During last months riots in France comments in Die Weltwoche and Le Point saw nothing but infantile self-destruction. For The New Yorker the American integration model is the most successful.And to round it all of In Der Spiegel, Hans Magnus Enzensberger considerred the Islamic radicals to be the losers that the Nazis once were.Nevertheless as many as 60 cars still burn nightly in France, most of them outside Paris I must ad.
The common assumption is that a harsh inhospitable French society refuses to integrate immigrants of Muslim descend. And this supposedly explains their anger, and their anger justifies their violence and, according to that logic, the solution is to reshape French society in such a way that their presence will be evenly distributed on all levels, frustration will give way to satisfaction, and healthy conflict will open the way to harmony.
The leading Muslim organization in France, the UOIF tried its best to declare that Islam had nothing to do with the riots but in the same time they enacted a fatwa to appeal for calm. Thus the UOIF recognized, indirectly, that the rioters indeed were primary Muslims.
On the other hand there is also an obvious contradiction in the French system. France does not recognize the ethnicity of these young Moslems and Africans. The French feel that if they were born in France, they are French and that person should speak French, not Arabic or African. This is understandable from a certain point of view. The government also allows these people to (and many do) have dual nationality including the country from which their parents arrived.
Many Arabs who left their countries in the sixties for France still have a permanent resident card (permit equivalent to the Green Card). For 40 years these people have lived in France with this permit without knowing the French language and never expressed the desire to obtain French citizenship. But they have children born in France, even many of these are not religious Moslems. However, in a country like France where the religious tradition has almost entirely disappeared from all the layers of society, it is normal that often Islam then fills the spiritual gap for these people.
As far as socially reasonable behaviour is concerned the French or other national authorities often are not interested in doing what is good for their respective people. Plus in W.Europe it often prefers an Islamization of European democracies to a democratization of Muslim communities in Europe since the latter is more expensive in terms of labor and social cost.
As indicated, the relevance of ideology to the rioters is a subject of considerable contention, with some commentators such as the respected B. Raman at the South Asia Analysis Group submitting "all indications point to the involvement of some Pakistani, Algerian and Moroccan members of the London-based [Hizb ut-Tahrir] (HT) in violence by sections of angry Muslim youth..." Many others have pointed to an identification by the rioters with both or either the anti-Israel violence since 2000 and the terrorists attacking Shi’ites and westerners in Iraq.
French discussion of any problems specifically related to Muslim immigration has suffered from the interventions and repugnant far-right agitations by Jean-Marie Le Pen. It also suffered from a Machiavellian trend within French leftist intellectual culture that forgave medievalism and anti-social activity from immigrant groups they believed shared their anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism.
Fact is however that for many years, in the Paris region, Islamist ideology has tried to take advantage of unemployment and unrest. “It is time to open our eyes.” Now, youths crying “God is great” rampage and demand that areas where Muslims form a majority be reorganized on the basis of the millet (religious community) system of the Ottoman Empire, with each millet enjoying the right to organize its life in accordance with its religious beliefs. In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place, with women obliged to wear the hijab and men to grow beards; alcohol and pork products forbidden; “places of sin” such as cinemas closed down; and local administration seized. The message in the suburbs is that French authorities should keep out. (Quotes are from Amir Taheri, “Why Paris is burning,” New York Post, Nov. 5, 2005.)
As thousands of voices shout ’Allahu Akbar’ from the windows of high-rise apartment buildings, shivers run down the spines of television viewers in their seemingly safe living rooms. Those citizens have good reasons to worry indeed. First, in France (as well as in Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany) Muslims are wildly over-represented in prisons. In France they make a majority of inmates, and in jails close to the banlieues as much as 80 percent. (See Farhad Khosrokhavar, L’Islam dans le prisons, Paris 2004, p.11 )
Second, Islamist terrorists from France (and Spain, Netherlands, and Belgium) have a profile quite distinct from that of their counterparts in the Muslim world, inasmuch as they contain a far more significant number of (usually petty) criminals. The available data suggest that Islamist criminality in France has a history at least a decade long. Thus, Khaled Khelkal, considered the mastermind of the wave of bombings in France in the mid-1990s, who was shot by police in 1995, became a hero in the banlieues. Born near Lyons to Algerian parents, Khelkhal went to the prestigious La Martiniere lycee in that city but, he claimed, dropped out and engaged in a criminal career because he could not “tolerate being marginal and rejected by the others” — and because he chose to follow the example of his brother, Nouredine, who was already in jail for armed robbery. And two French-born Algerian and two Tunisian immigrants were arrested for alleged terrorism and links to the main Algerian Islamist terrorist organization, which is part of the Al Qaeda nebula, while also being linked to a prostitution racket. (See Colette Thomas, La France sur le qui-vive, Sept. 26, 2005, at www.rfi.fr. )
The reasons for all this, are often attributed to factors like “alienation from both parental roots and country of origin, and the society in which they live.” Sociologists however also call this phenomenon re-Islamization, and it is increasing in intensity among second and third generation Muslims in Western Europe. Those young Muslims who were born in Europe lost their ties with the country of their parents, while at the same time their families suffered the same disintegration as their native ones, with parents losing control over their children, to gangs and/or Islamists. Hence, such youths are no more Algerians, Moroccans, or Pakistanis, but neither are they French or British. Therefore Islam, however understood or misunderstood, becomes as I explained the default identity.
Indeed, complaining of high unemployment and using it as an "explanation” of Muslim violence and refusal to integrate misses the point. Leaving aside the obvious fact that, since they are mostly teenagers and thus should be in school, not on the job market, these youths, “French against their will, products of Arab-African immigration, intend to maintain their cultural and religious specificities. Far from wanting to mix and integrate in a scared France which confuses indulgence with tolerance, they continuously look to their close origins, due to modern means of communication, and refuse to come out from their identity ghetto.”(See Jacques Myard, “ Assez d’angelisme, adaptons nos methodes repressives sans mollir, “ Le Figaro, Nov. 4, 2005.)
None of this is to say that unemployment, which has been running at 10 percent in recent years for those who actually want to work, is not a major problem in France. That and many Muslims’ rejection of integration are the two main reasons why it is so hard to be optimistic about any short-term improvement in France’s situation — and indeed Europe’s.
France has already tried one thing to solve these issues: money. After showering the suburbs with billions of dollars in the 1990’s, the latest plan put in place way before this recent wave of violence called for another 36 Billion USD help for these suburbs.
In fact, the wide array of subsidies has pushed people into a state of total dependence towards the State. From unemployment to minimum income, housing, large families, winter vacation some people are not motivated to work for sometimes less than what they collect. Of course at the same time France is the second highest taxed country in the world, the economy is in shambles, the brain drain is the highest ever. So they’re going right into a wall.
Thus although there was never a French dream but now there’s a French nightmare. In fact the welfare system is bankrupt and France cannot afford it anymore but does not want let go.
But has little effect because some Muslim youths do don’t consider themselves French (even if they hold French citizenship) but first and foremost Muslim. This state of mind is the result of the current work of organizations such as the earlier mentioned , French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, UOIF (Union des Organisations Islamiques de France), the Tabligh and people like Swiss Islamist Tariq Ramadan.
Thus the main problem as indicated, is not so much social deprivation as lack of a clear cultural identity. The young men who carried out the London bombings did not view themselves as members of the Pakistani community but as members of a radical Muslim Umma, and the same is happening in France claims “Le Londonistan : Le Djihd au coeur de l'Europe.”According to the author the number of jihadis in France could be around 1,000.
In their book Les islamistes sont déjà là (2005) Christophe Deloire and Christophe Dubois claim that, ”In the 1970s they would have joined the radical Left. Today they join radical Islam, both because they often have Muslim roots and because it is the main violent ideology available. Muslim extremists have in recent years deeply penetrated the suburbs .”
To go back to the specifics of the riots, no one - except the French authorities, the French press - can claim it was just a coincidence that most rioters were Muslim. Indeed, why did Asians - mostly Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants -, quite important in numbers, not take part in the riots - even the ones living in the banlieues? On top of it, one would think that with the language barrier, it would be very tough for these populations to integrate into French society but obviously they make do. Why then is it an insurmountable problem for French of Arab descent born and bred in France? Also, one should not underestimate the anti-white racism present within some young Muslim youths. The anti-white riots that occurred in March in Paris during students’ demonstrations were already a sign of things to come.
Furthermore, Muslim women in France have a birth rate much higher than non-Muslim French women and some demographers are predicting that Muslims will represent 25% of the French population within twenty-five years. In order to avoid constant “social unrest” as French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called the riots on CNN, France is going to have to integrate this community. Unfortunately it looks like the current generation is already lost, mostly because of the brainwashing from Radical Islamists who affirmed that Islam is the solution to everything.
Back in the 1960’s legendary French leader Charles De Gaulle warned about the integration problems of the Muslim community in France. Indeed he stated: “Those who advocate integration of the Algerian Muslims have a hummingbird’s brain. Try to integrate oil and vinegar. Shake the bottle. After a moment, they will once more separate. Does one really believe that the French body will be able to absorb 10 million Muslims, who will be 20 million tomorrow and 40 million the day after tomorrow?”
But nobody listened, for example even though for instance polygamy and excision are forbidden in France, they are tolerated and even rewarded monetary in the case of polygamy, because the country of origin accepts these practices. How can one integrate people if they don’t respect the law of their host country or worse their native one?
Nevertheless, it seems to me more intelligent to strive for improvement in France before writing it off. Thus it might be better for the Muslim world as a whole to see France stand up and declare its rights as a sovereign country, entitled to define its borders, its limits, its values. Indeed Islam has a particular problem about living with Others.
José Bové became a hero for attacking a McDonald’s restaurant. But if you say that France cannot absorb 5 or 8 or 10 or 15 million Muslims, you are a filthy racist. Next however we have a Belgian woman, married to an Islamist, who blows herself up in a martyrdom operation in Baghdad. Sleeper cells, operational cells, support cells, financing networks, French jihadis in Iraq, jihad missiles in France, Waqf zones in the banlieues, endemic anti-Semitism…is this a favor to decent freedom-loving Muslims who hoped to find refuge in France?
Professor Paul Schnabel, the cautious and considered director of the Netherlands Social and Cultural Planning Office, recently discussed the subject with me by explaining that at present, a number of Dutch public figures take unprecedented dramatic security measures, not so much out of the very real concern of international terrorism but due to threats emanating from local immigrants as explained in detail during my lecture in London.
In fact already one month before the riots started a study by the Center for Intelligence Research in Paris already concluded that Islamic networks are trying to establish a presence in companies involved in sectors such as security, cargo, armored cars, courier services and transportation. Once they gain a foothold, operatives raise funds for militants via theft, embezzlement and robbery.
Last year, police investigated a heist at the Brinks Co. that allegedly was engineered by an operative of a Moroccan terror network that has been implicated in the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Hassan Baouchi, who was 23 at the time, worked as a technician stocking automated teller machines; his brother, Mustafa, was a veteran of two stints in Al Qaeda's Afghan camps and an alleged leader of the network. In March 2004, Hassan Baouchi claimed that stick-up men had waylaid him during his rounds north of the capital and stole about $1.2 million. He awaits trial on charges of faking the robbery in cahoots with a gang of known jihadis. About $40,000 later turned up on a fugitive captured in Algeria.
More important, arrests during the riots, revealed that France has been targeted by an alliance teaming Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, with an Algerian-dominated network, said a senior French law enforcement official, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. Zarqawi operatives in Lebanon taught bomb-making to accused militants from the network who were arrested here, including French converts, the official said.
That underscores a development on the home front: a ''significant increase" in converts, including women, said a French intelligence official who also asked not to be identified. Conversions also result from militant recruiting in workplaces, according to the think tank report, which is based on a survey of corporate executives, private security officials and law enforcement experts. The author, Eric Denece, acknowledged that the issue was complex.
Nonetheless, demographics and perception make the debate difficult. As the report points out, Muslim employees in France are starting to organize along religious and ethnic lines rather than following the lead of traditional leftist unions. Management sometimes might allege extremism when workers are finding new ways to defend their interests.
Shortly before the riots started French police, already believed that about 50 of France's 1,600 mosques or prayer halls where under the influence of extremists. However putting Muslims under suspicion may not be the best strategy, and today’s tough line can be self-defeating. For example, when the government decides to expel an imam, many mainstream Muslims regard this as an attack on all Muslims. French Police, however, feel they have no option but to continue monitoring the Islamic pool from which militants draw their recruits.