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PARISIANS PROTEST FOR CALM AFTER TWO NIGHTS OF RIOTS,
VIDEO HERE
Most of the residents in the suburbs are immigrants from Northern Africa.
French youth face riot police in the Paris suburb of Clichy, October 29, 2005. Hundreds of French youths fought with police and set cars ablaze on Saturday in a second night of rioting which media said was triggered when two teenagers were electrocuted while fleeing police. The teenagers were killed and a third seriously injured on Thursday night when they were electrocuted in an electricity sub station as they ran away from police investigating a break-in, media reported. (Reuters)
Youths rioted for the second night in a Paris suburb torching 30 cars and fighting with police. Parisians worried that the situation was escalating:
Hundreds of French youths fought with police and set cars ablaze in a northern Paris suburb early yesterday morning in a second successive night of rioting.
The disorder was triggered last week when two teenagers were electrocuted and killed in a local substation while fleeing from police. French authorities insist they were running away from officers investigating a break-in, but people in Clichy-sous-Bois claim that the dead youths had committed no crime.
Firefighters extinguished more than 30 burning cars and dozens of dustbins pushed into makeshift barricades on Friday night and Saturday morning as running battles in the streets of the north-eastern suburb pitted more than 200 riot police against scores of hooded youths. At least one shot was fired at the police, 19 people were detained and 15 officers and one journalist injured, an official spokesman said.
Clichy-sous-Bois is home to 28,300 people a large number of whom are recent immigrants from North or Central Africa. Most live in rundown, low-rise public housing estates. Unemployment rates are among the highest in France and many locals see the police as 'the enemy'.
Claude Dilain, Socialist mayor of the suburb, called for an 'efficient, rapid and transparent investigation' into the deaths of the two teenagers. A relative of one of the dead youths, who were identified by local media as 15-year-old Banou and 17-year-old Ziad, said that the two were among nine boys were playing football and 'doing nothing wrong'. 'But one of them did not have an identity card, and so they were scared when they saw the police and ran,' she said.
The violence has focused attention once more on France's Interior Minster, Nicholas Sarkozy. Sarkozy, whose law and order policies have drawn frequent criticism from human rights groups, launched a new offensive against crime this month, ordering specially trained police to tackle 25 tough neighbourhoods in cities across France.
After violent outbursts throughout the night, the residents and youth held a silent rally today.
Clichy-Sous-Bois residents, some wearing t-shirts reading 'Death for Nothing', as they walk for the peace Saturday, Oct. 29, 2005, after riots erupted between youths and security forces in the Clichy-Sous-Bois suburb of Paris, France. Hundreds of angry youths went on the rampage Friday, setting fire to cars and shop fronts, after two of their peers died when they were electrocuted while fleeing police. (AP)
The residents held a silent rally after the violence during the night:
Firefighters went into action around 40 times on Friday night in the northeastern suburb where many of the 28,000 residents are African immigrants, police and fire officers said.
After the violence, several hundred took part in a silent march to honour the two dead teenagers, some wearing T-shirts reading "Dead for nothing".
"Thanks to you, France will now respect us more than this morning, before this silent march," said Claude Dilain, mayor of Clichy-Sous-Bois, a neighbourhood of high-rise public housing projects.
"We are showing our real face, that of united citizens, whatever our origin or religion or faith," he said at the march, where the victims' families appealed for calm among local young people.
Kathianne said:Weird I didn't hear about the first night, links at site, perhaps you can reconstruct.:
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2005/10/death-of-immigrants-spark-riots-in.html
March Over Deaths in Paris
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Published: October 30, 2005
PARIS, Oct. 29 (Agence France-Presse) - Some 500 people marched, angrily but peacefully on Saturday, in memory of two teenagers whose deaths set off rioting in a Paris suburb.
Marchers in Clichy-sous-Bois observed several minutes' silence and laid flowers a few yards from where the youths, 15 and 17, were electrocuted Thursday after they scaled a wall of an electrical relay station and fell against a transformer. An account that they died while being chased by police officers fueled riots that night, which grew Friday.
Representatives of Muslim groups at the procession appealed for calm and dignity.
The local prosecutor said Saturday that the boys had wrongly thought they were being chased by officers.
An investigation is under way.
Hobbit said:So two teenagers were stupid enough to a) run from police b) run into an electrical power substation and c) jump off the fence without checking the ground below, and everybody blames the police like the guys are just innocent victims. That's just retarded.
Hobbit said:So two teenagers were stupid enough to a) run from police b) run into an electrical power substation and c) jump off the fence without checking the ground below, and everybody blames the police like the guys are just innocent victims. That's just retarded.
Gateway Pundit
Observations of the World from the Heart of Jesusland!
Monday, October 31, 2005
"Jacques Chirac Doesn't Care about Black People."
Small Dead Animals explains why it is, but of course, all Jacques Chirac's fault!
VIOLENCE ERUPTS IN FRENCH SUBURB FOR THE 4TH STRAIGHT NIGHT!
VIDEO HERE
A police union spokesman says the Clichy Paris suburb is seeing "Civil War".
A van burns after clashes between French youth and riot police in the Paris suburb of Clichy, Octrober 29, 2005. (Reuters)
Local news outlets are blaming the government policies for the violence this weekend where at least 30 cars were torched and clashes with police sent many individuals to the hospital:
Tough new French anti-crime policies are partly to blame for riots that gripped a Paris suburb at the weekend, after the accidental deaths of two teenagers who thought they were under police chase, the opposition and rights campaigners said.
Described by the main police union as "guerrilla" violence, the three nights of rioting came a week after France's fiery interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, vowed to wage a "war without mercy" on crime in the suburbs of Paris.
Critics say Sarkozy's tough talk is feeding tensions between youths and the police while failing to cut crime in run-down suburbs, high-immigration areas facing chronic poverty, unemployment and a lack of prospects.
Nine people were arrested before dawn Sunday as dozens of youths rampaged through Clichy-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris, for a third night, setting fire to half a dozen cars in angry protest at the boys' deaths.
And last night made the fourth night in a row of violence:
Groups of youths hurled rocks and bottles and set fire to cars in the north-eastern district of Clichy-sous-Bois, which has a large immigrant population.
The rioting began last week after two teenagers believed to be of African origin were electrocuted while fleeing from police.
Six police officers were injured and 11 people were arrested last night.
The two boys, aged 15 and 17, died after getting into an electricity sub-station. They apparently thought they were being chased by officers although authorities have denied this was the case.
BBC says, "French Muslims feel alienated."
Previous Posting on the Clichy Riots:
Death of Immigrants Spark Riots in France
More words of consolation for Jacques:
Mike's Noise explains the Clichy violence.
Little Green Footballs is calling for calm.
The Brussels Journal is aghast!
posted by Gateway Pundit at 10/31/2005 12:32:00 PM
3 in rioting in suburb of Paris get jail terms
The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2005
CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France Three men were sentenced to prison on Monday after police officers clashed with youths in a Paris suburb for a fourth straight night and residents accused the police of throwing a tear-gas grenade at a mosque.
In all, 27 people have been arrested since the violence started Thursday night.
Two 25-year-old men and another aged 27, detained Friday during the worst of the rioting in the northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, received eight-month sentences, including two months' firm imprisonment for throwing projectiles at police officers.
Five other adults were due to appear before a judge north of Paris, and three teenagers were to appear before a children's court judge.
In rioting Sunday night in Clichy-sous-Bois, 8 cars and 16 rubbish bins were set afire. Dozens of other vehicles were incinerated in the preceding rampages.
There were no reports of civilian casualties on Sunday, but six police officers were slightly wounded.
The suburb was calm during the day Monday.
The unrest was triggered when two teenagers, aged 15 and 17, died by electrocution Thursday after they scaled the wall of an electrical relay station and touched a transformer. A friend who was with them said the boys thought they were being chased by the police, but the authorities have denied that was the case.
The clashes have pitted youths - at times several hundred of them - against police officers, leaving a total of 23 officers wounded.
Clichy-sous-Bois has a substantial immigrant population, a large share of public housing and a history of social problems.
The landing of a police tear-gas grenade in the local mosque - close by which "100 to 150 youths were looking for a fight," according to a departmental security spokesman, Jean-Luc Sidot - threatened to worsen the running conflict. Muslims inside the building accused the police of firing the grenade.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed that the grenade was of the type used by riot squads, but he said "that does not mean that it was fired by a police officer.'
Sarkozy promised stepped-up security in restive neighborhoods with riot police to ensure order and intelligence agents to search for troublemakers.
Residents of troubled neighborhoods will get "the security they have a right to," he vowed Monday during a meeting with police officers and fire fighters.
Sarkozy says that violence in French suburbs is a daily fact of life.
Since the start of the year, 9,000 police cars have been stoned and, each night, 20 to 40 cars are torched, Sarkozy said in an interview last week with the newspaper Le Monde.
PARIS, France (Reuters) -- French youths rioted in a Paris suburb for the fifth night running on Tuesday, raising fresh questions about Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's "zero tolerance" policy towards the violence.
Eleven vehicles were burned out and a policeman lightly injured in the latest overnight disturbances in the northeastern Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, where passions were raised a day earlier when a tear gas grenade was fired into a mosque.
The violence began after two teenagers died last Thursday night when they were electrocuted in an electricity sub station while apparently fleeing police.
"It was less serious than the previous nights," said an official at the Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture in Bobigny, which oversees Clichy-sous-Bois.
Twelve people were detained by police during the latest violence in Clichy, which is home to many immigrants and poor families who live in high-rise housing estates notorious for youth violence.
In the nearby neighborhood of Montfermeil, two cars were destroyed and a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a police garage.
Sarkozy visited the area on Monday to defend his tough anti-crime policies and vowed to investigate the tear gas incident at the mosque after contradictory reports of what happened. He also promised to put more police on the streets.
But equal opportunities minister Azouz Begag said a stronger police presence was not the way to tackle the violence.
"It is by fighting the discriminations of which young people are victims that we will re-establish order, the order of equality. Not by bringing out more CRS (riot police)," Begag told the newspaper Liberation in an interview.
Sarkozy, who is employing a "zero tolerance" policy towards violence, launched a new crime offensive this month by ordering specially trained police to tackle 25 problem neighborhoods in cities throughout France.
Sarkozy made his name by cutting crime figures during a first stint as interior minister from 2002 to 2004. He returned to the post in May and has maintained a high profile ahead of an expected presidential bid in 2007.
Opposition Socialists say the disturbances on the Paris outskirts show Sarkozy's tough policies are failing and argue that action is also needed on crime prevention, housing and education. They also say he has neglected the suburbs.
"Unfortunately, Nicolas Sarkozy has contented himself with carrying out security policies for the chic districts, but has forgotten the housing estates," Socialist spokesman Julien Dray told Le Parisien newspaper.
padisha emperor said:...
Anyway, I hope the situation would be more quiet soon.
CRS have arrested some people. We'll see.
13 Arrested In Paris Suburb Riots
PARIS, Nov. 1, 2005(AP) Youths torched cars, set garbage bins alight and threw stones at police in a fifth night of rioting in a Paris suburb, and set two primary school classrooms on fire as rioting spread to two other suburban towns, police and an official said Tuesday.
Police said that 19 people were detained in the late Monday and early Tuesday rioting in Clichy-sous-Bois and three other suburbs and 13 of them jailed. A total of 21 cars two of them police cars were burned, police said.
The mayor of Sevran said youths set two rooms of a primary school on fire, along with several cars. Police said three officers were slightly injured in Sevran.
"These acts have a direct link to the events in Clichy-sous-Bois," Sevran Mayor Stephane Gatignon said in a statement.
The troubles started Thursday night in Clichy-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris, following the accidental electrocution deaths of two teenagers who hid in a power substation to escape police whom they thought were chasing them. Officials have said police were not pursuing the boys, aged 15 and 17, at all.
Suburbs that ring France's big cities suffer soaring unemployment and are home to immigrant communities, often from Muslim North Africa. Disenchantment, and anger, run high.
Besides Clichy-sous-Bois and Sevran, troubles also erupted in Aulnay-sous-bois and Bondy, police said. All communities are in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, considered a "sensitive" area of immigration and modest incomes.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday ordered a permanent increase in police and undercover agents to identify troublemakers in difficult neighborhoods. However, the law-and-order minister's tough talk drew growing criticism Tuesday even from within his own government.
Sarkozy recently referred to troublemakers in the suburbs as "scum" or "riffraff" and in the past vowed to "clean out" the suburbs.
Such "warlike" words won't bring calm, Equal Opportunities Minister Azouz Begag said in an interview published in the daily Liberation newspaper.
He told the paper that he "contests this method of becoming submerged by imprecise, warlike semantics."
While re-establishing order demands firmness, "it is in fighting the discrimination that victimizes youths that order is re-established, the order of equality," said Begag, who was raised in a low-income suburb of Lyon.
The president of SOS-Racism, an anti-racism group, called Tuesday for a "massive investment plan" to cure suburban ills.
"The police response alone ... are not at all adequate to the problem in question," Dominique Sopo said on France-Info radio, calling for a "real policy of breaking the ghettos." The money must go not only to building, but also to caring for the people via local associations, he said.
Sarkozy says violence in the suburbs is a daily fact of life, with dozens of cars torched each night and underground economies of crime.
In incidents apparently unrelated to the riots near Paris, youths set fire to an empty building and trash cans and stoned fire trucks in several nights of unrest in Sedan, northeastern France, authorities there said Tuesday. Officials said the youths were protesting the imprisonment of one of their peers on drug charges and for resisting arrest.
PARIS, France -- French President Jacques Chirac has called for calm and warned of a "dangerous situation" following a sixth night of violence in poor Paris suburbs.
"The law must be applied firmly and in a spirit of dialogue and respect," Chirac told a Cabinet meeting Wednesday. "The absence of dialogue and an escalation of a lack of respect will lead to a dangerous situation."
"Zones without law cannot exist in the republic," Chirac said. His remarks were passed on to reporters by government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope.
The spokesman said Chirac acknowledged the "profound frustrations" of troubled neighborhoods but said violence was not the answer and that efforts must be stepped up to combat it, The Associated Press reported.
The unrest, triggered last week by the deaths of two teenagers, spread Tuesday night to at least nine towns in the suburbs north and northeast of Paris as police clashed with angry youths and dozens of vehicles were set on fire.
One of the worst-hit suburbs was Aulnay-sous-Bois, where 15 cars were torched and police in riot gear fired tear gas and rubber bullets at gangs of angry youths who threw stones at a firehouse and lobbed Molotov cocktails at a town hall annex, AP reported.
In Bondy, 15 cars were burned and four people arrested for throwing stones at police, AP reported officials as saying.
Police maintained a tense calm in Clichy-sous-Bois, where the rioting began last week after two teenagers were accidentally electrocuted and a third was injured while apparently trying to escape from police by hiding in a power substation. Officials have said police were not chasing the boys.
On Tuesday night, the sixth straight night of unrest, some 150 fires were reported in cars, buildings and garbage bins in the suburbs across the Seine-Saint-Denis region on the north and northeast of Paris, France-Info radio said.
The area is home mainly to families of immigrant origin, often from Muslim North Africa, AP said. It is marked by soaring unemployment, delinquency and other urban ills.
Police detained 34 people in the overnight violence, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told Europe-1 radio.
The mounting unrest also was causing strains within France's conservative government.
Sarkozy was criticized by government minister Azouz Begag for calling the protesting youths "scum," and the opposition Socialists have denounced Sarkozy's policies.
But the interior minister defended his approach.
"I speak with real words," Sarkozy told Wednesday's Le Parisien newspaper. "When you fire real bullets at police, you're not a 'youth,' you're a thug."
Sarkozy described the social aid provided to the suburbs over the years as a failure.
"We often accepted the unacceptable," he told Le Parisien. "The reigning order is too often the order of gangs, drugs, traffickers. The neighborhoods are waiting for firmness but also justice" and jobs.
Sarkosy and his political rival, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, both met Tuesday evening with victim's relatives, but the unrest spread even as they met.
The two men are locked in an increasingly tense battle to lead the right in the 2007 presidential election.
Villepin delayed for several hours his planned departure for for a visit to Canada on Wednesday, Reuters reported officials as saying, and French media said President Jacques Chirac was expected to make a statement about the unrest at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Sarkozy canceled a visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan that had been planned for November 6-9, his office announced.
On Monday night, 13 people were jailed after scored of cars were reported burned in Clichy-sous-Bois and two rooms of a primary school were set on fire along with several cars in Sevran, officials said.
On Sunday night, a tear gas grenade landed in the Clichy-sous-Bois mosque, feeding local anger. It was unclear who fired the tear gas.
The Clichy unrest was the latest in a series of incidents in the Paris suburbs.
In June, an 11-year-old boy was killed by a stray bullet in the northern area of La Courneuve. The eastern suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine made headlines in 2002 when a 17-year-old girl was set alight by an 18-year-old boy, Reuters reported.
:ali:
Violence has erupted for a sixth night in the troubled suburbs north-east of Paris with police firing rubber bullets and tear gas as they face down gangs of youths in Aulnay-sous-Bois, according to witnesses.
A store was set afire in the nearby suburb of Bondy, France-Info radio reported.
No trouble was immediately reported in Clichy-sous-Bois, where rioting began last Thursday following the accidental deaths of two teenagers. The latest violence broke out as Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy met in Paris with youths and officials from Clichy-sous-Bois.
An Associated Press Television news team reported confrontations between about 20 police and 40 youths in Aulnay-sous-Bois with police firing tear gas and rubber bullets.
France-Info said that about 100 fires burned in numerous suburbs of the Seine-Saint-Denis region, an area of soaring unemployment, delinquency and other urban ills.
A carpet store in the town of Bondy was set afire, and cars were burning in Bondy and Sevran, France-Info reported.
Tension had mounted after angry young men torched cars, garbage bins and even a primary school in several days of rioting that highlighted the division between France's big cities and their poor satellites where disenchantment thrives.
November 02, 2005
SECOND INTIFADA UPDATE: Tim Blair has more on the riots in Paris.
UPDATE: Some readers write that this should count as the third intifada. Whatever. Meanwhile, reader David Mosier thinks it's more than that:
If the rioting goes on for another couple of nights and spreads to other areas of the country, you've got 1968 all over again. France is ready to explode, as it was in 1968, and the all-night riots are lighting the fuse. Will Chirac be able to prevent an explosion that shakes the whole country? I doubt it. There's too much pent up frustration in France, and not just among young Muslims. They might be the group that kicks off the insurrection, but once it's kicked off, everybody in France with a beef (and that's everybody)will join in. Just like they did in 1968. University students started it with student strikes in Nanterre (note, not in Paris)and it spread from there. Before it was done, almost every organized, or unorganized, group in the country had joined in to bring down deGaulle. It would seem Chirac's time is short. France hasn't had a proper Gallic explosion since 1968; it's long overdue.
Interesting. We'll see.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jerry Davis emails: "I'm figuring the MSM will start reporting on the riots shortly after they find some way to tie it to our presence in Iraq."
Good bet.
posted at 07:58 AM by Glenn Reynolds
Monday, October 31, 2005
War in France, War in Denmark
Lately, the moslem-led riots now running for four days straight in France have been given a great deal of attention, fex from the BBC:
France's Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has promised to step up security after violence flared for a fourth night in a Paris suburb.
Six policemen were hurt and 11 people arrested in the latest clashes with youths in Clichy-sous-Bois, although it was calmer than on previous nights.
Not that well covered is a very similar series of riots, also running for four days, in Århus, Denmark. Nothing of it has penetrated to the english-language sections of Danish media, so the following is my translation of a piece in daily Jyllands-Posten:
Rosenhøj Mall has several nights in a row been the scene of the worst riots in Århus for years. "This area belongs to us", the youths proclaim. Sunday evening saw a new arson attack.
Their words sound like a clear declaration of war on the Danish society. Police must stay out. The area belongs to immigrants.
Four youths sit on the wall in Rosenhøj Mall sunday afternoon, calling themselves spokesmen for the groups, that three nights in a row have ravaged and tried to burn down the restaurant and other stores.
Around the parking lot, cars with youngsters from the immigrant community are swarming, and many are walking around, greeting each others with a sense of victory after the worst riots in Århus in years.
Every night 30-40 youts took part, especially immigrants.
Only two were arrested.
That was a victory.
"We knew, you would be coming. We are spokesmen", said a young man with a black knitted hood on his head, when JP (Jyllands-Posten - Henrik) visited Rosenhøj Mall sunday. He was angry. Very angry. Behind him the pub Hot Shot has scars after the attacks with cobble stones, and the stores along the parking lot besides the small mall have their windows covered with adhesive tape in a spiderweb pattern.
Four hours after the short meeting, Falck (Danish privat emergency service - Henrik) sent a group of fire engines under police escort to the nursery Kjærslund on Søndervangs Allé, right across the street from Rosenhøj Mall.
Gasoline through the window
A window had been shattered at the back of the house, and the fire had been blazing, apparently because of gasoline poured onto the floor, then lit.
Falck stopped on Viby Square, a couple kilometers from the site of the arson attack, waiting for the police to turn up so they could be escorted to the nursery. Two nights earlier, other Falck-employees were threatened, when they were covering up broken shop-windows.
Cobblestones had smashed the shop-windows from one end of the mall to the other. The police wrote in their report saturday night, that the youths had their stones with them in bags, when they came to Rosenhøj.
Cobblestones against bakery.
Saturday morning a 16-year-old somali boy was incarcerated, accused of aggravated assault, as he friday evening threw a cobblestone through a window in the bakery. The stone passed closely by baker Børge Svaløs face. ..
He calls himself 100 percent Palestinian, born in a refugee camp in Lebanon 19 years ago, and now out of work in Denmark.
"The police has to stay away. This is our area. We decide what goes down here".
And then the bit with the drawings of the prophet Muhammed comes around:
We are tired of what we see happening with our prophet. We are tired of Jyllands-Posten. I know it isnt you, but we wont accept what Jyllands-Posten has done to the prophet", he says aggressively, and the others nod approvingly.
Planned for three weeks
To of them are Turks, and it is the first time, that Turks and Palestinians act together, the 19-year-old says.
"We have planned this for three weeks. That is why only two were arrested saturday nigh. The police will cordon off it all. But we know the ways out", he claims, and then disappears, munching on a piece of pizza from Fun Pizza.
The pizzerias windows are also held together by adhesive tape after the attacks with cobblestones.
Of course, it isnt of the size the Paris riots have, but then France is 10 times larger than Denmark, population-wise, and has 25 times more moslems.
Its not just Paris.
Henrik
posted by Henrik at 2:00 PM
AT WAR
A Year of Living Dangerously
Remember Theo van Gogh, and shudder for the future.
BY FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
Wednesday, November 2, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
One year ago today, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh had his throat ritually slit by Mohamed Bouyeri, a Muslim born in Holland who spoke fluent Dutch. This event has totally transformed Dutch politics, leading to stepped-up police controls that have now virtually shut off new immigration there. Together with the July 7 bombings in London (also perpetrated by second generation Muslims who were British citizens), this event should also change dramatically our view of the nature of the threat from radical Islamism.
We have tended to see jihadist terrorism as something produced in dysfunctional parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Middle East, and exported to Western countries. Protecting ourselves is a matter either of walling ourselves off, or, for the Bush administration, going "over there" and trying to fix the problem at its source by promoting democracy.
There is good reason for thinking, however, that a critical source of contemporary radical Islamism lies not in the Middle East, but in Western Europe. In addition to Bouyeri and the London bombers, the March 11 Madrid bombers and ringleaders of the September 11 attacks such as Mohamed Atta were radicalized in Europe. In the Netherlands, where upwards of 6% of the population is Muslim, there is plenty of radicalism despite the fact that Holland is both modern and democratic. And there exists no option for walling the Netherlands off from this problem.
We profoundly misunderstand contemporary Islamist ideology when we see it as an assertion of traditional Muslim values or culture. In a traditional Muslim country, your religious identity is not a matter of choice; you receive it, along with your social status, customs and habits, even your future marriage partner, from your social environment. In such a society there is no confusion as to who you are, since your identity is given to you and sanctioned by all of the society's institutions, from the family to the mosque to the state.
The same is not true for a Muslim who lives as an immigrant in a suburb of Amsterdam or Paris. All of a sudden, your identity is up for grabs; you have seemingly infinite choices in deciding how far you want to try to integrate into the surrounding, non-Muslim society. In his book "Globalized Islam" (2004), the French scholar Olivier Roy argues persuasively that contemporary radicalism is precisely the product of the "deterritorialization" of Islam, which strips Muslim identity of all of the social supports it receives in a traditional Muslim society.
The identity problem is particularly severe for second- and third-generation children of immigrants. They grow up outside the traditional culture of their parents, but unlike most newcomers to the United States, few feel truly accepted by the surrounding society.
Contemporary Europeans downplay national identity in favor of an open, tolerant, "post-national" Europeanness. But the Dutch, Germans, French and others all retain a strong sense of their national identity, and, to differing degrees, it is one that is not accessible to people coming from Turkey, Morocco or Pakistan. Integration is further inhibited by the fact that rigid European labor laws have made low-skill jobs hard to find for recent immigrants or their children. A significant proportion of immigrants are on welfare, meaning that they do not have the dignity of contributing through their labor to the surrounding society. They and their children understand themselves as outsiders.
It is in this context that someone like Osama bin Laden appears, offering young converts a universalistic, pure version of Islam that has been stripped of its local saints, customs and traditions. Radical Islamism tells them exactly who they are--respected members of a global Muslim umma to which they can belong despite their lives in lands of unbelief. Religion is no longer supported, as in a true Muslim society, through conformity to a host of external social customs and observances; rather it is more a question of inward belief. Hence Mr. Roy's comparison of modern Islamism to the Protestant Reformation, which similarly turned religion inward and stripped it of its external rituals and social supports.
If this is in fact an accurate description of an important source of radicalism, several conclusions follow. First, the challenge that Islamism represents is not a strange and unfamiliar one. Rapid transition to modernity has long spawned radicalization; we have seen the exact same forms of alienation among those young people who in earlier generations became anarchists, Bolsheviks, fascists or members of the Bader-Meinhof gang. The ideology changes but the underlying psychology does not.
Further, radical Islamism is as much a product of modernization and globalization as it is a religious phenomenon; it would not be nearly as intense if Muslims could not travel, surf the Web, or become otherwise disconnected from their culture. This means that "fixing" the Middle East by bringing modernization and democracy to countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia will not solve the terrorism problem, but may in the short run make the problem worse. Democracy and modernization in the Muslim world are desirable for their own sake, but we will continue to have a big problem with terrorism in Europe regardless of what happens there.
The real challenge for democracy lies in Europe, where the problem is an internal one of integrating large numbers of angry young Muslims and doing so in a way that does not provoke an even angrier backlash from right-wing populists. Two things need to happen: First, countries like Holland and Britain need to reverse the counterproductive multiculturalist policies that sheltered radicalism, and crack down on extremists. But second, they also need to reformulate their definitions of national identity to be more accepting of people from non-Western backgrounds.
The first has already begun to happen. In recent months, both the Dutch and British have in fact come to an overdue recognition that the old version of multiculturalism they formerly practiced was dangerous and counterproductive. Liberal tolerance was interpreted as respect not for the rights of individuals, but of groups, some of whom were themselves intolerant (by, for example, dictating whom their daughters could befriend or marry). Out of a misplaced sense of respect for other cultures, Muslims minorities were left to regulate their own behavior, an attitude which dovetailed with a traditional European corporatist approaches to social organization. In Holland, where the state supports separate Catholic, Protestant and socialist schools, it was easy enough to add a Muslim "pillar" that quickly turned into a ghetto disconnected from the surrounding society.
New policies to reduce the separateness of the Muslim community, like laws discouraging the importation of brides from the Middle East, have been put in place in the Netherlands. The Dutch and British police have been given new powers to monitor, detain and expel inflammatory clerics. But the much more difficult problem remains of fashioning a national identity that will connect citizens of all religions and ethnicities in a common democratic culture, as the American creed has served to unite new immigrants to the United States.
Since van Gogh's murder, the Dutch have embarked on a vigorous and often impolitic debate on what it means to be Dutch, with some demanding of immigrants not just an ability to speak Dutch, but a detailed knowledge of Dutch history and culture that many Dutch people do not have themselves. But national identity has to be a source of inclusion, not exclusion; nor can it be based, contrary to the assertion of the gay Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn who was assassinated in 2003, on endless tolerance and valuelessness. The Dutch have at least broken through the stifling barrier of political correctness that has prevented most other European countries from even beginning a discussion of the interconnected issues of identity, culture and immigration. But getting the national identity question right is a delicate and elusive task.
Many Europeans assert that the American melting pot cannot be transported to European soil. Identity there remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory. This may be true, but if so, democracy in Europe will be in big trouble in the future as Muslims become an ever larger percentage of the population. And since Europe is today one of the main battlegrounds of the war on terrorism, this reality will matter for the rest of us as well.
Mr. Fukuyama is professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins and chairman of the editorial board of The American Interest.
Is Paris Burning?
Media Madness , Politics - Internationalia
Hatched by Dafydd
Is This the "Third Intifada" -- Or Not?
It fascinates me how little attention the riots in France have received, even from the blogosphere. The paucity of posts points out, as if we needed reminding, how dependent bloggers are upon the very MSM that we decry... media that all too often, as in this case, leave us in the dark about critical aspects of the stories they supposedly "report." Unknown unknowns, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might say.
For example, everyone (including me) seems to think he has the answer to this question: are those riots in Paris an organized uprising by Moslems, a "third intifada," as some have called it? I think most folks would say "Yes," but much of that is just due to bloggish logrolling, a "blogstorm," as Hugh Hewitt calls it. Being a natural skeptic -- I'm even skeptical about skepticism -- I want something more than just handwaving, even when it fits my belief system (or perhaps especially when). Alas, this is precisely the information that the mainstream news seems determined to conceal from us.
(Wretchard of the Belmont Club, I believe, once called for citizen journalism to go along with citizen punditry... a million folks with digital cameras, each person roaming his city, taking photos, and doing original reporting; this would then, I recall, be passed along to blogpapers that would post the news and photos -- and finally blogs, who would analyze it. So far, that intriguing idea has come to nought. Taking myself as representative of many bloggers, I don't have a digital camera; I wouldn't know where to go to snap pictures of news events; I have no "sources" who slip me tips; subjects won't talk to me as readily as they would talk to CBS or the LA Times; I don't have the resources of a news agency to do research (I don't even have a Nexis/Lexis account), and on and on. I don't think the time has yet come. Sorry for the digression.)
Where was I? Oh yes, fumfahing around, trying to find information about the riots without actually hopping on an Airbus to Pahree. Were they sparked by Moslem anger against France? Or did they have nothing to do with the rioters' "origin or religion or faith," as the mayor of Clichy-Sous-Bois, "a neighbourhood of high-rise public housing projects," implies?
Over on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy flatly stated that "Islamofascists" were burning Paris. He noted that they were "confined to ghettos" surrounding Paris, presumably by Parisian laws or zoning rules (which I have heard before), but he did not elaborate. Hugh himself stated that the two kids whose deaths sparked the riots were Moslems; but as with Gaffney's comment, there was no citation for how he would know this.
Power Line had a post about them -- but John had to turn to al-Jazeera for the original story! Reading the al-Jazeera account, you would barely realize that the rioters might possibly be Moslems; apart from the fact that al-Jazeera is interested in them at all (which is itself suggestive), there is only one passing reference:
The area, home mainly to families of immigrant origin, most of them from Muslim North Africa, is marked by soaring unemployment and delinquency.
This tells us who lives in Clichy-sous-Bois but not who is rioting there, nor why, exactly.
Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has linked to stories about the riots a couple of times; the first time to CBS (see below), and the second to Tim Blair's website (called Tim Blair, appropriately enough). Blair, in turn, cited a post on Little Green Footballs, another French/English speaking blogger whose name I don't recognize, and yet another.
He does cite a CBS story; but it's the same story that Glenn linked yesterday. CBS is even more reluctant to discuss the ethnicity and religion of the rioters. Note how this paragraph doesn't even entirely admit to being on topic:
Suburbs that ring France's big cities suffer soaring unemployment and are home to immigrant communities, often from Muslim North Africa. Disenchantment, and anger, run high.
At least al-Jazeera admitted that the particular suburb with the riots was one of those "Muslim North Africa[n]" ones. CBS won't edge itself quite that far out on a limb, being only willing to tell us that some unknown suburbs somewhere near Paris are stuffed full of Moslems from North Africa -- but they won't say which 'burbs or whether they have anything to do with this story. Just thought you'd like to know.
Other than that, all we learn is that the riots began after two teenagers were electrocuted:
The troubles started Thursday night in Clichy-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris, following the accidental electrocution deaths of two teenagers who hid in a power substation to escape police whom they thought were chasing them. Officials have said police were not pursuing the boys, aged 15 and 17, at all.
We are not told anything more about them than their ages... despite the same-day revelation of their first names in another source; we're coming to that.
Reuters took the same tack, dancing around the question in this piece published Monday (via CNN International). We are told in the subhead:
French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy defended his tough crime policies on Monday after a fourth night of riots in a Paris suburb in which tear gas was fired into a mosque.
But any hope for a conceptual breakthrough -- presumably the cops shot tear gas into the mosque because that's where the rioters were congregating -- are dashed in the next paragraph:
Sarkozy, addressing police officers, vowed to find how tear gas had been fired into the Muslim place of worship, an incident which had helped fuel the disturbances....
"I am, of course, available to the imam of the Clichy mosque to let him have all the details in order to understand how and why a tear gas bomb was sent into this mosque," he told about 170 police officers at the prefecture.
Again, we're left unsure whether the fact that one police target was a mosque (or was it a misfire?) has anything to do with the rioting. Reuters then takes away the prize for most misleading statement in any MSM article on this issue:
The violence began four days ago after the deaths of two teenagers, believed to be of African origin, who were electrocuted after clambering into a power sub-station while apparently fleeing police.
Evidently, it was too much trouble (or they ran out of room) to add the word "North" in front of "African," leaving the impression the youths might be from Kenya or the Congo, or perhaps rampaging Boers from Johannesburg.
The New York Times rewrites the Reuters story down even further, to a scant three paragraphs. Again, that same misleadingly truncated "African" rather than "North African," now tidily combined into the same sentence with the mystery term "immigrant population":
The violence began three days ago in Clichy-sous-Bois, which has a large immigrant population, over the deaths of two teenagers, believed to be of African origin, who were electrocuted.
Still on my quest to find out What the Heck Is Going On Here, I turn to the BBC's account -- and snag another tile of the mosaic. The Beeb is even more politically correct, mentioning only that the yutes came from a suburb that "has a large immigrant population" which faces "discrimination against immigrant communities such as theirs." But they finally begin to give the game away by unwisely identifying the first names of the two boys who were electrocuted:
Flowers now lie near the spot where Ziad, aged 17, and Banou, 15, died.
Gateway Pundit actually had the names earlier, on Saturday, October 29th, from the Guardian. He also notes that:
Most of the residents in the rioting suburb are immigrants from Northern Africa.
Since every country in Northern Africa (north of and including the Sahara Desert) is Moslem, this does tend to at least imply a religious identity, especially when coupled with the names, the fact that the cops fired tear gas into a mosque, and that al-Jazeera felt moved enough by their plight to write about them. Of course, there are non-Moslems living in North Africa -- in Sudan, for example -- so I still don't know for certain.
Gateway Pundit links to Reuters video that shows some marchers who could be Moslems; they're being addressed by some guy speaking what sounds like Arabic to me (or else Hebrew, but somehow I doubt that possibility). But we only see a few people, and none of them is rioting. No signs visible in the shots, so I can't even see whether they're in French or Arabic.
At this juncture, I think I have to just throw up my hands in surrender. I have no idea if the rioters are Moslems, whether that's one reason they're rioting, whether it has anything to do with the headscarf law, and what is the significance of the fact, solemnly chronicled by Gateway Pundit, that the neighborhood just opened up their first halal (Moslem-kosher) Burger King.
The sad and simple fact is that when the basic news conveyers -- the mainstream media -- conspire to withhold key facts from the readers, there is often no way of reliably getting that information. As much as we may hate it, the fact is that we are still, several years into the blogger revolution, utterly dependent upon exactly the people we hope to supplant. This is not a good sign.
Say, where's Wretchard? Maybe he should trot out that "citizen journalist" idea again.
PARIS, France (CNN) -- Rioting erupted for an eighth straight night in the impoverished suburbs of Paris, with angry youths setting fire to a school, a bus depot, three warehouses and hundreds of vehicles.
Although officials said the unrest late Thursday and early Friday was less intense than in previous nights, the disturbances spread outside the Paris region for the first time.
Violence was reported in some 20 communities around Paris and across the country, including areas near Rouen in northern France, Dijon in the east and Marseille in the south.
In the Seine-Saint-Denis region to the north and east of the capital, youths fired buckshot at riot police vehicles in Neuilly-sur-Marne, The Associated Press quoted the area's top official, Prefect Jean-Francois Cordet, as saying.
A group of 30 to 40 youths harassed police near a synagogue further east in Stains, Cordet said.
However, police reported seeing fewer large groups of youths rioting, and "contrary to the previous nights, there were fewer direct clashes with the forces of order," AP quoted Cordet as saying.
"The peak is now behind us," Gerard Gaudron, mayor of one of the worst-hit suburbs, Aulnay-sous-Bois, told France-Info radio. He said parents were determined to keep their teenagers at home to prevent unrest.
"People have had enough. People are afraid. It's time for this to stop," AP quoted Gaudron as saying.
Officials said 187 vehicles and five buildings -- including three sprawling warehouses -- were destroyed overnight in Seine-Saint-Denis, located between central Paris and Charles de Gaulle airport.
More than 400 vehicles were destroyed across the entire Paris region, including about two dozen buses at a terminal near Versailles, authorities said.
Police detained 27 people and reported two injuries -- one a policeman and another a handicapped person badly burned during an arson attack on a city bus, Reuters reported.
The latest violence flared despite the presence of about 2,000 additional police officers, and despite hopes that festivities marking the end of Ramadan would calm tensions.
Much of the rioting has occurred in areas heavily populated by poor African Muslim immigrants and their French-born children who are weary of poverty, crime, poor education and unemployment.
The unrest has drawn attention to simmering discontent among much of France's Muslim population -- at an estimated 5 million, Western Europe's largest -- many of whom often complain of job discrimination and police harassment.
While the troubled suburbs of Paris and other French cities are often the scene of unreported car-torchings and other small-scale violence, AP reported, the current unrest is unusual in terms of its duration and the way it has spread.
The rioting began last Thursday after two teenagers of African descent -- Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17 -- were accidentally electrocuted while apparently trying to escape from police by hiding in a power substation in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
Officials have said police were not chasing the boys, and the Interior Ministry has released a preliminary report exonerating officers of any direct role in the deaths, according to AP.
On Friday, the brother of one of the victims called for youths to "calm down and stop ransacking everything."
"This is not how we are going to have our voices heard," Siyakah Traore said on RTL radio, AP reported.
A police union official has proposed establishing a curfew and bringing in the military to help handle the rioting, while some members of the opposition Socialist Party have suggested the police should withdraw from the communities to quell the unrest.
The pressure is on
The violence adds to the pressure on Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who cancelled a trip to Canada this week to tackle the situation and soothe a public row between his ministers over the government's response.
Vowing to restore order, de Villepin on Thursday called a series of emergency meetings with officials throughout the day, including a working lunch with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
"I will not accept organized gangs making the law in some neighborhoods. I will not accept having crime networks and drug trafficking profiting from disorder," Villepin said at the Senate in between emergency meetings.
The situation has sparked a war of words between de Villepin and Sarkozy, his political rival ahead of 2007 presidential elections.
Speaking to parliament Wednesday, de Villepin demanded punishment for lawbreakers but used calmer language than that used by Sarkozy, who has been criticized for calling the protesting youths "scum."
"Let's avoid stigmatizing areas .... let's treat petty crime differently to major crime, let's fight all discrimination with firmness, and avoid confusing a disruptive minority with the vast majority of youngsters who want to integrate into society and succeed," he said.
In some areas, unemployment runs as high as 20 percent -- more than twice the national average, de Villepin told lawmakers.
On Wednesday, President Jacques Chirac called for calm, adding that "the absence of dialogue and an escalation of a lack of respect will lead to a dangerous situation."
"Zones without law cannot exist in the republic," Chirac said.
CNN's Chris Burns and Jim Bittermann contributed to this report
