The Revolution in France
Last fall, when hundreds of cars were torched in suburban housing estate communities in Paris and across France, it was clear that the perpetrators were very largely Arab immigrants to France from former French colonies in North Africa. In addition to the property damage and vandalism, there was violence against people, with the police often being targeted. Yet at the time, the French political establishment and the French media elite were united in proclaiming that all of the mayhem had nothing to do with the vandals’ religion. These unfortunates, they said, were angry because they hadn’t been successfully integrated into French society.
That much was true. The question is, why not? Is it possible they didn’t want to be?
The answer has been given in a new wave of rioting that has broken out in France and spread to more than three hundred cities. French police leaders have openly called it an “intifadeh,” have requested armored cars and water cannon, and report that 2,500 of their officers have been injured this year alone putting down the—well—insurrection. This time, the Islamic component of the rioting is much clearer, with rioters shouting, “Allahu akbar!” and avoiding torching the cars or businesses of fellow-Muslims. The rioters clearly do not want to be integrated into France at all.
In an article in the New York Sun entitled “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” a title deliberately harking back to the famous eighteenth-century work by Edmund Burke, Daniel Pipes, a veteran observer of Islamic radicalism, notes that the violence in France is quite explicitly defined as a religious war by many of the young rioters. He also points out that Islamic violent protests have also recently broken out in England and Denmark, with Danish Muslims shouting at police, “This land belongs to us,” and French rioters proclaiming that they are living in “occupied” territory. Pipes is dubious that the French will acknowledge what they are facing. The French political and cultural elite for more than two hundred years has been so averse to paying attention to religion that it will surely interpret the riots as yet another category of social dysfunction. Yep, nothing to do with religion.
It is ironic that France, perhaps Europe’s most determinedly secular nation, has the largest percentage of Muslim immigrants—about 10 percent of the total population—many of whom, it seems, are intent on overthrowing French rule altogether and replacing it with the religious law of Islam. With a French presidential election looming ahead in 2007, interpretations of the rioting are likely to play a major role in upcoming political debates. Meanwhile, in neighboring Britain there are signs of a reaction setting in to the growing domestic Islamic militance. The country’s Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has said that Muslim women visiting physicians should not be veiled. He had good reason to say so: one of the suspects in the London plane-bombing plot briefly escaped custody posing as a veiled Muslim woman.
Eventually, Europe will wake up from its welfare-induced slumber and acknowledge that it faces not just social dysfunction but a serious challenge to its entire legacy of civilization, reason, and tolerance. May it wake up soon.
Dr. Aikman is a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum and writer in residence at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia. His website is www.davidaikman.com.
4 Responses (comments are closed) • Provocations, Faiths and Worldviews, Society, Sat 21 Oct 2006
We should worry about taking on a specific religion instead of the “religious leaders” who stridently stoke prejudice and violence. I am not prepared to blame religion, I am prepared to blame and to do so actively those who use religion to pursue their power game or their distorted views often resulting from their own twisted personalities. God needs intermediaries, but just as we separate bad and good among all service providers we need to also actively screen those who provide “religious services”. Everybody who claims to be a person of God isn’t.
At the same time countries need to assure the benefits of universal education to all immigrants as in the final analysis their ability to assimilate and prosper will depend on how well this is done and to the extent it is done well there will be much less prejudice.
on 2006 10 23
There are two large issues that come to mind when reflecting on Dr. Aikman’s essay.
First, the broken state of immigration in Western societies. There was a time when immigrants were expected to assimilate into the cultures that adopted them. America was a great “melting pot” where every person brought their own history, yet became decidedly American. In large cities there were pockets of ethnicity, but immigrants learned the language of their new nation, as well as the customs (such as the national anthem) and values (such as the concept of the rule of law). You’d be hard pressed to find a majority of high school graduates today who could recite the Pledge of Allegiance, let alone provide a general timeline of events in American history.
We have our own immigration issues, yet, the comparison to France is an important one. Both nations have allowed liberalism to an extent such that no person should be expected to adhere to tenets that they choose not to. I have counted a half dozen times in the last month where I have called a business and the phone system required pressing 1 for English before beginning. Although this may be considered simply good community outreach, it may just as easily be considered a lack of American nationalism. This hypersensitivity or political correctness is absurd when applied specifically to issues of citizenship and immigration/assimilation.
The second issue is something Dr. Aikman hints at in closing: Western societies need to wake up. The question is, what will it take? In France, it appears that there is an ongoing insurrection against the government. What will their reaction be? In the United States, our immigration crisis is more subtle, yet we run the risk of bankrupting our government if immigration continues unchecked and at the same pace of growth in our societal entitlements. What will it take before the sleeping finally awake?
Are Western societies so comfortable—so unfocused on Liberty and their own survival—that it will require a tragedy or an emergency to shake us from our softness?
Kudos to Dr. Aikman on a thought-provoking piece.
Best Regards,
Michael Tams
I have to wonder if the endurance of racism among the French has to do with their enduring secularism and the mantras of the Revolution that so disturbed my Dutch Reformed brothers. Match the underlying unwillingness to identify with the French state because of their allegiance to the Islamic manifest destiny, with the bitter distaste so many indigenous Europeans have for Arabs, especially Muslims, there is fuel for the fire. Europeans have seen the overarching guiding vision of God’s love for all people as anachronistic or childish, so they can persist in ghettoization and the radical Muslims have their expectations satisfied.
Birmingham, Alabama
on 2006 11 05
Has anyone considered the underlying economics of these rioters’ lives? Their parents came to France legally to work in manufacturng during a short economic boom, and they have been collecting unemployment benefits ever since. These young people began by protesting that they could not find good jobs, which is entirely likely, given the way that the social, educational, and economic systems of France are interwoven. These are riots of people who do not have economic hope. I have seen nothing reported about the Paris riots that has no precedent in the “race riots” of America.
Sometimes, it is just about the money. These are French-born children of legal immigrants who want equal access to educational and economic opportunities. Neither the reasons nor the actions are particularly Arabic or Muslim.