While some prefer to compare the “riots in France” with the “civil rights” movements of the 60s in the United States, others see them as the evidence of the failure of the French social policy. In addition, the participation of non-Arabs and non-Muslims, who actually were not many, was for some leaders the proof that such events did not have a religious dimension and had nothing to do with extremism.
Making a comparison between the previously mentioned movement and the events in French neighborhoods is a provocation for us. The conditions in these neighborhoods and those of some cities in the United States, like New Orleans, are almost identical, particularly after Katrina, which revealed the discrimination that characterizes the Bush administration. This hurricane can bring about a revolution in the South of the country where the blacks are oppressed, just like the Arabs and the Muslims in the French slums. The hurricane is also a warning addressed to the American rulers who must pay more attention to marginalized populations.
The magnitude of the riots, the burning of cars and public places all over France is evidence of how complex the situation is. For some scholars, the French social policy must be questioned. Therefore, before judging or prejudging the rioters, such policy must be re-examined to define its advantages and disadvantages. Governmental policies in France continue to multiply the internal contradictions that lead to such events.
The mess and destruction caused by the riots in France not only damaged cars and private or public property, but the reputation and popularity of the political leaders. Even when riots were over, the problems had not been solved for several security measures had to be implemented, among them, the “curfew”. What is worse, the leaders did not try to understand the real causes of such a situation. During the last three decades, certainly, capitalism, which became stronger thanks to the economic development attained by the industrial countries, France among them, brought about social differences between the ‘have’ and the ‘have nots’. Such differences can provoke the emergence of other social movements in the world.

That night, when Orianna Fallaci received the Ann Taylor award, she did not hesitate when repeating the truth with a clear and strong voice: “We believe we live in democracy, but the fact is we live in weak regimes led by despotism and fear.” Western leaders are paralyzed by fear, they are afraid to denounce the disastrous aspect of the Islamic sharia that jihad supporters want to impose upon the rest of the world. In their minds, the fear of getting upset with Muslims is bigger than the fear of national or civilizational suicide. Since September 11, all Europe has been suffering from a new McCarthyism and the grand inquisitors of the Left chase and keep others quiet. And these intellectuals are seriously damaging Western unity, will and cultural identity.
Islamic terrorism is not the main weapon used by the followers of Allah in their war against us. It is nothing but a cruel aspect of this war. It is not the most destructive or catastrophic one either. In the long term, Muslims’ uncontrolled immigration is more dangerous for Europe. More than 25 million Muslims have invaded Europe (illegals are not included). This figure will be doubled by year 2016 and, as Bernard Lewis rightly predicted, this massive flow will create, undoubtedly, a Muslim Europe between the present and year 2100.
This immigration has not been accompanied by a voluntary integration or assimilation of the Muslims. The other immigrants have melted themselves into the European civilization. But Muslims have not. They do not even learn our language; they just follow the customs and the rules of sharia. They don’t want to learn European values; on the contrary, they want to impose their own customs and ways of living upon us. They don’t want to integrate, they want us to integrate into them. The army of the prophet needs warriors no longer. It already has the immigrants that were truly welcomed by the troops of the deviant multiculturalists. Europeans are the future comanches, cherokees, and Sioux: “We will be taken to reservations” explains Fallaci. In fact, some Muslim leaders in Europe, confident of their supremacy, consider non-Muslim Europeans as “indigenous peoples” or “aborigines».
How to react to this situation? Establishing a dialogue with Muslim leaders? Trying to reinforce moderate Islam. Fallaci opposed these two options. Muslims are not willing to give anything to anybody. There’s no moderate Islam. It’s an invention of our multiculturalist, politically obliging and weak elites. A moderate Muslim is someone who does not cut our necks. It’s a person that dresses like a Westerner but does not make Western values his own.
There’s no good or bad Islam. Just Islam. And Islam is the Koran. And the Koran is the Mein Kampf of such movement. The Koran demands the annihilation or the submission of others, it demands the establishment of a dictatorship and not a democracy. You just have to read it to see that all crimes committed by Allah’s followers against themselves and us are written there. The future of our civilization depends on our understanding of this and our resistance to it.

The terrible Hitlerian problem is brought about again by Muslim immigrants [1], that the French Minister of Interior describes as the “rabble” and which commit acts of violence in the outskirts of Paris.
However, Jacques Chirac criticized his Minister of Interior before criticizing the rioters. The French media, for their part, excuse them by talking about the poverty and the unemployment Muslims suffer. But the truth is that if they don’t have jobs it is because they don’t meet the requirements to get them. It’s an ignoramus population that is only good at committing crimes, that does not speak French properly, refuses to integrate into the French culture and believes that being a Muslim is more important than being French. Most of rioters are second or third generation immigrants whose parents and grandparents entered France illegally. The simplest thing would be sending them back to Africa but they boast about having French citizenship.
In view of their fertility rate, Muslims could represent 30% of the French population in 20 years. In many slums of French cities, Muslims are already the majority among those under 30 years old. The arrogant French culture is suffering a self-genocide nobody reacts to and, in demographic terms, it’s being Islamized.
Perhaps Nicolas Sarkozy can defeat the rioters, become the President of the Republic, tell Muslims that France is a European and Christian country and that if they don’t like this, they can return to live in a Muslim country. Maybe, but I don’t think so. However, I do wish “Sarko”, as his admirers call him, good luck.

The urban violence suffered by our great populations reveals the faults of our social model. In view of such events, our first priority is to restore the authority of the State to face unjustifiable acts. But we must not forget that such events have taken place in areas where massive unemployment, immigrant conditions, school failures and nonexistent social progress are quite common. Despite excessive social expenditure, our outlying zones are in crisis. And those who manage to get out due to an incredible tenacity meet with prejudice and racism. With no chance at all of integrating themselves into society, the neighbourhoods isolate themselves. _Since this problem must be solved, I am in favour of a French-style positive discrimination. Contrary to rumours, I am not in favour of comunitariansm or ethnic quotas. That is not the French tradition. Likewise, the absurd idea that states that positive discrimination would eliminate all efforts should be ignored. The Council of State presented positive discrimination as a group of policies aimed at making more for those who have less: subsidized jobs, measures to favour the male-female parity, and organization of the country.
The country’s intention of helping is not enough today. We need people to do it, to help those who work hard. Some companies are already giving their support by eliminating obstacles to social progress. However, if we want the private sector to participate in this task, the public sector and the State, in particular, must be real models. The conditions to let those who deserve it to get out of such situation must be created. Why not make more of the best boarding schools, increase the salaries of the teachers who work in the tough neighbourhoods, reserving seats in the preparatory lessons of the big schools for the best students of the Priority Education Zones (ZEP)? Increasing lodging assistance is also possible to allow those who wish it to get out of the dangerous urban zones. In addition, we could develop a system of scholarships for the best students or state that the access to public services’ jobs should be based on professional activity and not on diplomas. Besides, we could make a special selection process for the inhabitants of the dangerous urban zones.
All these measures could bring about a change.

To see riots reduced to their social level is what is wanted in France. That is, to see a revolt of the young people of the outlying zones against the situation in which they live, against the discrimination they suffer and against unemployment. However, the problem is that most of the young people are blacks or Arabs and they identify themselves with Islam. The rest of the immigrants do not make riots. Therefore, as has been shown, this is an ethnic-religious rebellion that has been developing for a long time. We have already witnessed the whistles against the French team in the football match between France and Algeria. It was that “black-blanc-beur [young Arab born in France, the son of immigrants. Translator’s note]” team everybody talked about. At present, it’s a black-black-black team everybody laughs at all over Europe. However, in France we have no right to discuss this. It’s funny to see a team made up almost exclusively of blacks representing France and used as a symbol of a multiethnic society. This has not prevented the young people from booing this team at the Stade de France and booing La Marseilles. Attention must be paid to the hate expressed in the lyrics of the rappers. These revolts show the hate toward the West.
The targets are France and its Judeo-Christian tradition. However, it’s difficult to talk openly about this in France. Those who commit these acts are the blacks and the Arabs that use Islam to transmit their identity. Up to now, we have only seen anti-republican programs. We have not suffered attacks like those in Israel. But, as in Israel, those sent in are youngsters for they can not be arrested. A part of the Arab-Muslim world is at war against the West. The Republic is the French version of Europe. Consequently, it’s a target.
In the United States we have witnessed an Islamization of the blacks accompanied by an increase in anti-Semitism. The main supporter of this theology in France is Dieudonné. He is the real promoter of anti-Semitism, even more than the National Front. It’s gaining ground, concessions are made in education because it’s no longer said that the colonial project was also aimed at civilizing savages. They only talk about exploitation. What Dieudonné wants is to put slavery and colonialism at the same level of the Shoah. I think life will be impossible for Jews when Francophobia triumphs in France. Nevertheless, there are some who don’t show their faces and excuse the rioters.
My family was sent to Auschwitz by France. We’d have a reason to hate it. At least, more than the Africans who have only received support from France. However, I was not taught to hate and today the blacks’ hate is stronger than the Arabs’ hate. And such hate is going to intensify the discrimination against these populations. The only way to fight this is counting on a firm and strict education. This is having common sense but you cannot say this in France because the generous notion of war against racism is transformed into a false ideology. Antiracism will be for the XXI century what communism was for the XX century. Jews are attacked today by using an antiracist discourse.
In view of these acts of violence, the government attitude is proper and that of the police is prudent and moderate. Unfortunately, the showbiz presents the bad guys as the good ones. It’s said that the republican model has collapsed. But the multicultural level is not doing better either. The republican model has problems due to the decrease in the educational level. What we see today is, in fact, the failure of the “nice” post-republican model.
Young people argue that they are not considered to be “French” but it’s them who should, first of all, see themselves as French. If they have a French ID , they are French, and if they don’t have it, they have the right to leave. If they think their economic situation is difficult, nobody will stop them. And this is the beginning of the whole lie: if they were the victims of exclusion and poverty, they’d go to another place. Those who commit such acts of violence are the ones who don’t want to integrate into society.

The history of French colonization is a major challenge since currently France is being judged on its colonizing and enslaving actions in the past. In any case, it is what a movement like the Indigenous of the Republic did. The judgment regarding colonization is a factor to discriminate ethnic origins and build hostile communities to the Republic based on a colonial past that would explain the existing inequalities among French citizens. In this context, debates about the balance of colonization are difficult, and Article 4 of the law dated 23 February 2005, which provides that teachers shall teach positive aspects of colonization, triggered protests.
For my part, I am against any imposition of a “correct history” by the political power that later takes the historian before a judge. It is true that the history of colonization has often been exaggerated, sweetened, but at the same time, the French historical and geographical school, in real terms, was a colonial history and geography, above any other suspicion. It is not the same for politicians who find it difficult to remember ambiguous positions of their parties during the colonial period.
Taking into account this major event in French contemporary history, colonization should not be dealt with in simplistic terms, let alone when colonized people still have the wounds of the colonial period; that is also the case of the French from the metropolis, I especially think of the French in Algeria. I am not trying to come up with any equivalence nor comparison, but trying to bear everything in mind for the historical approach: the jail of Poulo Condor in Indochina and Pasteur Institute of Saigon; the forced labor imposed by the colonist and prohibition of slavery; the destruction of indigenous culture and opening of French secular or missionary schools worldwide; lower status accorded to indigenous and promotion of the best (Senghor is its model). The crimes committed by colonists must be revealed including also the violent responses by the colonized people.
However, we have not commented anything about the sin of anachronism. Indeed, the history of colonization is full of blood and cruelty, but there are not “saintly or pure nations”, and it does not appear to me, once independence was achieved, that new nations resulting from colonization have ever come through with a peaceful history. History is violence and the only way to try to control it is, in the first place, to write it respecting the facts, all the facts. Camus was able to understand this.

Nicolas Sarkozy created the commission to formulate proposals in order to “touch up” the law of 1905 about the separation of the Church and State. Actually, despite his reassuring words, the Minister of the Interior wanted to question the spirit of this law, the article 2: “The Republic does not recognize, or pays, or subsidizes any cult”. Why? To support the construction of mosques in order to eliminate foreign influences on Islam in France? To fight against the “basement” phenomenon that houses terrorism? Noble intention, but wrong problem.
The problem is not building a mosque in France with the money of a Saudi sponsor but the modern or fundamentalist orientation of such a place for cults. It is not because a mosque had been built with foreign capital that the Imam would become an adversary of laicism, neither because a mosque is built with French capital and the Imam would not be a fundamentalist. At least, it is clear that the State has to get involved in the interpretations of the Koran that are defended in those places. Nicolas Sarkozy is careful about that, but this red line is the one that the Minister of the Interior is planning to cross to satisfy the different religious communities, from the Vatican, the UOIF to the scientologists.
Let’s be realistic about this; the risk is real. The idea of opening a gap in the secular French model attracts the right and left wing. The idea of negotiating social peace with Islamic preachers in populated neighborhoods with the risk of delegating the social link to religion rather than to the State in detriment of the secular people who live in such neighborhoods tempts the local representatives of the liberal right wing and those of a certain left wing. In England, in the name of such “pragmatism”, the Labor left wing is looking towards the “Muslim vote” that negotiates social and political peace with community representatives of the Muslim Brothers. Especially after the London attacks, like the latest decision of Blair’s government, appointing Tariq Ramadan among the wise people that advise the British government on fighting “Islamic extremism”. Is that a British joke? Some representatives of that council are already questioning the Holocaust Memorial Day. Precisely in France we will go to that indecent barter of less terrorism with more fundamentalism and towards this competition among communities if the law of 1905 is “touched up”.

Whether on the right or left wing of the political scenario, we are in the presence of the emergence of a discourse of variable geometrics depending on the countries where certain French intellectuals express themselves, but whose objective is still to spread fear of Islam and Muslims. The strategy is to take advantage of every good opportunity to feed suspicion of Muslims. Don’t the uprisings in neighborhoods have anything to do with Islam in France? Never mind! We can always take advantage of it abroad: that was what Finkielkraut, Fourest, Lévy and Fox News network did in the United States, entitling on the lower part of all the images from France, “Muslim riots”.
The procedure is dishonest and dangerous, but the least that could be said is that it works successfully worldwide. Apart from old political divisions, every country has a number of analysts and commentators, from the left and right wing, who are always willing to establish a link between security policies, immigration, social crisis and the danger of Islamism and radicalization. Concepts are vague, remarks are approximate, but the impact is real. In the West, ingredients are being disseminated which are the basis of the theory of the “clash of civilizations”. Maintaining an obsessive debate about Islam and “Muslim communities” that are presented as “non-integratable”, an Islamism with vague and indefinite outlines but the source of all dangers, an immigration conceived as a major invader associated to a simplistic and exclusive discourse about “our-civilization-that-has-to-be-protected” offers a legitimacy to more alarming discourses.
If we look closer, it is evident that those who have spread such theories come from political backgrounds sometimes opposed and with different agendas, but common interests as to the fact of expanding uncontrollably that “new enemy” which is the figure of the “Muslim-who-cannot-be-trusted”. Some, globally, have taken advantage of this clash of civilizations to justify the crazy ideas of spending on armaments and conflicts; others are fearful of the voices of the new Western Muslims that might be heard a great deal denouncing their dictatorships, support for the Palestinian cause and criticism against Israeli policy; others, still believe in a monolithic Islam that is dangerous for the West and its culture, laicism, human rights and women; others also project in statistics about populations and migrations, the fear to a silent colonization; and finally some who predict God’s death, men and women who knee settling down in their cities...
The discourse of rejecting the other one, that was the heritage of right wing parties, has been normalized in the West. We are facing a new racism whose arguments and legitimacy are to be destroyed; we will have to face it with the weapons of rationality and law; it should be imperative to stand up to it in the name of common universal values and shared citizenship. All of them will have to admit self-criticism (including the Muslims); we have to denounce the powers and privileges; to reveal the double-standards that, in the name of a deceitful defense of the great European ideals, undermine the foundations of the Europe that respects rights, dignity and pluralism.