Posted on 11/03/2005 6:42:57 AM PST by SJackson
Every night for the past week, the suburbs of Paris have been a showcase of Europe's failure to integrate its immigrants. Most of the rioting youths from the projects in Seine-Saint-Denis were born in France to African and North African parents and speak French. Yet these second-generation immigrants feel little attachment to France, much less a bright future in it, and therein lies the problem.
Home to Europe's largest Muslim community -- nearly a tenth of its 60 million people -- France is the main testing ground of the Continent's ability to bring these recent newcomers into the fold. Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Spain are in different ways struggling with the same challenge. All these countries have, not coincidentally, experienced or exported Islamic terrorism in the past four years.
French governments of either political stripe historically preferred to ignore the problem festering out in the banlieues of the country's large cities. The initial response to this rioting, sparked last Thursday by the death of two local teens, betrayed no sense of urgency. As with most public issues in France today, the troubles became the latest excuse to posture with the 2007 presidential elections in mind.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister who harbors dreams of moving into the Elysée Palace, stole the show from the rioters by calling them "scum" and "thugs" and vowing to end the rioting by force. The violence intensified. His chief rival and boss, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, stayed quiet for the first five days of the crisis, along with President Jacques Chirac, also a Sarkozy foe. That left the interior minister exposed to the inevitable attacks, from the right and left, for his tough talk. Another cabinet member, Equal Opportunities Minister Azouz Begag, lashed out at his "warlike semantics."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
They need to kick the Muslims out but they won't. I feel no sympathy for them.
The problem, I think, is that these MUSLIMS don't want to be integrated into French society, they want French society to be integrated into Sharia law..IMHO
No, France needs to deport it's Muslim detractors, radicals, and terrorists. Then again, so do we.
Oh, the last time I saw Paris, her heart was young and gay . . . No matter how they change her, I'll remember her that way.
When does France surrender?
Right, the answer to people who move to your country and will not integregate into your society is deportation.
Unless the U.S. learns from France's mistakes, this will be coming soon to a city in America.
If by some chance "integrate" is a french word for "jettison without haste" then I agree.
Oh well, Paris is still gay.
They need to kick the Muslims out but they won't. I feel no sympathy for them.
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Absolutely. Just like us, they let them in...then won't deal with them in the only sure way to prevent tragic trouble.
All of France should turn Muslim and this will stop. Same thing as waving a white flag so it should be easy for them.
Kumbyah
"IMHO"
Well, a load if Islamic clerics share your opinion.
Boy, I hate to defend "Europe" on this one, but since when is it the host country's responsibility to integrate its immigrants? Especially when said immigrants come from a religious culture hostile to any assimilation with Western cultures? The host country's unequivocal message to Muslims is: obey our laws and learn our native language and there'll be no problem.
But no, Muslims like to think of themselves as superior to us infidels. Yeah, that's why every Muslim-dominated country is roiling in murder & mayhem and yet it's always America/Israel's fault. That's why Muslim culture has not contributed to the advancement of civilization in the last 500 years. That's why most Muslims would rather stay silent and let the murderous nut-jobs hijack their so-called "Religion of Peace."
So, pardon me if I couldn't care less about a section of the world's population that would rather pick fights with everyone and everything than get along.
I haven't followed this closely with a number of other things occupying my attention the past week, and yesterday I saw the first news report on it. Greg Palkot on FOX News was talking to John Gibson about it. The thing I found interesting was that Gibson said the last time he was in France, Palkot (who apparently lives there and has worked there for the last several years) "told me this was going to happen."
It's been obvious for many months now that Europe is on the verge of a true crisis with its Muslim population. I haven't been to Europe in more than 15 years, but even from my vantage point in rural Georgia I could see this coming.
I wonder if it is just liberalism that has blinded the Europeans in general and France specifically or if there is something else culturally that I just don't understand. Why have the Europeans worked so hard to give the Muslims the ability to fight them from within?
Ah, yes, it's all that easy. The problem is that the Muslim immigrants don't want to integrate. Catholic Africans have not had the same problems, and in fact have even intermarried.
Muslims, mostly from North Africa although with an increasing number from sub-Saharan African, have no interest in adopting French customs and social standards, and in fact have been trying to impose their culture on the French. France has reached that dangerous tipping point: once a country has a Muslim population of more than 10%, it seems to trigger the desire of the Muslims to take it over. Or perhaps it's simply that they see it as possible at that point, particularly in a country where the native population has a pathetically tiny birth rate and sheer statistics are on the side of the Muslims.
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