Le Pen speaks about Christianity, islam... and Dresden

Firebrand French presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen was interviewed by the Christian publication La Croix this week, and reveals himself as somewhat equivocal about islam... and, it seems, nazis. [translations by myself]

...Le Pen states that “religions fill an irreplaceable role because they bring an element of stability to society"... “the decline of religious practice reinforces today a latent materialism, which no doubt explains the decadence of social behavior.”

Questioned on the trial of the mohammed caricatures published in Charlie Hebdo magazine, ... m. Le Pen suggests that “without a doubt, islam shows itself more reactive than the Christian religion does when it is mocked or maligned.”

“The islamic world seems more dreaded than is the Christian world. It is true that the islamic religion obeys a precept of conquest, which is no longer the case of the Christian religion”, he says.

He says also that “the dynamism of islam results less from its proselytizing than from demographic pressures. It naturally borrows the religious channel since this benefits from a certain complaisance or indulgence.”

“In any event, in France, the demands made for mosques are born from the considerable increase in the number of muslim immigrants, who are today approximately six million, it is said. Islam is dangerous when it is dominant”, he added.

The French christian blog Le Salon Beige highlights some further quotes from the same interview:

“[Islam] in its essence [has an] immense difficulty in separating [church and state]… secularism is the means to make common law respected by all religions… [While] some bend naturally, it is not the case with islam, which will no doubt need to be recalled to order.”

[Meanwhile Yahoo France selects Le Pen's answer to a question on the Sept 11 attacks for its lead: "Le Pen minimizes the Sept 11 attacks" ]

“3,000 deaths, that is as many as a month in Iraq” and “it is much less than the bombings of Marseille or of Dresden at the end of the Second World War.”
He suggests that these bombings “also were terrorist acts since they explicitly targeted civilian populations in order to make the military surrender.”

So the terror attacks on 9-11 are like the bombing of Dresden? What kind of ally will France remain for North America should we find this kind of relativism within its president?

From the interview I sense that Le Pen can clearly see the dangers of radical islam, but does not see them as present dangers. He seems to be saying that if things get out of hand we'll take care of the problem then... nothing that can't be solved. I shudder to think: what kind of "solution" could we expect from someone who sees the objective of liberating Europe from its Nazi death grip as of equal value as knocking over New York's World Trade Center?

A few months ago, Claude Reichman described the gloomy scenario that such extremist solutions are likely to lead to:

The real danger that France is courting is not the clash on the near horizon, but the state in which she will find herself when she gets out of it.
Our nation might just as well sink into a terrible civil war as give herself a new public-approved ruling class which will heave it outside the sinkhole it has fallen into.