| Monday, November 07, 2005 |
| France's Intifada |
Eleven days ago, the rioting in Paris struck me as an isolated explosion of youth temperament, perhaps mixed with immigrant frustration, and I'll admit, I didn't pay too much attention. Now, it's starting to look like something else ... something out of Gaza. Consider the source, but a Muslim analyst on Laura Ingraham's show this morning described what is happening in Paris and 300 suburban towns (with more than 1400 and some are saying 3000 cars torched, one person dead and some 35 police officers injured) as an "Intifada" or uprising, not unlike those spearheaded by groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. There and in France, the issue, this analyst said, is self-determination -- a desire for the religious leadership to take control of these North African immigrant neighborhoods, and for the "interference" of the French authorities and police to be withdrawn. Again, consider the source...
Ingraham links to this article by columnist Mark Steyn, which ran in the Sunday Chicago Sun-Times. It reads in part:
Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands
Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.
Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.''
''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.
The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness. Steyn goes on to recount the 8th century rout of Muslim Moors by the heroic Franc called Charles Martel (the previous "Hammer") which repelled what could have been a Muslim conquest of Europe, and how that expulsion 200 miles from the gates of Paris prevented a complete rewriting of the history of that continent, which might have been all Mohammad and no pope had the "other side" been victorious. But now, says Steyn (in agreement with Laura's caller this morning) Islam has found another way into Europe: immigration. And Europe is losing the second millenial battle for religious supremacy on the continent. Europeans are, in fact, in fear of their own streets -- the "disaffected youths" from North Africa literally control the psychology. (Which explains why, when France does try to fight back, it starts by battling relious head coverings). Says Steyn:
Battles are very straightforward: Side A wins, Side B loses. But the French government is way beyond anything so clarifying. Today, a fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd al-Rahman. They're in Brussels, where Belgian police officers are advised not to be seen drinking coffee in public during Ramadan, and in Malmo, where Swedish ambulance drivers will not go without police escort. Not everyone agrees. The WaPo described the riots as an outpouring of youthful frustration at immigrant socio-econominc stagnation and government neglect and says the unrest:
"underscores the chasm between the fastest growing segment of France's population and the staid political hierarchy that has been inept at responding to societal shifts. The youths rampaging through France's poorest neighborhoods are the French-born children of African and Arab immigrants, the most neglected of the country's citizens. A large percentage are members of the Muslim community that accounts for about 10 percent of France's 60 million people." Meanwhile, there's a war of words going on between government officials and left- and right-wing newspaper writers who alternately condemn and pity the rampagers.
For its part, the BBC comes down squarely on the side of a burgeoning Intifada, which now seems to think it can take down the interior minister, who is widely reported to have called the rioters "scum," but whose words the BBC more carefully translates as "rabble." If that's true, than this is rioting with an underlying political purpose, not just random urban freestyling. (To quote Trader Rob at the Jawa Report, "so much for the prevailing narrative of spontaneous and uncoordinated acts by poor French youths who want jobs.")
Chirac, for his part, is talking tough about restoring order. The rest of Europe, which has its own "Muslim problem" just seems to be popping the Pepcid and hoping their turn won't come, rationalizing that Paris' problem is the drab apartment complexes where immigrants feel warehoused. (Having had theirs already, the British are locked in a fierce debate over how far to go in cracking down on civil liberties in order to prevent another 7/7, or a copycat Paris.)
Of course, America has been here, too. During the 1960s, and at times the 1970s and '80s, urban riots tore at the heart of this country, as disaffected Black "youths" torched their own cities in rage at some combination of racism, econimc deprivation and political impotence -- all touched off by some inflamatory incident. In Paris, it was the deaths of two young Muslims who ran from police and hid inside an electrical sub-station. In Watts or other cities in the U.S., it was the death of Dr. King (or a generation later, the beating of Rodney King). But one crucial difference between 1960s America and 2005 Europe, is the religious element, plus the added factors of immigration and assimilation. France is a far more homogenious society than the U.S. -- almost all white (of one ethinicity, rather than polyglot European) and Catholic -- and the North African immigrants stand out like the proverbial sore thumb. But I think there is something to the idea that Muslim leaders within these neighborhoods are advancing a kind of Intifada-like movement to "take control" of thier mini-societies and drive the French authorities toward some political goal. And of course, the Watts rioters didn't have bomb-making factories...
Update: Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister who supposedly fueled the ire of the rioters, is actually quite liberal on the issue of immigrant rights, including, apprently, the right of "long-term foreign residents" to vote in French elections...
Tags: News, Paris, riots |
posted by JReid @ 10:30 AM   |
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