The riots in France
relate to this post on Europe’s ghettos.
Today’s story, Ghettos shackle French Muslims is surprising, not for the details of the story, but because it mentions Muslims, a fact ignored by government-owned France2 news in its first three reports on the riots, which have taken place for four consecutive nights at the Clichy-sous-Bois housing projects, which the London Times calls suburban estates. RedNova (via ¡No Pasarán! has a video.
The article explains,
L’Ile St-Denis is among the “suburbs” around French cities where immigrants, notably from former North African colonies, have been housed since the 1960s.
Blighted by bad schools and endemic unemployment, the suburbs are hard to escape.
Ten years ago these youths were seen as French “Arabs”.
Now most are commonly referred to, and define themselves, as “Muslims”.
France’s interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy visited the site of the riots Clichy mosque today (link in French).
(Note: I had erroneously written “visited the site of the riots”, when it should have been “visited the Clichy mosque”, hence the correction.)
Sarkozy supports giving immigrants a vote in city polls even if they are not full citizens,
Mr Sarkozy, an advocate of positive discrimination as well as a strict quota system for immigrants, sparked controversy last week when he suggested he would be in favour of giving immigrants the right to vote in city polls. Some of his closest supporters in the UMP have criticised his proposal, arguing that any right to vote should be given only to those who choose to take full French citizenship.
Additonally, via Dhimmi watch, Sarkozy named a panel to look into whether to change to a century-old French law to allow the state to fund new mosques, as a means of bringing the Muslim community into the mainstream.
Will this stop the rioting? Don’t expect it to.
Does it position Sarkozy apart from Chirac and Villepin? That it does.
