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REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Les Misérables
France's Muslim underclass goes to the barricades.
Sunday, November 6, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
Every night for more than a week, the suburbs of Paris have been a showcase of Europe's failure to integrate its immigrants. Most of the rioting youths were born in France to African parents and speak French. Yet these second- and third-generation immigrants feel little attachment to France, much less a bright future there, and herein lies the problem.
Home to Europe's largest Muslim community--nearly one-tenth of its 60 million people--France is the main testing ground of the Continent's ability to bring this rapidly growing minority into the fold. Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Spain are struggling with similar challenges. Not coincidentally, all these countries have experienced or exported Islamic terrorism in the past four years.
French governments historically preferred to ignore the problem festering out in the banlieues of the country's large cities. The initial response to the current rioting, sparked a week ago Thursday by the death of two local teens, betrayed little sense of urgency. As with most public issues in France today, the troubles became the latest excuse to posture with the 2007 presidential elections in mind.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister who harbors dreams of moving into the Elysée Palace, called the rioters "scum" and "thugs." His chief rival and boss, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, stayed quiet for the first five days of the crisis, along with President Jacques Chirac, also a Sarkozy foe. That left the Interior Minister exposed to political attacks for his un-P.C. talk, and alone to shoulder blame for the escalating violence.
This petty politicking might have continued were the real fighting northeast of Paris not growing worse by the day. The trouble started when two adolescents from Clichy-sous-Bois were electrocuted to death while hiding from the police in a power substation. (The police deny chasing them.) By Tuesday night, the clashes had spread to more than two dozen towns near Paris. Police and firefighters have been fired at. By Friday morning cars were burned as far away as Marseille.
With the situation threatening to get out of control, Mr. de Villepin at last got off his hands. Vowing to restore order, he dispatched heavy reinforcements to previously "no go" areas overrun by drug dealers, gangs and Islamic extremists. Most French voters share Mr. Sarkozy's brutally honest diagnosis of the law-enforcement problem there, not least--as in America's once blighted inner cities--the silent, non-violent majority who live in the tough Paris suburbs and whose cars and shops are going up in flames. In sheer numbers, France is Western Europe's most policed country. Yet all the years of malign neglect out in the Arab-dominated projects will be hard to undo overnight. France is bracing for worse.
However badly needed, policing alone won't solve Europe's integration problem, and here Mr. Sarkozy stands out for another reason: He has dared to propose solutions for the long haul. In particular, he leads efforts to bring alive a "French Islam," in contrast to an Islam that today is separate from and adversarial to France. A new Muslim council was founded two years ago to give the community a political voice--or, more cynically, co-opt it. The French state is pushing Muslim leaders to train clerics locally rather than rely on foreign imams with limited language skills and often open contempt for France and its ways.
Discrimination is a problem. No French Muslim or black African has risen on the country's political or business ladder. Mr. Sarkozy's support for "positive discrimination"--affirmative action to American ears--has at least forced a national debate on expanding opportunities for France's Arab and African minorities. In another unusual move--partly intended, no doubt, to gain votes--Mr. Sarkozy recently proposed extending the franchise to immigrants who have lived in France for more than a decade. The country's old assimilation model, which turned generations of Armenians and Poles into "Frenchmen" while forcing them to shed their native culture, doesn't work as well with Muslims.
Alas, the obvious, probably easiest, solution is taboo. Absent a major overhaul, Europe's welfare state continues to make it difficult for low-skill, low-wage laborers to find work. In a system like France's that protects the people already in jobs and keeps unemployment stuck at 10% (nearly triple that for the young), it's little wonder that the banlieues are burning. No better way exists to make someone feel part of a society than to give him a job in it.
The U.S. experience shows that all immigrants, regardless of race or creed, ultimately respond to the same incentives to embrace their new home. The Muslims of Europe are unlikely to be different.
