This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3264
November 28, 2007
Muslims Riot In France - Shades Of The Intifada
By William Mayer and Beila Rabinowitz
November 28, 2007 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Six North Paris municipalities are burning, victim of an increasingly violent Intifada style uprising in Muslim immigrant communities that had its start two years ago and has been simmering ever since, this time flaring up over a traffic accident in which two immigrant youths on a speeding motorcycle were killed in a collision with a police car.
Typical of the current French character in such matters, public proseutors are considering going after the officers who were involved, despite a lack of evidence over any wrongdoing on their part.
The three days of civil unrest have been noteworthy in the degree of violence employed against the police, with over 120 officers already having been injured, with many hospitalized, some in very serious condition.
Law enforcement officials have labeled the rioters, "genuine urban guerillas," noting that for the first time, "conventional weapons and hunting weapons" were being used by them. [source, Daily Mail UK, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=496422&in_page_id=1811&ct=5]
The violence is limited to enclaves - already no go areas for police - populated primarily by North African Muslim immigrants, legal and illegal, who have grown more militant as their numbers have swelled.
Of serious concern is the degree to which French appeasement of this population has created a perception of weakness and dhimmitude on the part of the central government.
Despite his tough-talking campaign, French president Nicholas Sarkozy has waved the white flag in the immigrant strongholds, having appointed one of their ilk, Fadela Amara, a leftist Muslim activist born to Algerian parents, as Secretary of State for Urban Policies. Amara was charged with developing a plan to deal with the "root causes" of the ongoing unrest. The new Secretary has been a ceaseless and caustic force for "immigrant rights" since her teens, calling into question Sarkozy's judgement in the matter. Given her history, Amara's plan will most likely be heavy with government programs which ignore the core issue.
Sarkozy's government's weak response so far is underscored by its apparent unwillingness to accept the fact that Islamist uprisings can't be bought off, outside of total capitulation. The French prime minister, quoted below in a statement to the National Assembly, seems genuinely baffled by the matter:
"The violence which they have unleashed is unacceptable, intolerable and incomphrehensible. Those who shoot at the police are criminals." [source, translation from Le Monde, "Les violences qui se sont produites sont des violences inacceptables, intolérables, incompréhensibles. Ceux qui tirent sur les policiers sont des criminels.," http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-983465,0.html]
Echoing this hands-off approach, the socialist Mayor of Villiers-le-Bel, Didier Vallant, pleaded with his townspeople to keep their children in after dark, as if the matter of rising guerilla street warfare was equivalent to a night out by pranksters.
"This evening I invite all of the parents,all of the adults to demand that their children stay at home...We have to be able to talk so that calm will return to Villiers-le-Bel." [source, translation from Le Monde, "J'invite ce soir l'ensemble des parents, l'ensemble des adultes à demander à leurs enfants de rester chez eux. Je leur demande de venir avec les élus. Nous devons pouvoir discuter pour que Villiers-le-Bel retrouve son calme," http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-983465,0.html]
With near unanimity, media reports of the violence have been stripped of any hint that might help identify who those who are responsible. Internet searches have so far not revealed a single main-stream news story which identifies the rioters as Muslims, or Islamic. This renders coverage of the events so one dimensional as to be meaningless.
Not wanting to leave any doubt as to its multi-culti bona fides, the LA Times took this tactic a step further, blaming the riots [in a front page story] in part on Sarkozy:
There is now a new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, promising more renewal, but he is also the loathed former interior minister of the previous administration who fanned the violence in 2005 by referring to marauding youth as "scum."
[source, LA Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-frenchriots28nov28,1,155633.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage]
In terms of the violence already having been wrought, describing the perpetrators merely as scum at this point, seems oddly quaint and hardly inciteful. Regardless, unless Mr. Sarkozy jettisons the current kid-glove approach to dealing with the rioters, France may be on the verge of societal melt-down, already weakened by the country's long flirtation with socialism, and now found wanting for even the ability to find the language to describe what is happening in its streets. http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=france11.28.07%2Ehtm
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3264