As the French riots near the two-week point – 13 nights now – there is a debate both as to whether a moderate drop-off in violence Tuesday means it is winding down or just fluctuating, as well as the broader question of what the riots mean socially and religiously for France. The purpose of this post is two-fold. First, I will do a round-up of news and commentary in the European English and French-language medias. Second, under the section subtitled Jihad, Intifada or Mere Degeneracy?, I will examine the broader issue of Islam and the future of France. I conclude that while these riots do not constitute a jihad, and only somewhat resemble an intifada (intifada means “uprising” in Arabic), they are certainly an opening for radical Islamist groups which would like to bring a genuine jihad to France in the decades to come.

(Readers daunted by the length of this post might want to make use of the Print function on my blog. Also, I was going to review the Arab media as well, but am not including that due to time limitations. Suffice it to say that the Arab media has not been kind to France in recent days. But do check out this BBC list of reactions from the Middle East, via Security Watchtower.)

In my initial post on this issue last Friday, I argued that the Islam factor had been overplayed in commentary on the issue because there didn’t seem to be any evidence of a local Osama bin Laden-like figure giving a religious vision to the violence; that is, this was not an orchestrated movement to use violence in order to dislodge the secular state and establish Islamic law in its place. Moreover, local Muslim leaders have consistently called for an end to the riots, and not all of the rioters are Muslim. One could say, however, that Islam plays a role to the extent that Muslim identity might be a hindrance to integration. As I will argue below, the primary implications in the long-term relating to religion are in the opening that the riots are giving to radical Islamic groups whose long-term goals do include the establishment of an Islamic state in Europe.

While there is a question about the degree to which physical repression should be used so as to maintain order while not aggravating the situation, I think that one widely discussed solution, an increased investment in social programs aimed at these areas, can be rejected out of hand. In fact, the French welfare state has been intensely involved in poor neighborhoods for the past two decades, and that is part of the problem. French policy has created a two-tier system in which the productive are guaranteed jobs and extensive benefits, while the unproductive are guaranteed a basic living with social services far greater than what they would receive in most countries. Yet the very nature of the regulatory-welfare system precludes increasing economic productivity in low-income areas.

By any standards the response of the French government has been an unqualified failure. In fact, they seemed to pull off what most might consider an impossibility – the government has managed to come off as both too weak and too repressive at the same time. One the one hand, they prevented Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy from making the firm response early which might have controlled the contagion, while adding fuel to the flames by giving the rioters legitimacy and blaming French society (racism, etc.). On the other hand, the government has now gone to the other extreme and implemented martial law based on a 1955 law designed to allow French authorities to crack down during the war with Algerian nationalists (the Algerian War for Independence was 1952-1960).

A burning furniture warehouse in northern France. (The Guardian)

British Media

Reuters reports on how Violence Wanes as France invokes emergency laws. Fewer towns were hit, but the fact that 617 vehicles were destroyed, and this is considered an improvement, says something. The report notes overwhelming public support for the introduction of emergency laws. See also this Reuters report which discusses the violence Tuesday and which indicates that more than 1,000 cars were torched Monday.

The London Times sets the tone on the new crackdown, Riot Emergency Brings Back Curfew Laws of the Colonial Age, emphasizing the ominous linkage of the suppression of criminal violence by mainly North African youth now to the need to crack down during France’s war to maintain colonial rule in Algeria. Today’s edition carries an article on how France’s predominately ethnic minority professional soccer players are condemning the crackdown, saying that they identify with the rioting youth and feel that the government isn’t addressing “real problems.” The Times’ most poignant article is Social Divide and Unrest: An Epitaph for Chirac’s Presidency. An excerpt:

…The private remarks Ätaking blame for the riotsÅ, reported by President Vike-Freiberga of Latvia, were not only a contrast with M Chirac????????s stern public demand for calm. They also amounted to self-indictment because he said the same in 1995 in a diagnosis of France????????s ethnic malaise that helped him to win the presidency.

National unity, he said then, was menaced by a ???????social fracture???????, in which high unemployment and prejudice were excluding a generation from the mainstream. He promised to remedy ???????these difficulties that threaten to grow into a fracture that is urban, ethnic and even religious???????.

Those words have returned to haunt M Chirac. Even if les jeunes des cit????s put away their petrol cans, November 2005 will serve as an epitaph for M Chirac????????s presidency, like the 1968 student-worker revolt did for Charles de Gaulle. Making the point, Lib????ration said yesterday that the arson rampages ???????show that Chirac????????s reign has been a tragic farce???????…

The BBC likewise pulls no punches, pronouncing France’s City Policy in Tatters and discussing how Violence Exposes France’s Weaknesses.

The Independent becomes more ominous still in an article headlined New Police Powers Raise Specter of Seine Pogrom, a reference to a 1961 incident in which French police killed 300 Algerian protestors, some of them allegedly beaten and then thrown into the river, alive, with the intention of drowning them (and many did drown). The Guardian reports on French Bloggers Held After Paris Riots for allegedly inciting violence. One apparently advocated the assassination of Interior Minister Sarkozy.

Hooded youth in Toulouse burn a bus and then attack police. (The Scotsman)

Der Spiegel (to add a German source, but in English) includes an interview with former street fighter and current Green Party politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit including harsh words for the French government. (This page has other Der Spiegel links, all in English, on riot-related issues.)

To add a comment, Cohn-Bendit’s criticism of French policing does not take into account the fact that traditionally French police have simply abandoned poor areas to crime, and the recent increase in policing under Sarkozy has been a positive step to try and provide some protection to local residents. The event which provided the spark to these riots began when police responded to a break in, so the police call was legitimate.

Clive Davis has several good posts on the riots, especially beginning with France – The Violence Spreads to his most recent post, Latest From France. (via Powerline)

The Brussels Journal naturally has several posts on this, most notably a recent post on The Breakdown of the Extended Order in Belgium, including comments on the general decline of social order in Europe.

French Media
For those who understand spoken French, both France 2 and the French-language Tele Suisse Romande have extensive video coverage of the riots. For the latter, click on the “Actu” link, and then the “Derniers editions en video” on the right side of the page.

(Posts in this section in French, but I have translated the headlines.)
Le Monde describes how The Curfew is Instituted in Several Large Cities. It notes, however, that no curfew is expected in the Paris region, where many of the worst riots have taken place. A separate article reports on how Sarkozy Requests the Expulsion of Foreigners Implicated in Urban Violence.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. (Le Monde)

Today’s Le Monde contained an op-ed, Between Weakness and Irresponsibility, arguing that the problem comes from lack of understanding of others and from the ineffectiveness of French institutions. To me it seems to be saying that France just needs a stronger application of its basic model – multiculturalism and the extension of state power over society. Nevertheless the article does give a certain window into French society for those not familiar with its realities. I’ll translate part of it:

Why can’t we get this together? Why is everything we do not working? The current events do not represent the problem of the suburbs; they are the consequence and the symptom of a generalized weakness of institutions to which it is necessary bring about a remedy.

Two primary reasons for this weakness. The first is that we search for solutions to problems with which we are not familiar. The different cultural milieus of French society are forever closed up against each other: he who does not live in the suburb does not know that which passes in the suburb. Each milieu lives with its own information about the world and I would even say its own propaganda. The only common information is sent out from on high and it is fed off of by ideology, in part by that of security (due to the gangs of delinquents), and also in part by creating victims (due to unemployment)…

The second reason is the weakness of institutions, those which are inadequately formed…

The author then goes on to explain what he thinks is wrong with French institutions. It is the better government/not more government dichotomy. There is some truth to this, but I think it is highly inadequate. The problem is not what the state does not do; the French state already does too much. It would surprise most Americans to realize the low quality of education in France, in both many secondary schools and in the universities. Their pre-university school system is on the whole probably about as good as that of the United States, that is to say, awesome in some places, wretched in others, with lots in between, but their university system does not compare well. It really isn’t very good from what I’ve read (and heard about it from French people). Having more effective institutions is not going to do much good for people who don’t want to identify with French society, and who, if they had better education, would not have jobs anyway because the French economy doesn’t create jobs.

More French media links:
The Belgian newspaper La Libre reports that Arab Countries Attribute the Violence in France to Social Injustice. Although as of right now it has nothing about violence in Belgium itself, Le Nouvel Observatuer does.

Le Nouvel Observatuer has an entire page of links on Violences Urbaines.

Boursorama reports that L’institute nationale de la Statistique et des Etudes Economique has published three dossiers dealing with inequality – the handicapped, public services, and naturalization of immigrants – which indicate that France really is combating inequality:

A l’heure des commentaires sur la “faillite” du syst????me social fran????ais, l’Insee rappelle aussi que “les pr????l????vements directs (imp????ts et cotisations sociales principalement,ndlr) et les prestations sociales r????duisent les in????galit????s initiales de niveau de vie”. Ämy translation belowÅ

At a time of commentaries on the “weakness” of the French social system, l’Insee recalls also that “the direct levies (taxes and social security contributions principally) and the social security benefits reduce the initial inequality in standard of living.

The article goes on to give specific figures, but doesn’t seek to explain why this approach isn’t working.

L’Express contains a list of links on the issue. One article, L’Europe des violences urbaines, reviews the situation in several countries, especially comparing France today to Britain in 1981.

The Francophone blogosphere (I don’t follow French blogs closely, so there isn’t much here, but if you read French this may be enough to get you started):
La Republique des livres quotes past statements about the importance of limiting police power by de Villepin and Sarkozy, with the implication being that they are being hypocritical. Lots of comments.

Netlex writes about “Le departement 93 communique sur les jeunes de 9.3.” “Departement” is the word that France uses for administrative units of the country.

Le Blog de RTL-Aphatie has several posts on the riots and the positions taken by various public figures.

Jihad, Intifada or Mere Degeneracy? A Potential Opening for Radical Islam

The greatest fear of France – and other European countries with significant Muslim populations – would be the rise of an Islamic equivalent to the Basque ETA or Ireland’s IRA – a terrorist organization which is more than a violent fringe, but the military wing of a political movement with significant public support aiming to establish either autonomous zones within the European nation states where Islamic law would prevail, or else aiming for the establishment of independent Islamic states. Yet although some have called this jihad in Europe, this is not jihad. There is as of yet no inspiring religious figure driving a movement to seek formal Muslim autonomy and the establishment of the sharia. Nevertheless, Muslim identity is a factor, and Islamist movements in France are already moving in to fill the void.

One such movement is Tabligh Jamaat, an avowedly non-violent but radical Islamist organization which emphasizes separation from European society and often acts as a recruiting ground for al-Qaeda in Europe and elsewhere. This is what the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) wrote about Tabligh’s role in the current crisis on Monday:

…These groups don’t preach violence, but they do advocate something that is troubling Europe’s secular democracies: that Muslims should identify themselves with their religion rather than as citizens. Effectively, they are promoting a separate society within society and that brand of Islamist philosophy is seeping into many parts of Western Europe. Countries from France and Germany to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands haven’t succeeded in integrating their Muslim minorities — and Islamic organizations have carefully positioned themselves to fill the breach.

The riots “are a blessing for them because it gives them the role of intermediary,” says Gilles Kepel, a scholar who has studied and written extensively about the rise of Islam in France…

As France has failed to integrate these immigrants, Islam has filled the void. In many Paris suburbs, women now wear headscarves. Those who don’t are often harassed. At school, Muslim boys increasingly refuse to mix with girls during sports activities or on field trips. Hospitals are under pressure not to have male and female patients in the same wards. Such disagreements are walling off Muslims from France’s staunchly secular society and creating a ripe environment for radical Islamic groups.

The violence in France is a stark reminder that reaching an accommodation with Islam is one of the Continent’s most pressing problems. Low birth rates and Europe’s geographic position just north of the Muslim world means that increasing numbers of its citizens will be Muslim in the future. Muslims account for an estimated 5% or more of the populations of France, the Netherlands and the U.K., and are heavily concentrated in and around big cities…

While their mediation seems helpful in the short-term, these Islamic organizations end up further alienating Muslim youths from mainstream society because they teach an ideology that is in conflict with France’s secular ideals, says Malek Boutih, a former head of human-rights group SOS Racism. “They recruit, they teach the Quran and they try to orient everything around the mosque,” says Mr. Boutih. “That’s it.”

That is especially true of the Tabligh group here in Clichy. Founded in India in 1927, the Tabligh sends its missionaries to Islam’s troubled frontiers: Central Asia, Africa and Europe. Although it preaches a peaceful brand of Islam, some of its former members have founded terrorist groups and been expelled from countries like Kazakhstan for engaging in radicalism. French intelligence officials say up to 80% of Islamic extremists in France were once Tabligh members and have dubbed the organization the “antechamber of fundamentalism…”

The involvement of Tabligh is ominous. If I could be excused from quoting myself, this is what I wrote in a recent post, After London – The Infrastructure of Terrorism in Pakistan:

…Within Pakistan’s borders exists other threats which have gotten even less attention. One is Tablighi Jamaat, an ostensibly apolitical missionary movement which aims to convert non-Muslims to Islam and mainstream Muslims to militant Islam and which appears to act as a recruiting resource for terrorist organizations around the world. (See Tablighi Jamaat: Jihad’s Stealthy Legions in the Middle East Quarterly.) It maintains political neutrality because it does not recognize existing nation states as legitimate political structures, but functions closely with Wahhabi networks and has influenced such prominent Western converts to radical Islam as John Lindh (“American Taliban”), Richard Reid (the “Shoe Bomber”) and Jose Padilla (the “Dirty Bomber”). Pakistan is also riven with religious division, with its 20% Shia minority facing severe persecution and violence (see Pakistan: Sectarian Monster from the Institute for Counter-Terrorism)…

There is potentially, then, a double-threat: the strengthening of Islamists movements like Tabligh could both give rise to a demand for legal autonomy and the establishment of Islamic law, and a significant increase in the recruiting pool for more militarized organizations like al-Qaeda. Indeed, both of these phenomena already exist in France, Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere, but could become much stronger.

It is important to emphasize in this context, however, that social degeneracy of this sort is widespread in Western societies, especially France and Britain, and is in no sense limited to Muslims. Crime rates for most types of crimes are higher in both countries than they are in the United States (especially non-violent crime, like larceny and car theft). To the extent to which Islam is playing a certain role in these events, it is difficult if not impossible to separate it from the kind of delinquency that the United States saw with the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles or, more recently, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Most Americans who don’t follow affairs in Europe have no idea that the problems existing in American inner cities – rampant violence and indolence – and suburbs – rampant drug use – are widely replicated there.

Whatever the source of the problem or its solution may be, France is failing. This will certainly be a wake-up call for France, and for all of Europe.

Kirk H. Sowell, Arab World Analysis.com