A FEW days ago Georges Bigot, a French firefighter, was standing with colleagues on a street in a suburb of Paris waiting for reinforcements to help put out a fire started by rioters. Suddenly a television fell out of the sky in front of him.
It had been heaved over a balcony eight floors up and shattered on the ground. Have you ever seen a television exploding on the pavement? asked Bigot wearily as he stood under a light drizzle. Well, it gave me quite a shock.
As he spoke, thick clouds of smoke billowed from a textile warehouse set ablaze the previous night by another gang of youths, mainly of north African and black African origin, in this shabby suburb north of the capital. Firefighters who had tried to put it out during the night were pelted with stones.
Were used to stones, grinned Bigot as blaring sirens echoed off the walls of giant concrete tower blocks built in the 1960s and 1970s to house the first immigrants. Household appliances are a bit more dangerous. A falling television or a toaster, it could kill you.
Bigot, 30, was on the front line in an increasingly desperate battle yesterday as the worst street violence seen in France for more than a decade spread from the Paris suburbs to other cities, with 250 people arrested and 900 vehicles torched on Friday night. This was the highest nightly total in a spate of rioting that followed the death 10 days ago of two youths apparently fleeing from the police.
Trouble was reported in Strasbourg, in eastern France, Rennes, Rouen and Lille in the northwest and Nice, Toulouse and Avignon in the south. In the Paris region, two nurseries, one in Yvelines and another in Bretigny-sur-Orge, were set on fire on Friday night along with a school in Seine-et-Marne.
In Meaux, a town east of the capital, youths threw Molotov cocktails at paramedics, whose patient was taken to hospital under police escort.
Last night the rioters returned, setting more than 600 cars on fire across France, and burning down a nursery school in Grigny, south of Paris. Rampaging youths also torched cars in central Paris for the first time since the disturbances began.
In the Normandy town of Evreux, arsonists laid waste to at least 50 vehicles, a shopping centre, a post office and two schools.
The Foreign Office urged British holidaymakers to be extremely vigilant in riot-hit areas. America warned its tourists to keep away from troublespots.
After an emergency cabinet meeting yesterday, Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough-talking interior minister, warned rioters that their actions could cost dear in terms of sentences. But he also promised to tackle the causes of violence, conceding that there were a certain number of injustices in some neighbourhoods.
Frances media and its politicians have portrayed the rioting as a form of protest against poverty, racial discrimination and the desperation felt by immigrant families who live in the cits the grim housing estates erected a generation ago, often near big factories, to accommodate a booming immigrant population.
Attacks against firefighters or ambulance crews trying to save immigrant families from the flames suggested something more perverse than despair, however, and the divided government seemed at a loss over how to deal with the problem.
Without question what is taking place bears all the hallmarks of being co-ordinated, Yves Bot, the Paris public prosecutor, said yesterday. The way things are organised is in response to a strategy, with mobile tactics employed by youths who turn up on scooters, throw a lighted bottle at a vehicle and then leave.
France has often tried to ignore the malaise in what police call sensitive districts or, collectively, the zone, a world far removed from the picturesque French tourist trail of restaurants, wine and historic monuments.
In these underprivileged pockets the burning of cars on a Saturday night is for many young men a popular sport and rite of passage that seldom makes news. According to one recent estimate, about 30 cars are set on fire every Saturday night in suburbs across France.
The sheer scale of last weeks clashes, however, made them difficult to ignore, particularly with the government acknowledging that it might deploy troops to prevent gangs from marauding through the affluent heart of Paris, a chilling prospect for a city that has come to regard its burgeoning immigrant community on the other side of the ring road as the barbarians at the gate.
Aulnay-sous-Bois is only a few miles from the Eiffel tower but last week parts of it resembled Baghdad. The Renault car dealership looked as if it had taken a direct hit from a car bomb. Black, twisted bits of metal were scarcely recognisable as the remains of vehicles waiting to be sold.
Well, thats just great isnt it, said Manuel Pires, 55, a Portuguese immigrant surveying the wreckage. What do they think theyre playing at? Theyve just put all of these garage employees out of work. Talk about shooting yourself in the head.
Pires, a driver who is married with two grown-up children, has some sympathy for Sarkozy, who raised eyebrows last week by referring to the troublemakers as scum that needed to be hosed out of the estates.
The interior minister may have been a bit direct, Pires said, but lets face it, we do need a bit of order around here. None of the other politicians seems prepared to confront reality. The gangs have taken over. It is a question of restoring law and order. Several thousand Aulnay residents, singing the national anthem, took to the streets yesterday demanding just that.
Not everybody agreed with Pires. Arguments from politicians across the spectrum about the root causes of violence have multiplied with the hurling of each firebomb.
Frances Muslim population has swollen in recent years to an estimated 6m 10% of the total population. That percentage could easily double in the next 20 years and compares with about 1.5m or less than 3% in Britain.
The ugly, often poorly maintained, blocks of public housing in which many live are a testament to 40 years of government policy that concentrated immigrants and their families in well-defined districts, often in the vicinity of big factories that attracted the first generation of grateful immigrant workers.
Today these districts on the outskirts of Paris and other cities have become hotbeds of joblessness and crime a parallel society with its own laws in spite of the lip service that government officials continually pay to the notion of integration. Women are often forced to wear veils. In one district a municipal swimming pool was persuaded to offer a period of women only bathing each day to satisfy a fundamentalist imam.
Police, meanwhile, were told to tread softly. They seldom set foot in the quartiers chauds, or hot districts, until Sarkozy arrived on the scene. He introduced the zero tolerance policing that was famed for taming the badlands of America: police began stopping and searching youths on the streets and conducting raids in the housing estates.
They are sometimes frisked up to 10 times a day, said Dounia Bouzar, an expert on French-born Muslims. Given the way these kids live, I wonder why it (the rioting) doesnt happen more often.
Michel Lereste, a social worker, said that resentment felt by many young immigrants had been crystallised by the deaths 10 days ago of two youths electrocuted in a power station where they had hidden after wrongly thinking they were being chased by police.
The ringleaders are well known to police from previous clashes and many have served jail sentences. Others appeared to join in for fun, snapping photographs of burning cars with mobile phones in between throwing stones.
In Le Blanc Mesnil, a Paris district, last week Hassan, a 15-year-old schoolboy, claimed his cit was involved in an intifada against French authorities a reference to the Palestinian uprising against Israel in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The violence wont stop until Sarkozy resigns, he said.
That seemed unlikely and in the end Sarkozy may suffer less from the riots than Dominique de Villepin, the prime minister and his chief rival in the race to succeed Jacques Chirac as president in 2007.
Sarkozys tough language against the rioters will at least win him support on the right, while de Villepin did not help his cause by losing his temper with MPs who were critical of his handling of the affair.
As pressure mounted on the government, de Villepin, who was forced to cancel a trip to Canada, met a group of 15 young people from the Paris suburbs on Friday night to discuss ways of restoring calm.
There were concerns, according to some analysts, that the biggest beneficiaries of the latest explosion could be extreme right-wing politicians such as Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of the National Front party, who wants to put an end to the Islamisation of France.
Despite his blunt rhetoric, Sarkozy does not come anywhere near that. He has adopted a subtle two-pronged approach a kind of Gallic tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime that has wrong-footed his critics. Besides advocating a crackdown he is also proposing affirmative action to help young people.
They probably need it. Jean-Franois Amadieu, a university professor who has studied discrimination, sought to demonstrate it by sending out fake applications for jobs. He found applicants with addresses in difficult areas received half as many invitations to an interview as those from more salubrious districts.
Some, nevertheless, have made it. Jamel Debbouze, a comic actor famous for his cracks about life on the estates, has become one of Frances best-paid entertainers; Faiza Gune, a 19-year-old from an Algerian family, has embarked upon a lucrative literary career with a debut novel whose heroine was described as a Bridget Jones teenager of the suburbs.
Too often, however, the fame of women from the estates is built on tales of horrific abuse. Samira Bellil, another young woman of Algerian origin, has written a book about being subjected to repeated gang rapes, a sickeningly common crime. On one occasion she was dragged off a crowded train by a gang of youths who wanted to rape her. Nobody lifted a finger to help.
Terrible things are happening here, said Mohammed Bouheiri, an elderly vegetable seller chatting with friends on a street corner. The government must not neglect us.
Man. This is the eleventh straight night of riots. 1,300 cars were torched on the tenth night alone. 12 police officers were wounded by a Muslim rioter wielding a shotgun. And yet from what I've heard, the police aren't allowed to fire back.
And apparently, an 'intifada' has also started in Denmark as well.
This is not going to be pretty.
Infantadas in places were Muslims are subjected to blatant prejuduce and have been for decades?
It's not called a holy war when people uprise against injustice.
Besides, I'm afraid this isn't really surprising. Every single time in the past 1400 years that Islam has been allowed to become a substantial minority of around 10% in a country; they start a jihad to make the land Islamic. The only way to stop them is to forcefully push back and restrict their expansion (like what Europe did in the past and what Israel and India are currently doing with their Muslim citizens). An unfortunate truth.
And, with 6,000,000 Muslims, Islam represents a solid 10% of France's total population.
I thought Jihad was holy war, not Infantada. o.o
Anyway. The French police won't fire back? How typical. They're just gonna whine to the U.N. Or us. They won't save they're own country. >> <<
Okay, seriously: They're rioters. Dangerous ones. I can't believe the police aren't doing anything. More civilians are dying because of fires than would be killed in the crossfire!
This is sad. A classic example of the inability of the French government to do ANYTHING except eat cheese and curse our government for taking action.
Every single time in the past 1400 years that Islam has been allowed to become a substantial minority of around 10% in a country; they start a jihad to make the land Islamic
As a historian, I know for a fact that is completely untrue. While people are encouraged to convert, they have allowed Jews, Mithrians, Zoroastrians Christians and most other religionists to retain their religion with little or no repercussuibs. Unless you can back up that narrow-minded statement of every conversion being forced, then don't make such blanket statements. I've been studying Islamic history and Islamic culture; can you say the same?
It's only within the past 200 years, with Wahabbism and European colonialism, that some Muslims have taken up that kind of hatebased philosophy. But most Muslims do NOT agree with forced conversion. Even Muhammad, that evil prophet person? He said that God discourages it.
only way to stop them is to forcefully push back and restrict their expansion (like what Europe did in the past and what Israel and India are currently doing with their Muslim citizens).
Yes, because discriminating against Muslims more is the way to go - let's expand on the reason the populace is rioting in the first place, because that solves problems. Muslims cannot express their own rleigion in France or Denmark already without severe repercussions, tghey cannot get work because of their religion, they cannot live outside of slums because French and Denmark nationalists will not serve Muslims and have not for almost four decades.
Yes, let's perpetuate that cycle, shall we?
Doesn't it say in the Qur'an to convert people to Islam by force?
Quote:
Yes, because discriminating against Muslims more is the way to go - let's expand on the reason the populace is rioting in the first place, because that solves problems.
The riots initially started because of two boys who were accidentally electrocuted because they thought the police were pursuing them (which the police denied they were doing).
And also, another small question; isn't Islam the prime religion in the Middle East (with the notable exception of Israel)? If so, then ask yourself: are things much better there from a realistic standpoint? Sure, they may be able to practice their religion, but is the standard of living that good to begin with?
As far as I know, "intifada" is where Muslims fight regardless of the circumstances. It's like a kid throwing a stone at a tank.
"Jihad" is the holy war. Though I don't see how a war could be holy, just like the crusades over a millenium ago, where crusaderss went around killing, killing, killing... and killing. In the name of God, too (which was NONSENSE! Violence has never been advocated, especially by Jesus!).
As for the conversion to Islam, I heard from my late grandfather that they (in general) forcibly convert people to Islam. *shrugs* oo
The riots initially started because of two boys who were accidentally electrocuted because they thought the police were pursuing them (which the police denied they were doing).
Yes, because the police would NEVER discriminate against a minority and lie about it....what was that? Rodney who? What's his face who was permanently disabled by the NYPD?
And also, another small question; isn't Islam the prime religion in the Middle East (with the notable exception of Israel)? If so, then ask yourself: are things much better there from a realistic standpoint? Sure, they may be able to practice their religion, but is the standard of living that good to begin with?
It was actually far better before we (yes, we) started messing around in there. Right now, it's only bad because our actions in the past (and by us, I mean France, Britain, the US, Russia) with their policy has allowed disgruntled radicals to take power over there - mainly because our actions have screwed up their economies.
By trying to initiate policies that are only beneficial to us, and allowing puppet governments (such as the Shahs in Iran) to take over and cater to our needs without regard to the needs of those countries (like, oh, assassinating a popular president, which we did in Congo, Iran, Iraq...), we've really screweed the poodle with some people over there. Think about it - why did we revolt against the British? Because we felt we were being oppressed. So, don't you think Muslims have the same right to overthrow an oppressive regime (such as the Shahs or the Egyptian government of the 1940's) as we did with the British? Or is it merely because we are Christians that we have that right, and we are imposing a double standard on Muslims countries who don't agree with us?
What about Mubarak in `Egypt - by all acounts, he's oppressive, he doesn't allow free elections anddrastically curbs free press, but Muslims can't overthrow him because the US supports Mubarak. That, in essence, is an oppressve condition on the Muslims that we ourselves are supporting. In other words - we helped to create it, so we're the ones keeping the Muslims down in Egypt. Aren't they allowed to do what we did 230 years ago? Or it that they deserve to stay in that regime because we allowed it to happen and heaven forbid Muslims get ANY popular government?
Before you accuse me of sympathizing with radical regimes, no, I don't approve of what came after the Iranian Revolution, nor do I approve of the Taliban, or of the Saudis (a `repressive regime that the US supports!) or any of these other chowderhead regimes that like to support the death of every other nation in the world that doesn't fit their tunnel vision.
But look into history and understand in the noneteenth and twentieth centuries, we helped create - we didn't solely make, but we helped - that radical beast we're now fighting - just like in France. We are reaping what we sowed many years ago. We created the Middle East as it is today. Irael is they way is is because we almost solely created that, but we had a hand almost everywhere else as well.
So think about that before you spout more anti-Muslim rhetoric.
As for the conversion to Islam, I heard from my late grandfather that they (in general) forcibly convert people to Islam. *shrugs* oo
Again, forcible conversions are forbidden. No, I take that back - only pagans who were not people of the Book could be forcibly converted (and by that Muhammad meant the bedouins in Arabia, because...he was one?), and no one else, because it was a sin.
Oh, also - about that rioter who said he was fighting an intifada:
In Le Blanc Mesnil, a Paris district, last week Hassan, a 15-year-old schoolboy, claimed his cit was involved in an intifada against French authorities
Because 15 year old schoolboys are thw authorities of Islam, right?
Ahh. I stand corrected. Thanks, Cooki. It's been five years or so since he told me that. ^^
And yes, sadly, it is the actions of the Westerners (and Russia, of course) that have brought the Middle East to where it is now.
*sighs* Why is the human race full of idiots? I give up.
Quote:
Saudis (a `repressive regime that the US supports!)
Quote:
That, in essence, is an oppressve condition on the Muslims that we ourselves are supporting.
You think I like it any more than you?
Either way, in terms of the riotings, I can only say it's going to be worse before it gets better.
Well, that's my concern. 😉
If I may explain you one or two things in order to comprehend the situation.
1) In France we use to debate problems not from an ethnic but social point of view. We don't see the young suburbians as Arabs or Muslims but as poors and desherited. But there's indeed an ethnic, racist problem. Your chances to get a job decrease terribly when your first name is not Paul or Mathieu but Karim or Ahmed. We difficultly try to fight against this job discrimination.
The French concepts of laicism and equality forbid to collect any datas about the ethnic origin or the religion. Whether you are catholic, jew, muslim, white, black or arab, you're supposed to be nothing other than a CITIZEN OF THE REPUBLIC. Utopic, of course. But France is really turned to the past.
2) There are very little references to religion. The "Allah Achbar" are marginal. Our worry should rather be that the authorities delegate the public order to the religious (imams) more and more. It's an admission of defeat on the part of the Republic.
3) The great majority of the young French muslims don't know ANYTHING to what is really Islam, holy war, Intifada... They only research a model. The Republic failed to integrate them to the society. They want to look like some heroes. Who can be sometimes the Palestinians... Or Tony Montana (Scarface is a cult film in French suburbs). But they know nothing about politics. They just want an identity, they want to be recognized as French citizens though we consider them, since 30 years, as semi-French or "trangers" in their own country. It's a long story in fact...
4) Those suburbs where they live were built in the 70's. High-rise estates. Closed. "Une barre d'immeuble pour tout horizon." No work. No entertainment (cinemas, swimming pools, libraries...). No culture but the TV (you know what it means: reality shows and bad sitcoms). The schools exist but the means are lacking. Nothing to do, nothing to dream, nothing to be. After 20 years living like that, you would got out of your nerves... And it's regular since the 80's.
5) There's a French tradition: hating the police. Disrespect the law. The French are a libertarian people. They expect not to be told what they have the right to do or not. Oh, it's not anarchy. Just cheating. "Guignol" is representative of this spirit: you'll understand if you can see that puppet show.
Quote:
Anyway. The French police won't fire back? How typical. They're just gonna whine to the U.N. Or us. They won't save they're own country. >> <<
Pay more attention to the news. They aren't whining to anyone. However, they rather solve things diplomatically than by just storming the place with troops. There is more than one way to stop things. ;p
Quote:
Okay, seriously: They're rioters. Dangerous ones. I can't believe the police aren't doing anything. More civilians are dying because of fires than would be killed in the crossfire!
I've only heard of one death in the riots so far.
This situation has gone on quite long enough, it is clear that France was not prepared to deal with insurection like this.
Thank goodness the US is, all the local, county, state, and federal organizations that can respond to a situation like this. That an seventy million gun owning citizens who will defend themselves and their property given the need.
Jimro
No. It's just that one more time, France is in late on the USA.
We have our riots 40 years after them. 
Quote:
Doesn't it say in the Qur'an to convert people to Islam by force?
No. No it doesn't.
(Pats copy)
