FRANCE - THE VIOLENCE SPREADS

Another bad night. But I'm even more depressed by some of the rush-to-judgment commentary floating around the blogosphere. Anne Cunningham seems to feel the same way.  To save myself some time [and at the risk of sounding unbearably pompous] I'm pasting in part of the response I just left on Neo-Neocon's thoughtful post:

As you say, until we know more about what's going on, we shouldn't leap to conclusions. I'm really disturbed by some of the coverage I've seen on other blogs. People seem determined to make everything fit into some neat ideological box, regardless of the few facts available so far. As for some of the anti-Muslim comments that have been posted (not here, but elsewhere) well, they're frankly racist, and stupid. "Deport them..." seems to be one common response. Where to? The rioters are French citizens. OK, the French can't complain if Americans want to indulge in a certain amount of Schadenfreude, especially after all the gloating coverage of Katrina. But let's stay grown-up about this. France has an underclass problem, America has an underclass problem. So does Britain. Religion complicates things enormously in Europe, yes, but we're not yet in a clash of civilisations. I don't want to sound Pollyanna-ish. At the same time, there's no point being apocalyptic either, even if it does give us a nice, warm glow inside.
I say this as someone who loves France as much as America. (As I'm usually mistaken for a North African when I'm travelling in Paris and, especially, the provinces, I don't have any illusions about all that "égalité, fraternité" stuff.) There's no question there's a structural crisis in France, but the idea that we have nothing at all to learn from their system is just silly.

PS: Just to make it clear, I'm not downplaying the seriousness of the riots. And I'm not saying Islamists have played no part in them. But we don't know enough yet, do we?

PPS: "But where's the French blogosphere?" asks one of Loïc Le Meur's commenters, who's clearly not impressed with the "intifada" talk in the English-speaking blogworld. Another links to a local blog's tribute to the two youths whose death prompted the riots in the first place. For what it's worth, the other images on the page show rappers, not jihadis.

Le Meur also has a link to a suburban blog, Monaulnay.com. One post there touches on the French media coverage: TV executives claim they were reluctant to give the riots too much publicity for fear of provoking copy-cat violence:  "There's a sort of competition. 'They did that in such and such a town. We'll go one better, you'll see."  ['Il y a une espèce de compétition : "Ils ont fait cela dans telle ville, nous, on va faire plus fort, vous allez voir." '  **Please feel free to correct my French...]

UPDATE: Mark Steyn is in a pessimistic frame of mind. Le Figaro examines the role of Islamist radicals, and finds the evidence is patchy.

Comments

[Jeffersonranch]

This is not just a French happening. It is here for all Western civilization to see. Talk is cheap. Do I see Neville Chamberlain here. Like all humans we will wait until the blood runs and make the silly comment of not understanding history. History has spoken and the secular West is dead.

[Robin Burk]

'Intifada' is premature. But what is not premature is to note that gang activity can morph into the functional equivalent of urban insurgency, eroding the ability of the state to maintain order and security in non-oppressive ways.

That is my concern about the actions of the youths from the banlieus - and the inaction from French authorities.

[dougf]

Hmmm I agree we can't jump to conclusions but let's be simplistic for a moment.

Are the 'insurgents' Muslim or are they not ? Surely that is a relatively easy to answer question. If they are considering the current state of the world, I hardly think it unfair or unreasonable to posit that Islamic tendencies might underlay these 'demonstrations'. For some reason Islam seems to be getting a 'bad rep' lately. Guess it must be a simple coincidence.

On a more demonstrable note:

Chirac Lied --- Peugeouts Died !!!

[susan]

Send Chavez, Castro and Carter armed with empty Progressive Leftist platitudes, that should help to lull the unwashed masses back to sleep, and once again, saving peaceful Utophia from its own wreck and ruin.

[Ray]

You should really go back to Oct 19th when this latest escalation started and to before that for further clarity:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L19243562.htm

There is much "more" to this than to just write it off. If you open your eye's some more and do a bit more research you'll find some quite more interesting details and internal French politics. I'm this short post does not come across in a bad way that is not my intent.

[Robin Burk]

Yes - the drug trafficking and other activities that Sarkozy challenged is what I meant by 'gang activity' above, Ray.

[Dean Jorge Bocobo]

I prefer to be optimistic. Maybe Paris is Europe's Pearl Harbor in the War on Terror...

[Vikr]

> But we don't know enough yet, do we?

This reasonable question appears to indicate that the riots in France are a new phenomenon and have little relationship to past events.

For example, is the poverty of the Islamic population in France a relatively recent result of 30 years of French policies? No less an authority than Winston Churchill provides testimony that this is not the case:

> How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

> ...Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -- the science against which it had vainly struggled -- the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

(Source: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Robert Spencer, page 92.)

The phenomenon of poverty in Islamic populations is not new in France, or caused by French policies.

Humanity suffers from "The Memento Syndrome." The protagonist of the film "Memento", couldn't remember anything that happened longer ago than 15 minutes. Similarly, much of what happened before the time of our fathers and grandfathers disappears from our memory. (Discussed in my post at http://tinyurl.com/7v9dd)

The Koran instructs Muslims to kill non-Muslims wherever they are found, or to make them second-class citizens. This is in over 100 verses in the Koran, and these versus are held by Muslim scholars to abrogate the older, peaceful verses in the Koran. Muslims have been following these verses religiously (not a pun) for over 1300 years, in war after war, on nation upon nation. Egypt and Syria were once predominantly Christian. Iran once had a significant Christian population as well.Those nations were conquered by Muslim forces following the dictates of the Koran. Spain was conquered by Islam and held for 700 years. France was nearly conquered until the invading forces were driven back by Charles Martel. (Source: Spencer, ibid. Additional details are in a post on my site at http://tinyurl.com/bssv7).

No other people, nation, or religion on Earth has consistently made war on its neighbors for the purposes of conquest and/or religious conversion for anything remotely resembling 1300 years.

The instructions to do so are in their bible.

Surely it is possible for Muslims to reform Islam and bring it into the modern world, and surely that is happening in a number of places at this time.

But it is unlikely that the riots in Paris have no relevant relationship to the events of the past 13 centuries, which I have noted in this post.

[Dr. Deano]

Jumping to conclusions about the degree to which Islamism is driving/instigating the French insurgency is wrong. However, it would be just as wrong to ignore Islamism as a factor in the riots. The question regarding Islamism's support of the rioters is not if, but to what degree.

It is also unwise to rationalize that because these insurgents do not look or act exactly like the stereotypical Islamist terrorist/insurgent, that they are not. France has bred its own unique strain of Islamist that is not visually the same as those in Iraq or Afghanistan. We should be careful not to stereotype Islamists as all looking the same.

France's experiment with socialist-multiculturalism has resulted in alienated young (and not so young) people that are French by technicality of where they were born, but culturally not French. They also can not identify with the North African cultures of their parents and grandparents and therefore essentially have no culture at all. Socialism provides them with food, shelter, and healthcare - but no future and no hope.

These rioters are a product of the ultimate welfare state at least as much as anything else. Islamism catalyzes these people and enables and justifies their violence, but is not the root cause. The vacuum created by the French experiment with socialist-multiculturalism is all to easily filled by radical Islam with its strong identity, structure, and promise of something better.
But the Islamism of French ghettos is not the Islamism of the Taliban in many ways. It is rather a hybrid owing to adherents who pray to Allah and listen to rap music. Again, we should not be quick to deny Islamism's role simply because the rioters do not look like our vision of Islamist zealots.

Before trying to minimize the role of Islam in these riots we should then explain why the government is trying so hard to use local Imams (including both the government sponsored Imams and independent Imams) to calm the rioters, and why, next to the unfortunate deaths of the two youths, the other 'reason' for the rioting is cited as a tear gas canister exploding near a mosque.

Some have compared the French riots to the Watts riots in America a few decades back. Granted the contribution of the welfare mentality, a strong and unifying influence instigating violence (the black power movement) are similar. But a striking difference is the apparent level of coordination and planning shown by the French rioters as compared to the Watts rioters. Another significant and telling difference is the fact that the French riots are occurring in over 300 (last I read) towns covering a wide geography, while the Watts riots did not spill out much beyond Watts and was essentially contained within a few tens of square city blocks.

The French riots are a new phenomenon whose full impact and meaning for the future are not yet known or understood.