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
