One French youth out of four or three may be Muslim today, and even one out of two in some cities.Five years ago, the Second Intifada was raging, and the French Establishment – that is, the bulk of the political leadership and most of the media, Right or Left – was, against all evidence, putting the blame on Israel. Then, when anti-Jewish violence spread over the country, largely because of the way things in the Middle East were reported on TV, including public TV (remember the Mohamed al-Dura story ?), the Establishment ignored it. Sure enough, the French finally revised their stand, both on Israel (at least, in part) and on antisemitism. Still, denial has a cost.
The French unwillingness to acknowledge the truth regarding Israel or the Jews was linked to a more global uneasiness about the implications of demographic changes in France proper. Like most Western countries, France is being transmogrified by large scale immigration from non-Western countries. Like most European countries, it is chiefly dealing with Muslim immigration, essentially from the Maghreb but also from subsaharian Black Africa, Turkey and Pakistan (a difference, here, with the United States, where most immigrants come rather from Christian Latin America, Christian or Christianizing Asia, or Hindu/Sikh India). And Muslim immigrants are not just immigrating, i. e. coming in order to fully integrate within a rich and powerful French nation. They are in many cases attempting to superimpose their own religion and civilization over the native one.
Back in the early 1980’s, it was the then quite influential French Communist Party who, oddly enough, was the first to raise Muslim immigration as a political issue. The whole matter was then taken up and made utterly unpalatable by the Far Right agitator Jean-Marie Le Pen, with the machiavellian support of socialist president François Mitterrand, who saw it as a ploy to divide the classic Right. Thanks to Le Pen, who relished and still relishes in Vichy regime inuendoes of all sorts, talking about Muslim immigration grew into a major taboo. Questioning the ways and means of Islam at large and the fact that contemporary Islam was politics as much as religion was made politically uncorrect and would lead perpetrators to political, civic or academic exclusion. All in all, the French went schizoid. They knew they were doomed and acted as if everything was OK. They banned religion-related or ethnic-related statistics by law and thus made as if the demographic revolution was not taking place (the government data say there are some 3.5 million foreign residents of all stripes in France, whereas the actual figures for the largely Muslim foreigners, naturalized foreigners and children of foreigners are closer to 10 million). They tolerated more Muslim immigration – even if immigration as such is deemed to be severely restricted – and condoned a steady radicalization of the Muslim religious institutions. They either ignored or underestimated the scope of such natural alllies as the secular or democracy-minded immigrants of Muslim origin, especially the Berber-speaking Kabyles. And above all, everything that could remind them of their sad fate – from Israel’s self-defence to America’s brave stand after 9/11 – was met with hysterical hatred.
Even prime minister Dominique de Villepin now admits, in the wake of the riots and urban warfare that have rocked most French cities for two weeks, that this is " the moment of truth ", and more pointedly that the " French model " on immigration is at stake. The logic of events is unescapable. First, we had Nicolas Sarkozy, the minister of the Interior, attempting to restore law in order in some Muslim neighborhoods in suburban Paris, not so much out of principle, but rather as a response to grave crimes exposed in the media. Then we had insurrection, more often than not under the Islamic war cry (Allahu Akbar) : cars being torched by thousands, local facilities like commercial arcades, schools, tramways or metro stations arsoned, non-Muslim holy places (synagogues again but also, in growing numbers, churches) attacked, non-Muslim individuals beaten to death, Molotov cocktails and firearms used. The local powers that be, mafia type thugs and Islamist brotherhoods and networks, didn’t want the French police back into their enclaves. Then we had parts of the Muslim Maghrebine and Black African community and certainly most of its youth identifying with the warriors, either in word or deed. An eery prospect indeed, since the Muslim community is much younger than the nation at large, and the share of Muslims is accordingly broader among the youngest population brackets than among the global population. One French youth out of four or three may be Muslim today, and even one out of two in some cities, whereas the figures for the global population are just one out of six.
The government was rather slow to act upon this. What may have prompted its final reaction, which culminated last Tuesday with the imposition of the state of emergency on twenty-five countries out of ninety-five, was the emergence of vigilantes groups. Militias are against the grain of the arch-Statist and hypercentralized French political culture. If and when they appear, it means the State is desintegrating and the entire political class has to go. There was no other option but to take the rioters challenge seriously, at long last. It is very significant that the opposition Socialist Party supports the Villepin-Sarkozy cabinet in these matters, at the insistance of local officials.
And then what ? The government is currently insisting for both public order and " justice ". Which means that it is attempting to assuage or bribe some of the Muslim extremists with public money and possibly more recognition for the eminent role of Islam in public life. Obviously not what is needed in the long run. Nor what the average French citizen will allow. Another factor to be taken in account is the global European response. The French Intifada (as many call it now) is the third bad experience over just one year, after the murder of Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands, and the ensuing riots, and the 7/7 bombings in Britain.
(c) Michel Gurfinkiel, 2005