French reap what they sow
I'm not a good graphic manipulator and never bothered to follow Linux Format's GIMP course, but if I were, there would be a graphic on the right showing a French flag with the stripes burning, and a fist (mine) with a thumb pointing upwards. Rioting is always ugly but people don't riot just for fun. Last month, the Asians in Birmingham learned that they could not treat people with flat-out contempt and get away with it forever. This time, it's the turn of the French to learn a similar lesson. (More on this at Pickled Politics, Dictator Princess, Samizdata, Opinionated Voice.)
You see, over here we've been hearing that the French like to call London "Londonistan" because of the number of Algerian extremists who supposedly made London home, yet when it came down to rounding people up after 9/11, it was only actually a few dozen people. The French, apparently, get tough on people who don't adopt the French lifestyle, deporting anyone who states plain Islamic positions on certain aspects of gender relations and those who have two wives, rather than a wife and a "bit on the side" like some of their politicians including a recent President.
I find it really difficult to feel sorry when a country which considers schoolgirls in headscarves a threat to its integrity is getting torn apart. Of course, this isn't what's causing the riots. What caused it is a common factor in riots: police brutality and harrassment:
Across the road from the market, 57-year-old Boubaker acknowledges that delinquency is a problem.
He often chides small groups of youths hanging around outside his flat. He agrees the police have a job to do, but says that often they are too aggressive and pick on the wrong targets.
His 19-year-old son is regularly stopped when out with friends – especially if they are black – by police who demand to see their ID.
"Each time he goes out he has to prove who he is," says Boubaker, "even right outside his own front door."
(Is there any better argument against bringing the wretched idea of compulsory ID cards in here in the UK?)
The same local has more to say about police treatment of local Arab and Berber youths:
It's the way they stop and search people, kneeing them between the legs as they put them up against the wall. They get students mixed up with the worst offenders, yet these young people have done nothing wrong.
There's also the matter of systematic employment discrimination, which of course was cited as a major factor in the 2002 riots in northern England. In France, more than a quarter of university graduates of North African origin are unemployed; blacks and Arabs have barely any profile in public life, with not a single non-white mainland French MP and no black or Arab TV presenters. And this in a country whose population of immigrant descent is vastly higher than the UK's, which does manage to find room for them in the major political parties and in the media.
Reading the comments on the BBC's riot comments page, the same two themes come up time and time again: the rejection of multiculturalism, the concentration of the Arab poor in out-of-town slums, the racism. Why should anyone be surprised that out-of-town slums are causes of trouble given their reputation (Borehamwood, New Addington) in this country where they are few and relatively small? Comparisons with the US, Canada and the UK is generally unfavourable. This comment came from someone in Philadelphia:
One half of my family lives in France, and it's common when I go there for them (not just the family) to make "comments" about immigrant Muslims and jokes about Jews. Each time they look for a smile or laugh, I reply "We're Americans. Your jokes are not funny to us." French society is long beyond repair and the proverbial fan in spinning up; preparing itself for the hit. I liked France much better when I couldn't understand what they were saying.
(You also get a few ill-informed comments about the two youths whose deaths sparked the riots, who were supposedly running from the police although police dispute this. "Serves them right" is a common theme. Another moron, called "coruja" at Pickled Politics, suggests that "in the future when European countries âinviteâ cheap labour/citizens of their former colonies over they should insist these people be sterilised first". What a jerk.
Frankly, my only regret is that the violence is the work of irreligious delinquents and isn't the resistance of Muslims to the harrassment of their people. The main reason girls can't wear headscarves in French schools is not just the racism and post-Algeria rancour of the French population and the presence of anti-religious Marxists among their teachers, but the fact that the mainstream religious Muslims are weak, as indeed they are in their home country; nobody can say of Pakistani girls here that isolationist, kafir-bashing Salafi jihadis are breathing down their necks. (Which is why I've got no time for anyone who dismisses Pakistanis as grave-worshipping bumpkins.)
Really, the French reap what they sow. I hope their rivers and crops remain dry and their cities and forests burn until they get a clue or perish.
