Liberal policies have been harmful in France.
The French have done this to themselves, but not in the way people suspect. The French government have not turned their Muslim population into a permanent underclass. Despite the colossal level of bigotry in the French hierarchy, Muslims have done this to themselves through their unwillingness to assimilate into their surroundings. On the surface, Muslims have not been marginalized in French public life...
After the French government announced plans to expel jihadist imams from France last year, the anouncement was made by Jean-Pierre Raffarin that "there is no lumping together of the expulsion of imams and the Muslim community in general."
Not too long before this, France established an official organization to oversee French Islam, the French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM), and had even discussed revising France’s age old secular laws of seperation between church and state to allow the government to fund mosques in France, in order to wean them away from "extremist" foreign influences.
When two French journalists were kidnapped in Iraq in August 2004, Dominique de Villepin went to a mosque to join Muslims in prayer for their release — and drew applause when he spoke of the unity between non-Muslims and Muslims in France.
France has made ongoing efforts to make its Muslim population feel included, loved, and French — efforts they are now being universally excoriated for not having made. The French are guilty of the same thing they are always guilty of - failure to recognize the growing threat and making every appeasing liberal attempt to make it go away. Just like in so many corners of the world where a multiple number of Islamists live, they are blaming some one else for their civilization's failures. Instead of rolling up their sleeves and prospering like people from every religion have done, they choose to blame a scapegoat.
Most of the rioters from last year and from this year are the French-born children of immigrants from Arab and African countries. A large percentage are Muslim. Their parents' generation was invited to France as laborers who were expected to return home but didn't. The new generation is coming of age in the midst of France's worst economic slump in years and during a time when many in the country, which is culturally Christian but officially secular, are increasingly fearful of the growth of Islam inside its borders. At present, the country has an estimated 6 million Muslims, most of African descent. The fear of losing France's traditional white European identity fueled French voters' rejection of the proposed European Union constitution last summer and has heightened French opposition to admitting Muslim Turkey into the E.U. (Of course, there are other factors in play).
In France's defense (ouch..that hurt), they are victims of a civilization's failures just like the entire western world. This is the sort of thing that I have talked about when speaking of the fundamental spread of Islam. One only has to pull out a map. We allowed the government's of the Middle East to abuse and oppress their people just as long as the oil flowed. Islamic extremism has been the desperate development. In France, they are dealing with their own version of this. Of course, the mainstream media and French government has yet to admit that what is occurring is the beginnings of what it will eventually turn into even though all of the signs are obvious.
Some interesting signs...
1) It has long been established that there is a significant jihadist presence among French Muslims. Recently six Muslims in Paris were arrested for recruiting for the jihad in Iraq.
2) The rioters have been heard shouting the jihad battle cry, "Allahu akbar" and have avoided Muslim-owned businesses, preferring obviously non-Muslim targets.
3) French Jewish synagogues and Christian churches have been targetted.
4) Mouloud Dahmani is a Muslim leader in France who has tried on at least two occassions to prevail upon the French to allow for a group of Muslim Brotherhood sheikhs to negotiate an end to the riots. The Muslim Brotherhood, of course, is the first modern Islamic jihad organization and the direct forefather of Hamas and Al-Qaeda.
Jacques Chirac and de Villepin are especially sore because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community. That illusion has now been shattered — and the Chirac administration, already passing through a deepening political crisis, appears to be clueless about how to cope with what the Parisian daily France Soir has called a "ticking time bomb." It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture," but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.
Where have we seen this before? Look at that map, identify where Islamists are lashing out through violence and take your pick. It won't be long before the rest of the world stops appeasing and coddling and starts identifying the true issues behind Islamic extremism and the vast size of it's adherents. Maybe after enough of France has burned and the explosions begin, even the French will acknowledge that America had the right idea the whole time regarding a democratic and necessary social change in the Middle East where Muslims have been mostly "victimized" by the prosperities of the west. You can't fight terrorism without addressing it's roots.
"Social Inequality & Class Radicalism in France & Britain" by Duncan Gallie
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=72731&d=5&m=11&y=2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union
Islam in France -
http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=514
Mouloud Dahmani -
http://posseincitatus.typepad.com/posse_incitatus/2005/11/crescent_of_fir.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1516006/posts
