[elfman2]

" France Is Burning… "

How much of France is burning?

" Could Break Out Into War "

A lot of things “could” happen.

" fires and many casualties."

How many is “many” casualties?

" Many largely Moslem suburbs of Paris, and other large cities, have become no-go zones for the police"

Any listing to those “many” no-go zones for police?

" statistics shows that high rates of robbery, murder and rape tend to coincide with Moslem areas."

What statistics, and how much greater is that than high crime in our ghettos?

I’d like to see the French realize they need to fight rather than appease Islamism as much as anyone here, but this story reads like a right wing version of the propaganda we’re used to from CNN.

[untenured]

Thank you for being the voice of reason in this thread. It is true that the poor assimilation of Arabs and black Africans and the spread of the jihadi ideology among the former is a serious problem, but all this apocalyptic rhetoric is being carried out in a completely data-free environment. What are the fertility rates of Arabs vs. white French? What percentage of Arabs there assimilate? No one really knows. The French government is no help because it doesn't collect racial or religious data, but we are a long way from knowing how bad these problems are. The total damage in these riots may be well less than one day's worth in Watts in 1965, and that didn't cause the U.S. to fall apart. It's not a good sign to be sure, but it doesn't mean the whole society is about to fall apart either.

The lack of decent data makes this whole Islamization-of-France hypothesis (which very respectable and calm people, notably Bernard Lewis, believe) impossible to assert with any confidence.