Arabs blame French society, discrimination

ap on Yahoo ^ | 11/09/05 | TAREK AL-ISSAWI - ap

[NormsRevenge]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - France's riots have set off a round of troubled debate across the Arab world: Most here blame a failure to offer opportunity to immigrants, but others see a more ominous clash of cultures over Islam.

Across the Middle East, the images of burning cars and stone-throwing young people have dominated newspapers and television. Analysts have hotly debated the riots' meaning, their cause and whether they might spread.

"The anger displayed, and the intensity with which it has spread, is alarming," said one Persian Gulf political analyst, Abdul Khaleq Abdulla.

Most attribute the flare-ups to social injustice and high unemployment, rather than anti-Islamic discrimination or a wider culture clash. They have urged the French government — and the Western world at large — to take concrete steps to rectify the problem.

"There are no puzzles here. The core problem is mass degradation and alienation manifesting themselves in ... belts of educated, usually unemployed, young men throughout Arab and Asian urban areas; and in parallel urban zones of mass disenfranchisement and marginalization," said Rami Khouri, writing Wednesday in the Lebanon Daily Star.

Added Al-Arabiya director Abdel Rahman al-Rashed: "These are the voices of a community that has no voice on the political scene."

But Iran has taken a more provocative slant, blaming anti-Islamic sentiment that it contends is widespread across Europe.

"Restrictions imposed on the Islamic dress code in France are an official policy there and the government has suppressed minorities' beliefs and humiliated them openly," the hard-line Jomhuri Eslami daily said in a commentary.

Immigrants tend to blend in more in the United States, while in Europe the barriers of culture, language and class are high, noted Shafiq al-Ghabra, the president of the American University in Kuwait, in his column in Al-Rai Al-Aam daily.

The worry is that right-wing groups will gain power in France because of the uprisings, he said.

"Will Europe enter into a confrontation phase with Muslims on its territories?" he asked.

Many of those rioting are French-born children of immigrants from France's former Arab and north African territories like Algeria. Community leaders in France's slums have long complained of a lack of jobs and widespread discrimination.

Among government leaders in the Arab world, the images of streets on fire raised many alarms.

In Saudi Arabia, the official Saudi Press Agency reported Wednesday that King Abdullah, in a telephone conversation with French President Jacques Chirac, expressed "the kingdom's hope that the French government would be able to put an end to the acts of sabotage."

The Jordan Times, an English-language daily, compared the French riots to those three years ago in Maan, a poor city in southern Jordan that is an Islamist stronghold and frequently prone to rioting.

"Many blamed the riots on Islamic fundamentalism, exactly like many today are speaking of religious violence in the Parisian banlieues (suburbs)," said the Jordan Times in an editorial. "But deep down, they are two stories of denied opportunities, forgotten reform."

[randog]

"Islam: we gave the world the Zero a thousand years ago, and Zero since then"

So it's safe to say that Islam gave us nothing.

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

I believe the zero, like "arabic" numerals, is a Hindu invention.

The Mayas and the Incas had it too.

[joe fonebone]

bump for later

[SMARTY]

Religion is to the current discord what putt-putt golf is to the PGA. No connection. Just a disguise for gullible Liberals everywhere.

[hang 'em]

"Islam: we gave the world the Zero a thousand years ago, and not a damn thing since then."

Or "Islam: we gave the world the Zero a thousand years ago, and Zero since then"

Actually they stole the concept of zero from the Hindus.

[backhoe]

Is Paris Burning? ( Religion of Peace® Alert )
Click the picture:

Islam, The Alleged Religion of Peace® ( TARP™ )? Click this picture:

No, I am not exaggerating. Click the pic, go to "last," and read backwards.
If you are not informed about this stuff, you will be made sick. If you are informed, you will be made mad, all over again.

For "Thunder on the Border," click the picture:

Is Paris Burning? ( Religion of Peace® Alert )
Click the picture:

Islam, The Alleged Religion of Peace® ( TARP™ )? Click this picture:

No, I am not exaggerating. Click the pic, go to "last," and read backwards.
If you are not informed about this stuff, you will be made sick. If you are informed, you will be made mad, all over again.

For "Thunder on the Border," click the picture:

[tennmountainman]

Yes, go back to to your country of origin and ride a camel, hang Osama pictures on your walls, pray to Alla...but just go.

[funkywbr]

It's time for US, Russia and China to sit down and divy up the ME.

And as for the pityful EU, let them eat cake.

[SMARTY]

You forgot to mention that they left their own country because they were parasites there, and sucked all the life out of the host organism. How could they be any thing but parasites anywhere else?

[GeorgiaDawg32]

Do As I Say, Not As I Do..someone ought to write a book with that title..

[edcoil]

Arabs blame French society, discrimination

SOLUTION: OK, go home

[river rat]

Until Muslims learn that rioting, bombing, beheading, "honor killings", stoning of women, and biting the hand that welcomed you, houses you and feeds you in inappropriate -- they should remain in their Turd World paradise...

Hell, we already have one bastardized ethnic minority that believes self inflicted ignorance and poverty, entitles them to loot, pillage, and rape as protest....while leaching for generations on the welfare state...

Semper Fi

[samtheman]

Take a western nation. Weaken it with Socialism. Infect it with unrestricted Islamic immigration.

Result: death of the West.

[GeorgiaDawg32]

I thought Al Gore invented the zero..wait, he is one..

[RobbyS]

The mind-set that the Arabs reject is pretty much like that which Christians reject, but which is increasingly prevalent among our own elites. They regard religion of any sort as delusional and don't even bother to learn the thinking of the masses. They don't even know that Islam is as worldly as their own ideology, so that to speak to a Muslim about religion being a "private" matter is, to the Muslim, to talk nonsense.

[.cnI redruM]

Sure, just take someone's embassy over and hold hostages for 400 days. Then, when you finished with that cuteness, bankroll Hezbollah. No reason for anyone to hate you for that!

[Humvee]

Actually it was Hindu Indians.

[BeAllYouCanBe]

"The worry is that right-wing groups will gain power in France because of the uprisings, he said."

This is always the liberals' worry that no matter how they try to "SPIN" the news positively -- things now look very bad for the French failed liberal policies. When liberal policies fail the lefty analysis always says that they weren't liberal enough. The fact is the French were complete faliures allowing so many Muslims into France.

[RobbyS]

Right. The Muslims just passed it on. They added a little to Greek notions of algebra, but the math was not fully developed until it reached Christian Europe.