Undetemined situation
Reader comment on item: Explaining the French Intifada

Submitted by Jean (France), Dec 12, 2005 at 17:52

I'm writing from Paris, I'm French and my appreciation would be as follows.
Apart from islam, the causes of the French riots are basically :
- unreasonnable immigration since the 60's ;
- unemployment, since people get integrated through work ;
- lack of will to adopt the French (or Werstern) way of life on the part of immigrants ;
- demography : many youths means trouble.

All these factors tend to aggravate one another. Islam also plays its part, but not usually in a really religious or ideological sense, but more as a culture. Male domination is critical here. Women from North African origin sometimes succeed very well provided they manage to escape from their community, but that is made difficult by the rigidity of French society. That rigidity is not cultural but social, and is due to socialism. For instance, a successful schoolboy in a bad area cannot move to a better school in another area because of the "scholar map", a system designed to reduce social inequalities but only succeeded in reinforcing them. This is one example among hundreds. So these youths are influenced by islamic way of life even though not all of them are Muslims.

I believe that the French intifada hasn't started yet because these riots lack a real political organization, or even a political agenda, however simplistic. There is not much of it. The rioters don't like the cops, but there isn't much more to it.

Of course, islamisme exists in France and is spreading. There are converts, and islamists preachers target all sorts of institutions, among which the prisons. It is extremely likely that the current social disaster will be exploited at some point, probably in a near future, by better organised people, maybe the islamists themselves but more probably people just a bit more reasonnable that hard-core islamists, just consistent enough to be able to mobilize some rioters, push them towards more violence and finally get some of them killed, so they can have their martyrs and get their revolution going. All that can happen someday, probably during this decace, but that will take a bit of thinking and some smart people. At least smarter than today's islamists, who are completely stupid.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but comments are rejected if scurrilous, off-topic, vulgar, ad hominem, or otherwise viewed as inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the Guidelines for Comments. For informational purposes, we identify countries from which comments are sent.