"Jihad in Europe?" by Robert Spencer"
Has an intifada begun in France — an all-out jihad? Are the French facing what is by now, as the riots are well into their second week and have engulfed virtually the entire country, a full-scale insurrection from immigrant youth who simply resent being marginalized and shunted to the fringes of French society? Or does the unrest have something to do with the agenda of jihadists worldwide? As is becoming increasingly well known, Osama bin Laden and others all over the world want to unify the Islamic world under a restored caliphate, reestablish the rule of Islamic law, and extend the hegemony of that law, Sharia, to the rest of the world also. Does that play any role in the French riots? Evidence so far is somewhat sketchy. Mainstream media reports have centered on the rioters’ economic and cultural marginalization. “Theirs,” laments AP, “is a drab life of days spent smoking hashish, hanging out on street corners.” An 18-year-old named Ahmed complains: “You wear these clothes, with this color skin and you’re automatically a target for police.” Some analysts, indulging in various degrees of schadenfreude, have alleged that France’s ingrained racism, snobbery toward outsiders, and mistreatment of Muslim immigrants are responsible for the riots.
Yet the horror stories detailing this mistreatment that are now filling the news do not entirely ring true. France has not neglected its sizable Muslim minority. Not too long ago it established an official organization to oversee French Islam, the French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM), and has even discussed revising France’s secular laws to allow the government to fund mosques in France, in order to wean them away from “extremist” foreign influences. Nor have Muslims been marginalized in French public life. Dalil Boubakeur, leader of the CFCM and imam of the Paris mosque, enjoys high visibility. After the French government announced plans to expel jihadist imams from France in May 2004, then-Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin told Boubakeur that he wanted to “reassure the Muslim community” of “his willingness to treat it as he treats other faiths.” Boubakeur explained that as far as Raffarin was concerned, “there is no lumping together of the expulsion of imams and the Muslim community in general.” When two French journalists were kidnapped in Iraq in August 2004, then-Interior Minister (and current Prime Minister) Dominique de Villepin went to Boubakeur’s mosque to join Muslims in prayer for their release — and drew applause when he spoke of the unity between non-Muslims and Muslims in France.
De Villepin’s mosque visit was emblematic of France’s ongoing efforts to make its Muslim population feel included, loved, and French — efforts they are now being universally excoriated for not having made. And there are several indications that the riots are not wholly or solely about economic and social marginalization at all, and that the Islamic jihad agenda is a significant element fueling their continuing spread. Note EU-Digest: terrorists could not be so stupid as to have the whole of Europe turn against them by instigating turmoil. Maybe other forces are at work here, which seek to create a similar popular paranoia against terrorism in Europe as they have created in America.
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