France is an utter mess: After two rounds of elections — which were bisected by the French media generating a national sense of hysteria over Marine le Pen’s surging right-wing populist party — three parties now share power in Parliament, none of which hold a majority.

The result? Political and economic chaos now rule the nation, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

How did this happen? In response to the media-generated hysteria over le Pen’s National Rally party — roundly condemned as a “fascist threat” — a coalition of leftist parties quickly banded together to defeat it. That coalition, branding itself as the “New Popular Front,” won the most seats in Parliament following the second round of elections. Coming in second was President Emmanuel Macron’s “centrist” party, and in third, National Rally.

The results may have been surprising even to the left; the sole plank in its platform was to keep National Rally from taking control. (Sound familiar?)

(For the record, I hereby use the political labels — leftist, centrist, and rightist — only for convention. In reality, and by any measure, the so-called rightist party is really “centrist,” the centrist is leftist, and the leftist is insane.)

Although there is much to be said about these developments, the elephant in the room which has been fueling all of this is Islam in France. National Rally was surging precisely because its top agenda item is a tougher stance against Muslim immigration as well as hard-line domestic practices (women wearing the hijab, cruel halal practices of slaughtering animals, etc.).

And the sole reason no one party now holds power in France is because the leftist party allied itself with Islamic forces to defeat National Rally.

Has history taught the French nothing?

France Is Turning Muslim

But before we get to that, we must ask: Why is a party that is focused on the Muslim question so popular in the first place? For Western “mainstream” media, the answer is predictable: It is the party that represents France’s “deplorables” —France’s islamophobes, xenophobes, homophobes, etc. (The party is further accused of misogyny, despite being led by a woman).

In reality, the Muslim question is so popular in France because Islam has utterly ruined the nation and undermined its security. France, it should be recalled, is the first European nation to begin accepting large numbers of Muslim migrants. As far back as 1973, French intellectuals — including Jean Raspail, author of Camp of the Saints, a dystopian novel on how the West will be destroyed by unchecked mass migration from the third and especially Muslim worlds — had already seen the writing on the wall. Nothing, of course, was done about it. As a result, France now holds Europe’s largest Muslim population, about 10%; that figure is expected to reach 17% by 2050.

And how has this large and growing Muslim population been behaving? In keeping with Islam’s Rule of Numbers, which holds that, the more Muslims a nation has, the more it experiences phenomena intrinsic to the Muslim world — namely, an exponential rise in violence, rape, and sheer criminality. (Islam teaches Muslims to hate and prey on the “other,” the infidel). And France has definitely seen that: A full 70% of the nation’s prison population is Muslim (even though they are only 10% of the general population … again, sound familiar?).

France’s Churches Are Burning

According to statistics compiled by Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris,

More than 120 knife attacks take place in France every day and can happen anytime, anywhere. Most of these attacks are committed by Muslim men who then tell the police that they did it because they hate infidels and hate France. Only the knife attacks that result in death appear in the newspapers; the others are passed over in silence. In the main French cities, muggings and beatings have become commonplace. There are also more than two hundred rapes every day in France, most perpetrated by Muslim men who entered France illegally. Only 7% of illegal immigrants ordered to leave France [for crimes committed] are ever actually deported.

Hand in hand with Islam’s hate for infidels is its inherent tribalism, which, in France, has led to the rise of hundreds of Muslim “no-go zones,” or enclaves:

There are at least 751 designated Zones Urbaines Sensibles (“sensitive urban zones”), where Muslim gangs and radical imams are in charge. Non-Muslims can still live there, on the condition that they accept the status of dhimmi (tolerated second-class citizen), bow their heads, and admit that they live in a territory ruled by Islam. Members of Muslim gangs no longer respect the police. If an incident between a police officer and a member of a gang breaks out, riots follow, and the police receive orders that if the situation risks escalation, they are not to arrest anyone.

Needless to say, the church-burning capital of Europe is France — which is saying something. On average, two churches are desecrated and/or set ablaze every day. Crucifixes everywhere are broken, and statues of Christ and Mary decapitated (click here for typical examples).

Other telling statistics concerning Islam in France were revealed earlier this year in a detailed survey published by Le Journal du Dimanche. It found that 42% of Muslims in France — and 57% among those aged 18-25 — prefer shari‘a (draconian Islamic law) over French law. This is tantamount to saying that 57% of Muslims in France are more loyal to Islam — which is inherently divisive and calls for the subjugation of non-Muslims — than they are to the nation. Similarly, 25% of Muslims in France reject the very word “France.” Additionally, 49% of Muslims want Catholics to convert to Islam, and 36% want all churches to be transformed into mosques (as a great many already have).

Betraying Their Forefathers and Heritage

The irony of all this is that, from a historical point of view, no European nation was more adamantly opposed to Islam than France. Beginning with the Battle of Tours in 732, when the Franks, under the leadership of Charles “the Hammer” saved Europe from Islamization all the way up to the Enlightenment period, France spearheaded every effort to hold the line against Islamization. This included Charles the Great (“Charlemagne”) creating rebuffing attacks from Spain (which was fully conquered by Islam at that time) and all throughout the Crusades. For centuries, when Christians from Europe fought Muslims for control of the Holy Land, France led the way. (Indeed, Arabic colloquial for “Western person” till this day is ifrangi — Frank.)

But then the “Enlightenment” came, followed by secularism, and finally atheism, and everything France once believed and fought for was jettisoned to make room for “multiculturalism” and the rest. To “atone” for its historic “sins” against Islam, France went from being the first Western nation to keep Islam at bay (at Tours, nearly thirteen centuries ago) to being the first to take in large numbers of Muslim migrants.

And the rest — including France itself — is history.

May this be a lesson for the rest of us in the West as our own elections approach.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.