by nomo » Mon Nov 07, 2005 8:26 pm
From Der Spiegel, via Salon:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/07/paris_burning/print.html">www.salon.com/news/featur...print.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Generation jihad?<br><br>The chaos in France is the latest flash point for a profound crisis of<br>integration facing Europe.<br><br>By Der Spiegel staff<br><br>Nov. 07, 2005 | Mayor Claude Dilain sits on the edge of his chair in<br>his community's wedding-banquet hall. His hands are folded on the<br>table in front of him, and his face is a tortured reflection of the<br>doubts and fears inside him.<br><br>For the past 10 years, Dilain, 57, has been the mayor of<br>Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb in northeastern Paris with 28,100<br>inhabitants, mostly immigrants. Dilain calls it "a powder keg." He<br>slightly resembles French author Michel Houellebecq, but today he is<br>paler than even the author normally is. The strain of the last few<br>nights is no doubt part of it. But so too is a growing suspicion that<br>the modern welfare state may be fully incapable of addressing some of<br>his community's most pressing problems.<br><br>Dilain is a socialist and the vice president of the French Convention<br>of Municipal Authorities. He has been a proactive mayor, setting up<br>free soccer training for local youth, appointing youth leaders as<br>mediators and making sure that the community's waste collection<br>service functions properly. Clichy-sous-Bois is an amalgam of schools,<br>day-care centers, welfare offices, parks and a college that looks like<br>something out of an architecture competition. The community library is<br>currently sponsoring a writing contest themed "I come from afar, I<br>like my country."<br><br>By any measure, Dilain has done everything right. But these days he is<br>filled with an ominous sense that doing things right may not be good<br>enough. What good is education without enough jobs?<br><br>Television news programs portray Clichy essentially as a<br>Ramallah-sous-Bois, a place where young people in sneakers and hooded<br>sweatshirts are trying their hand at revolution. They depict riot<br>police armed with rubber bullets and tear gas patrolling streets lined<br>with burning vehicles and garbage cans. A spokesman for the police<br>officers' union is calling for the government to bring in the<br>military. And all this against the backdrop of concrete walls covered<br>in brightly painted murals, the work of local children in a program<br>sponsored by the mayor's office.<br><br>Clichy-sous-Bois serves as evidence that the French route of soft<br>integration has failed miserably. And when French Interior Minister<br>Nicolas Sarkozy, who has ambitions of becoming France's president,<br>called the youth gangs "scum" and "riffraff" who must be dealt with<br>severely, he only added fuel to the fire.<br><br>The French capital has an intifada unfolding on its doorstep. For 11<br>nights running, garbage containers and vehicles have been burning in<br>Departement Seine-Saint-Denis. Night after night, gangs of teenagers<br>storm through their neighborhoods, throwing Molotov cocktails into<br>carpet shops and nursery schools, turning vehicles into bonfires --<br>250 in one night, then 315 the next night, and 500 the next.<br><br>On Oct. 27, two local teenagers died in circumstances that have yet to<br>be clarified. They had reportedly been running from the police --<br>although officials have since denied this was the case -- and ended up<br>in an alley at the end of which was an electricity substation. The<br>warning sign Mayor Dilain had had affixed to the building's entrance<br>-- featuring comic book characters for the area's youth -- was no<br>deterrent to 15-year-old Banou from Mali and his 17-year-old Tunisian<br>friend, Ziad. They were electrocuted to death. A third boy survived<br>but was seriously injured.<br><br>A rumor that the police had driven the two boys to their deaths<br>quickly began to spread. There have been street riots every night<br>since, and the French government is in a state of crisis.<br><br>The authorities have had trouble catching these urban guerrillas. The<br>number of arrests -- 230 by last Friday, with even fewer convictions<br>-- has been small compared with the scope of the violence and<br>destruction. On Sunday night, fully 190 people were taken into custody<br>by French police after they were fired on by demonstrators in Grigny<br>just south of Paris.<br><br>French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de<br>Villepin remained silent on the matter for five days, creating the<br>impression that they were passively looking on as the violence<br>threatened to vaporize Sarkozy's political ambitions. But then they<br>recognized that the dramatic events in Clichy-sous-Bois could in fact<br>pose a grave danger for the entire republic.<br><br>President Chirac was urged to speak directly to the French public in a<br>televised address, which he finally did on Sunday evening. "Law and<br>order must have the last word," insisted de Villepin. Sarkozy canceled<br>all foreign trips, as did de Villepin. There is now the growing sense<br>that integration à la française -- which has transformed newcomers<br>into citizens since the French Revolution -- has failed.<br><br>The rioters are the children of immigrants from North Africa and<br>sub-Saharan Africa. Schools have been on holiday in France, giving<br>these youths even more time on their hands. It's also the end of the<br>Ramadan fasting period, a time when nerves are already on edge. The<br>rebellion is directed against anything that even remotely reminds the<br>rioters of state authority -- even the mailman. They are beyond<br>reason, and no one, not their parents, not their teachers and least of<br>all the authorities, can get through to them.<br><br>Social divisions in France today run along ethnic and religious lines,<br>signifying deep cultural rifts. The ideal of the French republic --<br>the nation as a community of the willing, of citizens who enjoy equal<br>rights, regardless of their ethnic origins or religious beliefs -- is<br>giving way to a volatile coexistence among communities that want to<br>retain their identities and live according to their own rules. The<br>official French position has always been to condemn multiculturalism<br>-- and yet the state must now deal with the consequences.<br><br>The strict separation of church and state, a sacrosanct pillar of<br>French government, has become an illusion. Jihad may not be what's<br>inspiring the rioters, but Islam is undeniably an inseparable<br>component of their identity. Islam strengthens their sense of<br>solidarity, gives them the appearance of legitimacy and draws an<br>unmistakable line between them and the others, the "French."<br><br>Suddenly "big brothers" -- devout bearded men from the mosques, who<br>wear long traditional robes -- are positioning themselves between the<br>authorities and the rioters in Clichy-sous-Bois, calling for order in<br>the name of Allah. As thousands of voices shout "Allahu Akbar" from<br>the windows of high-rise apartment buildings, shivers run down the<br>spines of television viewers in their seemingly safe living rooms.<br><br>As welcome as these self-appointed keepers of the peace may be,<br>worried authorities think they have detected something akin to a<br>Muslim law enforcement group -- perhaps even the beginnings of an<br>Islamic militia. "The logic behind this unrest," says one police<br>officer, "is secession." If he's right, that could mean a nightmare<br>scenario of entire neighborhoods separating themselves from the state<br>and essentially declaring their independence, creating zones with<br>their own laws, areas to which the authorities no longer have access<br>unless they wish to be perceived as hostile intruders.<br><br>For the past 25 years, France has had special programs, plans and<br>suburban ministries for its troubled neighborhoods. Indeed, the French<br>have almost become accustomed to the sight of burning garbage cans in<br>the poverty-stricken suburbs of cities like Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg<br>and Marseille. But the problems have now escalated, with authorities<br>registering 70,000 cases of vandalism, arson and gang violence this<br>year alone. No fewer than than 28,000 vehicles -- mostly belonging to<br>the poor -- have been set on fire.<br><br>The Molotov cocktails, the stone throwers and the fanaticism are all<br>reminiscent of the student riots of 1968. But this time the rioters<br>are not the avant-garde, their leaders not leftist intellectuals like<br>Jean-Paul Sartre or Daniel Cohn-Bendit.<br><br>What is shaking the public order in Europe's cities today is seething<br>desperation that has erupted in directionless violence. The rioters'<br>targets can just as easily be the government in Paris as other members<br>of the underclass, as was recently the case in Birmingham. And the<br>terrorist attacks in Madrid and London are also fresh in people's<br>minds.<br><br>It was merely a coincidence that Queen Elizabeth and British Prime<br>Minister Tony Blair met with the family members of the 52 victims of<br>the London subway and bus bombings last Tuesday to officially mourn<br>their deaths on July 7. And it was also nothing but a coincidence that<br>last Wednesday was the anniversary of the murder of Dutch filmmaker<br>Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist. But these highly symbolic<br>coincidences have not gone unnoticed, as evidenced by a recent story<br>in Time magazine that describes a "Generation Jihad" forming in old<br>Europe.<br><br>The events in Birmingham and the Paris suburbs are unrelated to<br>terrorism. The riots are not about jihad, Iran or Palestine. But they<br>have given rise to concerns that this urban violence could easily<br>become a breeding ground for terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and<br>other extremist groups.<br><br>According to official figures, France is home to a little over 5<br>million Muslims, the largest per capita concentration of Muslims in<br>any country in the European Union. However, the official count is<br>viewed as unreliable; religious affiliation is not recorded in the<br>French census. France's Muslims feel marginalized, as do millions of<br>other immigrants from former colonies throughout Europe, many of whom<br>are unemployed. They live in suburban ghettos, unable to afford better<br>neighborhoods. Now, with the ghettos turning into battlefields, the<br>notion that immigrants will voluntarily assimilate is proving<br>questionable.<br><br>Of course, part of the problem lies in the sheer numbers of immigrants<br>-- and the fact that they tend to live in the same place. Metropolitan<br>Birmingham, Britain's second-largest city, has a population of about a<br>million, and just under a third are of African or Asian descent.<br>Statisticians believe that Birmingham's traditional white majority<br>could become a minority in the next decade. And the same holds true<br>for Amsterdam, now home to about 150 nationalities.<br><br>Some are calling this new Europe "Eurabia," a reference to the growing<br>influence of Islam and Arabic culture, despite Europe's political and<br>cultural roots in Christianity. Indeed, one out of 10 Dutch citizens<br>was born abroad. Disneyland near Paris offers prayer rooms for French<br>Muslims. And in Britain, immigrants from former colonies have mostly<br>slipped into the poverty of ghettos.<br><br>How can the members of this "desperate and dangerous new underclass,"<br>as social workers in Leeds call them, become responsible citizens? Who<br>is preventing them from attacking one another, as was the case two<br>weeks ago in Birmingham?<br><br>It doesn't take much for violence to erupt. The recent unrest in<br>Lozells, one of Birmingham's poorest neighborhoods, claimed two lives,<br>20 injured and a large number of smashed windows and torched vehicles.<br>The violence erupted when young Asians, most of whose parents came<br>from Pakistan and India, clashed with the children of immigrants from<br>the Caribbean.<br><br>In Birmingham, the violence was triggered by a rumor that Ajaib<br>Hussein, the owner of a successful cosmetics business, had caught a<br>14-year-old Jamaican girl shoplifting and then, joined by up to 25<br>acquaintances and employees, raped the girl. There is no evidence that<br>the incident occurred, nor that the alleged victim exists. But the<br>suspicion alone -- just as in Clichy-sous-Bois -- was enough to ignite<br>the worst violence in Birmingham in more than 20 years, evidence of<br>the enormous tensions in suburbs with a similar social makeup.<br><br>In Lozells, home to about 30,000 people, more than half of residents<br>are of Asian origin and 20 percent are Caribbean. The district's 22<br>percent unemployment rate is almost three times as high as that in the<br>entire Birmingham region. "People here have to fight for every crumb<br>that falls from the tables of the wealthy," says Bishop Joe Aldred.<br><br>The violence is fed by street gangs like the "Muslim Birmingham<br>Panthers" and the "Burger Bar Boys," groups that originally formed to<br>protect residents against racist attacks. They have since turned into<br>crime syndicates, and Lozells has become a metaphor for Britain's<br>failed integration and immigration policies, a community that the<br>government can only control through tough policing. Large ghettos have<br>appeared, say experts, and the anger of those who live there is<br>directed at neighbors with different skin colors and bigger television<br>sets -- and not at the "infidels of the West."<br><br>Britain's white establishment, warns Trevor Phillips, head of the<br>Commission for Racial Equality, is "sleepwalking" into a future where<br>cities will be full of "black holes." Recent surveys conclude that 95<br>percent of all white Britons have exclusively white friends, that 37<br>percent of nonwhite residents also prefer to socialize with their own,<br>and that this trend is on the rise, especially among young people. In<br>places like Lozells, only one in 15 children succeeds in climbing the<br>social ladder.<br><br>Such neighborhoods are fertile recruiting grounds for fundamentalists<br>because "the majority of Muslims in Great Britain are frustrated but<br>cannot talk about it," says Sayid Sharif, 37, an immigrant and<br>construction engineer from north London. "They would never publicly<br>express approval of the London attacks, but they secretly believe that<br>Great Britain got what it deserved."<br><br>Britain officially mourned the victims of the July 7 bombings just<br>last week. A few days later on the other side of the channel, the<br>Netherlands marked the first anniversary of the murder of filmmaker<br>Theo van Gogh, who was killed by an unemployed Moroccan extremist.<br><br>The Dutch also face the ruins of their integration policy, long<br>considered exemplary. Indeed, for American terrorism expert Jessica<br>Stern, the Netherlands is "a laboratory that's especially well suited<br>for studying the development of fear." Stern is astonished at how the<br>murder of a single individual can affect an entire country. "How can a<br>nation suddenly become so consumed by self-doubt? And how can it be<br>that not just the Muslims, but also the native Dutch, find themselves<br>in such an identity crisis?"<br><br>Sixty percent of the Netherlands' 1 million Muslims see themselves as<br>Moroccans or Turks first, are often proud of their cultural norms and<br>values and seek comfort in their own communities. This creates<br>parallel worlds so disparate that immigrant children speak of "the<br>Dutch" as enemies. Their siblings attend Koran schools, and more and<br>more Muslim women now wear head scarves in public. Interactions<br>between Muslims and native Dutch are becoming increasingly abrasive,<br>especially in public places like Amsterdam's shopping streets.<br><br>The country's journalists, attorneys and politicians of every stripe<br>have been receiving anonymous threats. Even Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen,<br>named one of Time magazine's "European heroes" of 2005 because of his<br>conciliatory stance, now needs bodyguards. And Dutch authorities are<br>installing more surveillance cameras in the country's most volatile<br>urban neighborhoods.<br><br>"We were too soft. The days of drinking tea are over," says Dutch<br>Minister of Immigration Rita Verdonk, who has adopted a hard-line<br>approach toward troublemakers. Her officials have increasingly taken<br>to deporting rejected asylum seekers, including those who were<br>previously tolerated and whose children even attended Dutch schools.<br><br>According to statistics compiled by the Anne Frank Foundation, there<br>have been 106 reciprocal acts of revenge since the Van Gogh murder,<br>including the firebombing of the Muslim Bedir Elementary School in the<br>tranquil town of Uden by a youth gang that left behind a clear message<br>to the country's Muslims: "White Power."<br><br>The combat zone is expanding, mirroring the scenario pale author<br>Michel Houellebecq described in his latest bestseller. And it seems as<br>if Europe's rootless immigrants are changing life on the Continent in<br>dramatic ways, with Birmingham and the Paris suburbs providing a taste<br>of what may well be in Europe's future.<br> <p></p><i></i>