velsignede fredag, sagde: "The supplication of the servant will always be answered provided that he does not supplicate for something sinful or supplicate to sever the ties of kinship and provided that he is not impatient." It was asked, "O Messenger of Allah, what is impatience? "He replied, "He says: 'I have supplicated and supplicated but I have not received an answer' then he becomes frustrated and leaves off supplicating" (Muslim). Dette indlæg er dedikeret til især en af mine meget nære søstre og alle andre søstre og brødre som måtte være i en knibende tilstand. Må Allah gøre alt nemt for hende og for os alle inshaAllah. Husk hende i jeres bønner, for hun har brug for dem.  

 En fremragende og indsigtsfuld artikel omkring hele striden om karikatur-tegningerne. Artiklen kalder til mere konstruktive reaktioner fra muslimer og fordømmer voldelig og uciviliseret adfærd - blandt muslimer, såvel som ikke-muslimer. Imam Zaid Shakir: "Furthermore, we go on living our lives oblivious to the ongoing abuse of Islam and our Prophet, peace and blessing of God upon him, until it becomes a major media event. At that point based on urgings issued by parties, the origins of their dubious agendas unknown to us, we are expected to drop everything and hastily rush into the fray. In many instances, our ill-conceived actions only make the situation worse."

Og endvidere: "...it is all too easy to get swept up into the mob hysteria generated by the crowd, and then engage in outrageous actions that only affirm the offensive claims of the transgressing cartoonist. It is as if we are saying, “We’ll show the Kafirs our Prophet, peace upon him was no terrorist! We’ll defame the symbols of their religion [burn their embassies, murder their unsuspecting innocents, and behead the bloody cartoonist if we get our hands on him.” Hvad er bedst i All?hs syn? Hvad er bedst for udbredelsen af Islams budskab? Hvad er bedst for folket? At brænde ambassader af og gå amok er næppe svaret. Men hvad er svaret så? Et godt bud findes i teksten. Må All?h lade folk opnå gavn ved den.

Professor John Stuart Blackton

Now Dutch is a funny case.

"In any event, don't you think it is high time that the minor Teutonic tribes learned proper High German?"
Spengler

And the point is...? Anyone who doesn't understand Danish is a member of the "lumpen blogetariat"?

The Danish blog example is irrelevant. In Denmark, it is reasonable to assume that any half educated person has a solid command of English. It is reasonable to assume as much in an English speaking country, but no more. For native English speakers, there are no compelling reasons to speak any specific second language, and in the United States, French will certainly be far less useful than, say, Spanish.

Just out of curiosity, how many Danish blogs can you find that switch between Danish and French?

Dan K thinks it a matter of common sense and simple courtesy to use French at TPM cafe. Perhaps so.

I suppose this might actually be true if I believed that the majority of TPM readers were monoglot members of the lumpen blogetariat.

In fact, I suspect that the majority of readers of TPM Cafe are members of the lumpen blogetariat - to use your invidious term for them.  Those who post and comment seem little different from the participants in the other political blogs I visit.

I already regret lowering myself into this spat; it's the kind of thing I usually avoid.  But you really are an insufferable snob - or perhaps I should say "insupportable" - and I can't resist. 

The exercise of common sense I mentioned is this: anyone who visits TPM Cafe knows that of the thousands of posts that have appeared here, almost all of them are in English.  It is a reasonable hypothesis that close to 100% of the visitors to TPM Cafe are competent in English.  It is also reasonable to assume that only a much smaller minority of them read French fluidly.

It seems to me that a widely respected and general rule of courtesy recommends that when one is engaged in a conversation with a group of people with differing language competencies, with one language shared among them, one is expected to use the shared language - the one that will include all of the participants.  To do otherwise, when one can easily avoid it, is to practice exclusion.

Of course there may be a good reason to break the rule from time to time, in order to bring in some passage from a writer in another language, or a particularly apt phrase.  But the considerate thing to do would be to translate the passage for the benefit of those who can't read it, or at least offer a precis.

If this were a single instance, I'm sure everyone would have overlooked it.  But as you noted yourself, you have a strange compulsion about this.  I would suggest your purpose in your French displays is not to advance the discussion but to (i) attract attention to your fantastically coneceited person, (ii) to dazzle the easily dazzled, and (iii) to separate yourself in your own mind from the repulsive lumpen that you obviously hold in contempt.  All of these are selfish reasons, unrelated to enhancing the conversation.

You may have noticed that this particular TPM Book Club discussion - of Fawad Gerges book - has generated a very minimal amount of discussion. Perhaps there would have been more if you had refrained from expressing your self-centered, envious need for attention.

I have read your posts in the past, and profited from them.  You are an intelligent man.  But this is a habit that is both discourteous and stupid.  Get over yourself.

I would have put this in an email but I could not send one. I have not taken French for many years and was regrettably not very good at it. However, having had to learn Latin as an adult I have grown to appreciate the usefulness and benefits of being able to read foreign languages. Any suggestions about relearning to read French?
Daniel A. Greenbaum

Ellen's advice is on the mark.

I would start out along two parallel tracks

--- light fiction in a genre you aleady like (mystery novels by Simenon might be a good choice. They are short, the writing is simple, and the stories are always rather neat).

--- subscribe to a French news-magazine (for example l'Express which is more or less like Time or  Newsweek. Paper is better, but it is also online at www.lexpress.fr ) Read the stories about subjects you are already following in the Anglophone news. This way you will intuitively pick up on terms like "rate of inflation" or "rising unemployment" without constant recourse to your dictionary.

That said, however, keep a paperback dictionary at hand.

Bon courage et bonne chance!

Professor John Stuart Blackton