Islamic Propensity For Terrorism (Parisian Riots)

Exactly.

The underclass riots, when social and economic marginalisation and exclusion becomes too bad.

The rioting itself is all too often random, seemingly arbitrary: the inability to focus the frustration in more politically organised and constructive ways is an expression of the marginalisation itself: disintegrated, nihilistic communities.

This has always happened, the phenomenon surging or ebbing with the economic tide, and depending on whether socio-economic policy succeeded in increasing cohesion - or inequality.

Today, in many West-European cities, a large part of the underclass is North-African, Muslim. So of course it will now be mostly North-African faces in the rioting crowd. Just like twenty or thirty years ago, it was blacks. (Even now it can be mostly blacks, instead too - just look at the Birmingham riot last month.) And a hundred years ago, in the UK or the US, it might have been Irish Catholics.

That obviously doesn't mean that it's because they are Muslim that they riot. Today's marginalised, resentful and sometimes criminal Muslim/North-African youth is the latest manifestation of a threat that's been there ever again, when the economy or social policies failed.

Thats not the end of it, of course. There's the issue of pied pipers: in the 30s, it was communists trying to capitalise on riot-ready resentment, incending new ones or using them to recruit cadres; in the 60s, there were violent Black Power groups, now, there are extremist Islamist organisations. And like the communists, but unlike the Black Power militants, they have international networks and international financing behind it - and they're liable to use it for terrorist violence. And as the Dutch case shows, they're able to convert non-Arabs (white, black) to their cause as well.

Also, there is the valid enough question of why such a large part of the underclass is North-African/Muslim. Turks do better; so do black immigrants, and Indians do better still. So you can validly ask what cultural patterns in North-African communities help hamper social mobility.

But even that isn't as Huntingtonian as it seems. The difference between Turks and North-Africans, both Muslim, points to that. So does the wide variety within black immigrant communities: in Holland, Antillean immigrants do distinctly worse than Surinamese, and on several counts as badly as Moroccans. And they're not Muslim. Not to speak of the latest generation of immigrants, who tend to come from much more wide-flung, new countries - Somalia, Congo, Iraq.

Also, even if there is a comparative difference between the number of second- and third-generation North-Africans who fail and that of other immigrants, take any underclass neighbourhood on the verge of riot, like those in France, and you'll still see a very multicultural bunch, with white French, ex-Yugoslavs and black Africans mixed in just the same.

For their collective "ras-le-bol" (violent fed-upness), religion or religion-based culture just doesn't hold up as explanatory framework. It's largely a red herring.

Class and race - economic marginalisation and cultural exclusion - both caused the riots; and "race" means, primarily, the discrimination that all immigrants face in Europe, in France perhaps especially painfully.

Nimh, you make every excuse not to face up to the fact that these 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 militant islamists and jihadists behind the riots are of the same mind set as those who put bombs on trains in London and Madrid. They should be disabused of their stupid notions, not encouraged as Gary Younge appears to do.

Are you fukking serious?

You dont mean that, right?

The rioters were "organised by Islamist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir"? Where do you get that stuff?

I've been reading up as much as anyone on the Paris/France riot stories, and I have not seen ONE mention of a rioter with the intention to "establish an Islamic caliphate".

Lots of quotes from individual rioters from Congo, Yugoslavia, white French taking part as well; wonder if they knew they were working for the Caliphate.

Lots and lots of quotes of (second-generation) North-Africans who complained about everything from there being "nothing to do" in their part of town to the cops always stopping them to "the French hating us" to everyone they know being unemployed - all not immediately Jihadist stuff.

Lots of descriptions of mosques trying to stop the rioters, even engaging in door-to-door visits to tell people to stay at home, and none of bearded terrorists urging the rioters on.

An Islamic Caliphate??!! All those guys are quoted as saying they just want to be taken for full, finally - in France. Just like their predecessor (black) rioters in your country, back in the 70s early 80s (or hell, even now still).

"These rioters have one objective, the establishment of an Islamic caliphate" ... ...stupidities ...

nimh--

Writing about the Muslim element of this story would be seen by politicians as lighting the fuse of what they are frantically trying to diffuse.

I think they are completely mad. Unfortunately it is they who are "fukking serious".

(I should have said the Islamist organisers of the riots rather than individual rioters)

steve that does not sound like.

Data source?

I was reading a couple of articles in the Spectator magazine.

One by Rod Liddle entitled the cresent of fear. The other by Patrick Sookhdeo on Islamic view of sacred territory.

The Spectator is a right wing magazine. But Rod Liddle is a paid up member of the London liberal chattering-class elite. Unlike Gary Younge in the Guardian, he took the trouble to take the Eurostar train to France and see a bit of rioting for himself. Thats primarily why I rated his piece.

He made the very point that Younge inadvertently illustrates....the liberal media's inability to use the word muslim in context of the riots.

steve

Is there ANY other coverage you have seen in the media which doesn't use the word Muslim?

Younge's piece may have been unusual in not using the word at all. But in general I believe Liddle is right in saying the meejah in France and UK go out of their way to play down the religious dimension to the riots. But as a point of fact to answer your question directly no I haven't.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is soon to be proscribed in the UK. This is from their website

The Aim of Hizb ut-Tahrir

Its aim is to resume the Islamic way of life and to convey the Islamic da'wah to the world. This objective means bringing the Muslims back to living an Islamic way of life in Dar al-Islam and in an Islamic society such that all of life's affairs in society are administered according to the Shari'ah rules, and the viewpoint in it is the halal and the haram under the shade of the Islamic State, which is the Khilafah State. That state is the one in which Muslims appoint a Khaleefah and give him the bay'ah to listen and obey on condition that he rules according to the Book of Allah (swt) and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (saw) and on condition that he conveys Islam as a message to the world through da'wah and jihad.

The Party, as well, aims at the correct revival of the Ummah through enlightened thought. It also strives to bring her back to her previous might and glory such that she wrests the reins of initiative away from other states and nations, and returns to her rightful place as the first state in the world, as she was in the past, when she governs the world according to the laws of Islam.

It also aims to bring back the Islamic guidance for mankind and to lead the Ummah into a struggle with Kufr, its systems and its thoughts so that Islam encapsulates the world.

Steve

Thanks. I get a little sharp-edged at generalities about the "liberal media" particularly when the claim is exactly 99% false.

As you know, there are very prudent reasons why we have to be careful when making broad derogatory claims about faith groups - particularly when that group represents a minority. Our experience with anti-semitism is the great reminder.

There is a religious dimension to the riots, of course. But it is equally true that the riots in American cities in the late sixties and later had a race dimension. The danger was in ascribing 'why' those riots in Watts and elsewhere happened to some characteristics of black people or black culture. There were, at the time, numerous militant organizations operating within the black culture, but those organizations weren't responsible for the riots even if they did provide rallying points for anger.

The theocratic and extremist group you note above is surely one of a number of such groups operating in the Muslim communities in Europe. But most communities have such extremist elements. That they exist and believe as they do does not provide us with the evidence that they are causal as regards the rioting.

The Muslim immigrants did go to western nations to live a Muslim life but to escape it. It is the Muslim women in the western states and in droves who protested against Sharia Law. Sharia Law should only be practised in Muslim lands. In Briain, British Law should be the law of the land.

Of course, the extremists will try to milk any situation and add fuel to the fire.

Yes, I am sure Hizb ut-Tahrir is up to no good.

But any evidence that they played a substantive role in organising all these riots, that sure seem to have erupted quite randomly across the whole of France, with hooliganesque youths playing hide and seek with coppers? Are you sure they're really that well organised, that they actually control those legions of frustrated, violent youths that otherwise seem so ... well, shall we say, unfocused?

And, to add to the confusion, the same kind of rioting in Birmingham can take place in quite similar ways, without any such devious plot behind it?

Wow, I never knew that the international media were such a tightly organised cabal with a stringently controlled common agenda ... you would have thought that in the ever-murderous competition for scoops and audience ratings, some TV station or newspaper would have exposed the overarching Hizb ut-Tahrir conspiracy thats been directing these multi-ethnic groups of dead-end youths across the country ... what discipline!

I'm sorry. I'm more than willing to acknowledge the threat in how Islamist extremists will capitalise on the whole situation (see my "pied piper" paragraph). But the suggestion that "these rioters" were a) Muslim (all the ghetto dwellers of other colours/backgrounds that appeared before camera lenses or microphones apparently constituting freak exceptions), b) organised by Islamist groups and c) out to establish an Islamic caliphate, and that all of that takes place without any of the commercial, competing press agencies etc picking up on it as the major context behind it, leaves me only with biting sarcasm to keep from crying...

Projection. Leaves you powerless.

Sharia Law should be rejected as rejection does not preclude someone from following Sharia Law but enshrining it would force every Muslim to obey the Imam thus creating a nation within a nation.

Hizb ut Tahrir, btw, is illegal in France, Germany and The Netherlands.

The fact is there is a war going on. Who started it, when and why is too complex to go into here. But the two protagonists are fairly easily identifiable, modern western secularism v medieval Islamic fascism. For me its a battle of ideas, and a battle where I know instinctively which side I am on.

Yep. And in that battle, I'm on the same side as you. I just dont agree that the French riots were particularly identifiable as part of that battle. There's several other obvious battles it is an expression of (ghetto vs police, poor vs rich, angry young men against everyone) that are at least as pertinent in understanding what happened - and what needs to be done now.

The danger with your perspective is that you seem to have started seeing everything as necessarily further manifestations of That One Battle. In such a perspective, one tends to start brushing aside all the details that do not fit the binary picture of the war that everything must be part of.

It is a narrowing of awareness that's had many manifestations in history as well: Communists who saw every fisticuff as an expression of the upcoming revolution; anti-Communists who, every time there was some popular demonstration, some riot, or some Third World uprising, succeeded in identifying the communists who could invariably be found somewhere in the masses, and concluded that it was another attempted Communist take-over. (Thats the obvious parallel.)

Current expressions of that distortion of perception by concentration of focus are Bush's mental categorisation of everyone as either with us or against us, and bin Ladens unwavering ability to place every unrest in the world in the context of the Jihadist struggle.

I do not think it is particularly an expression of "Factual Rational Explanation", however. The identification of the French street riots as an ut-Tahrir uprising for the Islamic Caliphate strikes me as lacking in fact and ratio, actually.