Islamic Propensity For Terrorism (Parisian Riots)

Intereting Nimh...particularly so that the women are speaking out about it. (There are lots of Islamic feminists who speak out...some very much at their own risk, if their countries have a fundamentalist group with power.)


Actually, frankly, it is not so very dissimilar to stories I was hearing 30 years ago from young women who were the children of immigrants from Greece and parts of Italy, especially, I think, Sicily, whose parents were from very impoverished and uneducated backgrounds. Even knew of a couple of such young women killed by irate fathers for going against the mores of their community, which often became more fixed and severe the further away from home they were. I certainly knew of young women from these communities beaten and imprisoned for wanting more freedom.

This stuff seems to me very hard for people from religiously and/or culturally rigid backgrounds who emigrate to more liberal countries.

It is wonderful to see these young women taking action, and I wish them well.

Yes, the Wahhabi's take orphans to their madrasses, feed them and fill their brains with fundamentalism. The Western nations need to reduce the 'fuel' in their midst for the Islamic machine by eliminating poverty

What I'd also still wanted to say to Steve and Lash last night: you people talk about Muslims like you've never worked with one, never befriended one, or hung out with any. Like they're from an alien world, that you only know from television.

But still you lecture others, who have, about what "they" are really like. Weird.

No I am not making those assertions. I am saying there are organisations such as Hizb ut Tahrir which are subversive and actively working for the overthrow of western democracies. But I have specifically said I dont know if they have been involved in organising the riots, but if evidence was produced to show a link I would not die of shock. As regards the religious nature of the riots, the only commonality between disturbances in Denmark Paris Lille Antwerp and in the Netherlands, as far as I can see is Islam, though religion may not be the direct and immediate cause of the riots.

Your central point seems to be that you know and understand Islam and French working class immigrant communities better than me or Lash or probably anyone else on this thread, and that therefore I can only make sweeping generalisations on a sensitive issue from a position of ignorance.

I cant speak for Lash, but this doesnt bother me at all. I've never claimed to be a student of sociology or Islam. But the fact is you dont need to hold a chair of Urban Studies at the Sorbonne to read a newspaper critically or form an opinion.

Actually some of your recent comments and links I find really puzzling. You say you are afraid that Islamists cliques will take advantage of urban youth. But when I say something similiar, you have to "defend liberal democracy" against my "xenophobic prejudice and sweeping ill informed generalisations".

You said you havent seen any evidence that Islamists were behind the riots and I said so too, but then you yourself provided the abc news link which catalogues violence within the muslim community. [And blames it partly on radical clerics].

I notice you did not call me a racist only a prejudiced xenophobe. OK prof. nimh when you say

"if you actually want to fight Islamism, rather than just showboat about it, you'd bloody well better know what exactly is going on."

then tell us. Explain it. In simple terms that even I can understand.

One of the reasons for these 'problems' might be that France (like Germany and other countries as well) does not record "race," ethnic or national origin or religion in any adequate statistics.

This additionally lets look some 'conclusions' as 'wild guesses'.

No, my central point is simply that you and Lash made a number of specific assertions that I believe to be wholly untrue, and that some of what Lash said is nothing more than vile prejudice.

I have brought a number of links, stories, reportage to show what I personally believe to be going on, and how it differs from what you have submitted. I have defined my own position a number of times too.

I have also dared to say that I actually have worked with and befriended Muslims and they did not at all fit the "earned" stereotypes Lash suggested. If saying so makes you think I'm arrogant, so be it.

I dont think you "can only" make sweeping generalisations. I do think you did make several sweeping generalisations that I find untrue. If pointing them out makes you think I'm arrogant, so be it.

<shrugs - resigned>

if you could list them or, if not quote me directly, just paraphrase what you believe them to be, I would like an opportunity to expand on them.

Wise, Walter.

Been there, stayed there, saw it. Nothing wise but only able to use my five senses.

So, the more we get near it, the more we avoid comment...

Walter knows a lot about wild geese (es)

And Francis probably shoots them.

psssscht! :wink:

je ne comprend pas cher Walter, vous parlez une lange estranger.

(might have made up the odd French word there)

Your part of what I was referring to, Steve, is where you wrote:

"The French rioters are Muslim, are organised by Islamist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and have one basic objective, the rejection of the French state and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate. The jihadists behind the riots are of the same mind set as those who put bombs on trains in London and Madrid."

Now if that doesn't imply that fundamentalist organisations have organised the riots and that they were religious of nature, I don't know. It's what I've been taking issue with, anyhow - I'm not making these things up, you know.


I'd say exclusion, discrimination, unemployment, poverty and the tensions of many different cultures inhabitating cramped, depressed neighbourhoods occurred in all those places too.


Depends on how you define "similar". You said something similar to there being a risk that Islamist cliques will take advantage of some of the angry, confused youth? That I would not take issue with. But you said a lot more. You said, for example:

- "the French rioters are Muslim".

I'd say they were highly mixed, with North-Africans being the dominant group, but hardly the only one - which would refute the theory that it was the Islamic background that made the youths riot.

- "the French rioters are organised by Islamist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir".

I'd say there's been no evidence of that, and thats what I've been posting links of reportage about. They all suggest the riots were about all kinds of things, but not about the mobilisation of an Islamist insurgency.

- the French rioters "have one basic objective, the rejection of the French state and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate."

I'd say there's been no evidence of that. The rejection of the French state, yes - much like American blacks rioting in previous decades were rejecting the existing American state. But establishing a caliphate?

Perhaps I've had too many youths, half the time Moroccans, hang out in front of my door - youths whom I could easily imagine taking part in a riot if the opportunity ocurred - and heard the way they talk - to believe that what's on their mind is a Caliphate.

- "The jihadists behind the riots are of the same mind set as those who put bombs on trains in London and Madrid."

I'm sure that there are jihadists in France who are of that mind set, but I'd say there's no sign of it having been such "jihadists" who were behind the riots.

- "Islam [is] the common factor in uprisings all over France".

As said, I'd say exclusion, discrimination, unemployment, poverty and the tensions of many different cultures inhabitating cramped, depressed neighbourhoods are also all common factors, and likely more relevant ones in explaining the riots.

- "a distressingly high proportion of Muslims in [Britain] have chosen to support jihad".

Depends on what you mean. If you indeed meant the 0,05% that alone could be distressing then, sure. But I don't see Islamist extremism as already having taken hold over any substantial proportion of the Muslims in our countries.

- you see the issue at hand here - the French riots - as part of the war that's going on: "modern western secularism v medieval Islamic fascism".

I don't think that's the relevant frame of explanation for the French riots.

I'd see the riots as the typical thing that happens if you put a culturally different group - any culturally different group - in separate, poor neighbourhoods with rampant unemployment, lawlessness, lousy housing, and nothing to do for the youths, where they are kept stuck through systematic discrimination on the labour and housing market.

See how the blacks responded to that earlier, without any religion involved. It even happened without cultural difference, in Holland in the 30s for example. I just dont see how, if you look at that litany of valid reasons to riot, you still need the Islam angle to 'justify' how it 'could happen'.

For the same reasons, I disagree with Lash's point that:

- the "millet" lifestyle is the LEADING reason this began, and the leading reason it continues."

Then there was her rant about how

- "one of the leading reasons" why Muslims "aren't hired or accepted" is the "(earned) stereotype" of a "worker who 'can't follow this job duty', because of his religion, and MUST pray five times a day", not to mention "take a ritualistic bath, too, after each prayer". It's because "their religion dictates they cannot accept someone of another religion", as in, you know: "how would you like Abdul throwing rocks at the female working beside him". These, says Lash, are "VALID complaints by prospective employers."

THAT's simply the kind of "xenophobic prejudice and sweeping, ill-informed generalisations" I was talking about, that we have to keep on defending liberal tolerance against even if there is also an Islamist extremist danger to have to keep an eye on.

Now do you really consider it puzzling that I can disagree with you two about these above-mentioned assertions, and yet still also well see the problems in:

- How there is harassment and discrimination of women in Euro-Arab communies

- How the conservative culture of the first-generation immigrants has contributed to the fragmentation of Euro-Arab families

- How there are small extremist organisations that have succeeded in recruiting a tiny proportion of Muslim youths - tiny but enough to spread real death in London, Madrid, Amsterdam

- How there is a real danger of a more successful expansion of Islamist extremism if the marginalisation and discrimination of immigrant and second-generation youths continues uncorrected?

Why? Because I don't see the contradiction. There are real problems - but the chimera you two conjured up re: the French riots was false. <shrugs>

thats a good post nimh and I will consider what you have said.

Yup. Look.

Violence against women in French suburbs -> greatly inspired by religious background.

The riots in those French suburbs (massive arson attacks against police, schools, buses and other such symbols of those rich, white folks) -> not or only marginally inspired by religious background.

My take, anyway. From what I've read and brought. Now how are distinctions like this so terribly hard to imagine or recognize? I suppose I was right when I wrote:


It leaves me super-frustrated tho. What IS the problem with that black-and-white thinking? Why does either everything or nothing need to be explained by this thing? Why is everyone who says that a specific allegation about the 'Islamic extremists being behind it all' is unfounded, to be assumed to be asserting that, oh, there must be no problem at all?

I'll never get that mindset. It evokes my allergy for "large" theories. I suspect that as soon as one subscribes to some overarching, all-explaining concept, like "modern western secularism vs Muslim medieval Islamic fascism", or "the proletariat vs the exploiting classes", or "the West vs the East", or "capitalist freedom vs communist dictatorship", then recognizing the elements from any particular news story that fit into that mall, and superimposing it, takes the place of the tiresome nitpicking over what exactly might have happened where. In fact, anyone who insists on that must then be someone Who Just Doesnt Want To Know.


You wrote:


Didnt exactly sound like you talked about a minority, did it?

Much further below, you did add a "Clarification", noting that "The Muslims discussed are more recent immigrants, who have eschewed assimilation, live in homogenous communities, and are fundamentalists."

But then what in heavens name are we talking about? Are we still talking about France, about the rioting neighbourhoods? Because that particular group forms a small minority in those neighbourhoods, as pointed out before. Most residents there are not recent immigrants, these are not homogenous communities, etc. Same with immigrant neighbourhoods with many Muslims in other countries.

In short, most of the people we're talking about do not fit your description. And yet the Arabs in those French suburbs find it near-impossible to get a job - second/third generation ones too - five times less likely to be invited to a job interview with the same resume. So what's with this "earned stereotype" BS?

well you certainly say a lot nimh
and i agree things are always more complicated the further you examine them
but at the same time one has to bare in mind the big picture

1. There is conflict between Islam and the West.
2. Although its been going on for 1200 years, the current spat began 100 years ago because of our interest in their oil.
3. Just because we are in the wrong (propelled by our dependency oil) it does not follow that Islam must therefore be in the right, or even have merit.

Thats my take anyway.

nimh - what do you think are the reasons these young men can't get hired? I read somewhere that only those with French-sounding last names have much of a shot at the good jobs.

Also, I'm not quite sure I understand why you think it's the "conservative culture of first-generation immigrants has contributed to the fragmentation of Euro-Arab families." If you have time, would you mind expanding a bit more on this?

Lastly, why (in your opinion), if Muslim immigrant life is so crummy in France, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Italy, why do they still come?

I agree with you, by the way, that the riots probably weren't religiously motivated (despite the supposed screams of "Allah Akbar"). Rather, I think it's as you (and Mark Steyn in a recent article) pointed out when you said "How there is a real danger of a more successful expansion of Islamist extremism if the marginalisation and discrimination of immigrant and second-generation youths continues uncorrected".

and having considered it nimh I still think you are twisting double to minimise the religious dimension of the current troubles in Europe

just as Gary Younge did in that Guardian article

by writing a whole piece about the various disturbances without mentioning islam or muslim once

which is the sort of obfuscation I object to.