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A former French government minister, Patrick Devedjian, who served in the conservative governments of French presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy is in trouble for stating a politically incorrect but politically uncomfortable truth.   A former French minister stirred up controversy today after saying Germany 'took our Jews and gave us Arabs' as France began taking some of the thousands of refugees arriving in Germany. Patrick Devedjian, a right-winger who served in the governments of presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, made the remark at a press conference, but quickly tried to backtrack on social media. 'My humorous jest was misplaced,' Devedjian wrote...

France’s top Muslim official has suggested turning empty or abandoned Catholic churches into mosques, saying as many as 5,000 are needed for the country’s Muslim population - the largest in Europe. “It’s a delicate issue, but why not?” Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris and the president of the French Council of Muslim Faith, told Europe 1 radio on Monday. There are currently about 2,500 mosques in France with another 300 under construction, but the number falls short of what is needed, he said. With roughly 5 million Muslims in France, at least 5,000 mosques are needed,...

A widely distributed political cartoon by Ranan Lurie, published after the massacre of four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris, depicts a tiny shrub above ground, and just below the surface, supporting the plant, is a web of thick twisted roots spread in the design of the swastika. These Nazi roots are more than a cartoonist's imagination, carefully tended by the anti-Semites of France, exposed when the French rounded up their Jews, men, women and children, and shipped them to the death camps of World War II. If the cartoonist had dug deeper, he could have drawn the roots...

France announced sweeping new measures to counter homegrown terrorism Wednesday, including giving security forces better weapons and protection, going on an intelligence agent hiring spree and creating a better database of anyone suspected of extremist links. Since three police were among those killed by the Paris terrorists, the prime minister said improving officers' weapons and protective gear was among the top priorities. France has repeatedly strengthened its counterterrorism laws over the years, including a measure passed in November that focused on preventing French extremists from joining fighters abroad. Another measure — expected to be activated in the coming weeks —...

940 cars were set on fire across France by frenzied revellers as they welcomed the arrival of the New Year, according to France’s Interior Ministry. The wave of arson - part of a bizarre and dangerous tradition frequently reported in mass celebrations as well as protests in the country - was actually a 12% improvement on last year’s New Year’s festivities when 1,067 cars were set ablaze.... Pierre-Henry Brandet, spokesperson for the Interior Ministry told French broadcaster BFM-TV that the car burning was most frequent in eastern France, as well as in the suburbs of Paris, particularly in the banlieues...

It is settled: The Paris terror attacks had almost nothing to do with Islam. If there is any doubt about this, consider that on the one hand, you have the chilling new tape of the Charlie Hebdo attackers declaring, “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad,” and on the other, you have the tortured reassurances of White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Which are you going to believe? The Obama administration’s mind-bogglingly determined refusal to say that we are at war with “radical Islam,” together with the left’s evasions about Islamic terrorism, means that there has been a haze of euphemism and...

In hundreds of French "no-go" zones -- neighborhoods where neither tourists nor cops dare enter -- poor and alienated Muslims have intimidated the government into largely ceding authority over them, prompting fears that the kind of jihad that gave rise to last week's attack in Paris is festering unchecked. In some ways, these 751 areas designated by the French government -- officially called zones urbaines sensibles (sensitive urban zones), or ZUS, for short, but referred to as “no-go” zones by some observers -- resemble poor sections of America’s cities where gangs rule, crime and drugs are rampant and police only...

(CNN)French law enforcement officers have been told to erase their social media presence and to carry their weapons at all times because terror sleeper cells have been activated over the last 24 hours in the country, a French police source who attended a briefing Saturday told CNN Terror Analyst Samuel Laurent. Ahmedy Coulibaly, a suspect killed Friday during a deadly Kosher market hostage siege, had made several phone calls about targeting police officers in France. The alert came as the lone remaining suspect wanted in connection with a terrorism spree -- Hayat Boumeddiene -- entered Turkey on January 2,...

Just as Kristallnacht targeted the Jews of Berlin, the sound of terror and broken glass were the alarm signals to Jews and civilization everywhere For French Jews, January 9, 2015, was Kristallnacht, a seminal watershed of no return. That was the day that the Islamic fever that had infested France and most of Europe turned its fury away from attacking a satirical magazine that poked fun at them to its greatest enemy—Judaism. In Paris, a gunman, linked to the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo massacre who had shot a policewoman in the back the previous day, selected a Jewish target...

Border Security: As terror-torn France and other European countries put curbs on Islamic immigration, the Obama administration is waving foreign Muslim nationals into the U.S. in record numbers. According to a recent Center for Immigration Studies report, America between 2010 and 2013 imported more people from Muslim countries than Central America and Mexico combined. And now, with the president's executive amnesty, the welcome mat is bigger than ever. That's a major shift in immigration flows — and one that poses a major national security threat. If just a fraction of these nearly 300,000 new Muslim immigrants follow in the footsteps...

<p>Gunmen have attacked the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 11 people and injuring 10, French officials say. Witnesses spoke of sustained gunfire at the office as the attackers opened fire with assault rifles before escaping.</p> <p>Police have launched a major operation in the Paris area in their hunt for the attackers.</p>

The enemedia is applauding this because the number is a few shy of last year’s mass car burnings — as if this were consequential. Wrong. Burning close to 1000 cars is the lede — that’s the story, but media has little to say about that, and even less about the fact that it was Muslims. Perhaps the number would have been higher if so many French Muslims hadn’t gone to the Middle East to wage jihad alongside the Islamic State.

940 cars were torched last night in France in a stunt that started mostly in immigrant communities back in the 1990s. ... Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said on BFM-TV that numerous cars were burned around the country, particularly in the east, as well as in suburban Paris, notably the Seine-Saint-Denis region — where fiery riots around France started in 2005.

France is to step up police and military patrols in areas frequented by the public following recent attacks, Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said. He said up to 300 soliders would be deployed around the country to boost security over the Christmas period. The attacks, seemingly unrelated, in Nantes, Dijon and Tours have left more than 20 people injured. In the latest incident, 10 people were hurt when a van was driven into a Christmas market in Nantes on Monday. In Dijon on Sunday, driver shouting "God is great" in Arabic ploughed into pedestrians into pedestrians, injuring 13 people. On...

Dozens of people were injured tonight when a man ploughed his white van into a Christmas market crowd while screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’, Five people were left seriously hurt when the vehicle drove into the pedestrianised Place Royale area of Nantes in France. Within seconds of running down as many people as he could, the driver stabbed himself nine times. It is the third incident of its kind in as many days in the country which have been linked to Islamic terrorism. The man, who is said to be aged 44 but otherwise unidentified, was tonight under armed guard in the...

France does host one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe so the results are not especially surprising. Also France draws more Middle Eastern and North African Muslims than the UK does. If you asked about support for the Taliban, you might get better numbers in the UK. One in six French citizens sympathises with the Islamist militant group ISIS, also known as Islamic State, a poll released this week found.The poll of European attitudes towards the group, carried out by ICM for Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, revealed that 16% of French citizens have a positive opinion of ISIS....

EVER since the French banned conspicuous religious symbols from state schools in 2004, the country has grappled with striking the right balance between religious freedom and enforcement of its strict secular rules. On June 25th the scales tilted again after a landmark ruling by the top appeals court that a private day-care firm was within its rights when it fired a woman for wearing a Muslim headscarf. In 2008 Fatima Afif was sacked from her job at Baby-loup, a private nursery in the western suburbs of Paris, for wearing an Islamic head-covering. She took her case to court, claiming discrimination...

Among the long list of recommendations...the panel says that public schools in France should be taught in Arabic and African languages rather than in French. "It would no longer be up to French immigrants to adopt French culture, but for France to abandon its own culture, language, history and identity to adapt to other people's cultures." — Jean-François Copé, UMP Party. Instead of integration, "parallel societies are forming that continuously distance themselves from each other." — Alain Finkielkraut, author of L'identité malheureuse. A panel appointed by French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to review France's integration policies has urged the government...

The much lamented tradition of torching cars to mark the arrival of the new year claimed more than 10 per cent fewer vehicles this year By French standards, it was a peaceful New Year’s Eve. Only 1,067 cars and vans were destroyed by arson, a “significant” reduction of more than 10 per cent compared to the number of vehicles set ablaze last year, according to Manuel Valls, the Interior Minister. All things considered, it was a “positive result”, Mr Valls told a press conference on Wednesday. He said he regretted the deaths of three people in knife attacks in Paris...

A French soldier patrolling a business neighborhood west of Paris was stabbed in the neck and injured on Saturday by a man who fled the scene and is being sought by police, President Francois Hollande said. The 23-year-old was patrolling in uniform with two other soldiers as part of France's Vigipirate anti-terror surveillance plan when he was approached from behind around 6 p.m. and attacked with a knife or a box-cutter. A police union spokesman said surveillance footage of the attacker showed him as tall and bearded, aged about 35, possibly of North African origin and wearing a white Arab-style...