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‘Mohammed’ was overwhelmingly the most common name among those arrested during the recent French riots, reports the French newspaper L’Opinion, which analyzed a sample of the most common monikers amongst over 2,000 arrested throughout the uprisings in late June. Mohammed appeared 81 times in a sample of 335 arrests, 50 times more than second place Yanis –another name with Arab origins – which appeared 31 times. In fact, several Arab names were prevalent among the random sample of 335, with Yacin appearing 11 times, Ali appearing 13, and Ibrahim at 10. The names were revealed after the French Interior Minister...

For the most part, the American media aren’t much interested in the riots consuming France. But since images of burning cars and buildings are too dramatic to ignore, and because it is the height of the tourist season in a European destination favored by American travelers, they have had to acknowledge them now and then. Mostly, the death of a youth at the hands of police is cited as the cause, and comparisons are drawn to the George Floyd riots that began in Minneapolis and spread throughout our country. More sophisticated American commentators mentioned the word “jihad,” acknowledging what the...

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It is Europe's autumn of discontent. All across the continent, people are taking to the streets to protest the austerity measures of their governments. The governments have to cut for a simple reason: They are broke. They no longer have the money to sponsor the kind of padded lifestyles to which their citizens have grown accustomed. This in turn makes the citizens angry -- so much so that they are willing to turn their countries upside-down in order to obtain benefits their governments simply cannot provide. In France, where the deeply unpopular President Sarkozy is trying to raise the retirement...

MARSEILLE, France — France's interior minister sent extra riot police to patrol the southern port city of Marseille on Sunday after a group of marauding teenagers torched a bus, seriously burning a young passenger. French police have braced for a surge of violence this weekend, as Friday was the first anniversary of the start of riots in poor neighborhoods where many immigrants and their French-born children live. In scattered violence Saturday, 46 people were taken into custody, most of them in the suburbs around Paris, and two police officers were slightly injured. The most serious violence was the bus attack...

MONTFERMEIL, France (AFP) - Rioters hurling rocks clashed with police in the rough suburbs of Paris for a second night running as authorities arrested a youth whose injury -- along with the death of two friends -- last year sparked a wave of brutal rioting. ADVERTISEMENT Muhittin Altun, who survived an electrocution in October when he hid out from police in a power sub-station, was detained late Tuesday in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor neighbourhood northeast of Paris that was the epicentre of last year's violence. Police said the 18-year-old had been pitching rocks at a police car. His lawyer denied the...

You would think, by looking at the images of millions of French people in the streets of Paris carrying banners saying "We shall never surrender," that France was on the verge of suffering an invasion. And yet the massive mobilization is all about a law that would allow companies to fire workers under 26-years old within two-year period of being hired.Big protests have taken place for weeks around the country. Many of them have been extremely violent due to infiltration by the "casseurs" (thugs who specialize in trouble-making) and they have been joined by a broad spectrum of society that...

The strangest revolution the French have ever producedThe French are justly proud of their revolutionary tradition. After all, 1789 begat 1848 and 1871 and indeed inspired just about every revolution for a century, up to and including the Russian Revolution of 1917. Say what you will about the outcomes, but the origins were quite glorious: defiant, courageous, bloody, romantic uprisings against all that was fixed and immovable and oppressive: kings, czars, churches, oligarchies, tyrannies of every kind. And now, in a new act of revolutionary creativity, the French are at it again. Millions of young people and trade unionists, joined...

During the Iraq war, much was made about how different France and the United States had become. There is no better example than the recent political eruptions in the two nations.In France, they apparently are able to make law in the streets.Here in the United States, it's still done in the halls of Congress.That's the only conclusion available after the French political system caved to political pressure from massive demonstrations and shelved a plan to attack the nation's 20-plus percent youth unemployment rate.Meanwhile, as advocates for immigration changes here that would legalize and perhaps grant citizenship to illegal immigrants continue...

PARIS - Tens of thousands of protesters poured onto France's streets and striking workers hobbled transport services Tuesday, increasing pressure on embattled Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to withdraw a contested new jobs contract for youths. Cracks opened in his conservative government as public pressure mounted, with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy suggesting that the contract be suspended to allow talks with unions, in a clear break with Villepin. Paris and other cities deployed thousands of police to prevent a possible resurgence of violence that marred previous demonstrations against the contract, which would make it easier for companies to fire young...

THE CURRENT WAVE OF PROTESTS in France is regularly misportrayed as a pale remake of the 1968 student revolt that brought down Charles de Gaulle. The comparison gets it awfully wrong.True, we are witnessing a ritualistic springtime skirmish between students and the authorities. But there is an ironic ideological twist: It is the French government that is advocating change while students on the moral barricades are defending the status quo.As the conflict gathers steam, it offers a historically recognizable ballet--the government confronting student and trade-union demonstrators. This political trope enjoys special legitimacy in France, where factions and interest groups marginalized...

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac on Monday backed his prime minister in a confrontation over a youth job law, urging unions and students to enter constructive talks on the measure rather than threaten strikes. Buoyed by protests at the weekend that organizers said brought 1.5 million people on to the streets nationwide, union leaders set a Monday evening deadline for the government to withdraw or suspend the so-called First Job Contract (CPE) law. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has shown no signs of backing down over the law, which allows employers to fire people under 26 for any...

PARIS -- 2006 could prove to be a very dangerous year for Europe, especially for France. Jacques Chirac may have thought that opposing America and Israel would keep France safe from terror, but it has not. Christmas Eve 1994, seven years before 9-11, Islamic terrorists from Algeria tried to fly an Airbus into the Eiffel Tower. They were stopped by French commandos at an airport in Marseilles, where the terrorists were waiting on a full load of jet fuel. They had already packed the plane with dynamite. Europe has lived under the threat of Islamic terror far longer than the...

PARIS -- The French government deported a Malian involved in autumn rioting on Thursday _ the first expulsion stemming from the weeks of violence that swept across France's troubled suburbs _ and was preparing to send home another six foreigners. The deportation of the man made good on promises issued by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy during three weeks of car burnings, riots and other violence that began Oct. 27. "I was widely criticized for saying ... that I would apply the law by expelling those (foreigners) who participated in the riots," Sarkozy said on LCI television. "Well, a first one...

According to an AP story at the French Yahoo website, Pope Benedict has been making fatally naïve, classically deluded, liberal-style comments about the meaning and “message” of the Muslim riots in France, namely that the riots express a “dissastisfaction” with society that society must do something about. Why can’t the Pope understand that the riots are not an expression of dissatisfaction with France, but an expression of emnity toward France, not a plea for better “integration” in France, but a scream in the face that no integration is possible? And when will Christians understand that unless the Church stands with...

The coverage didn't cut it, Alex Chan felt, so he decided to tell his version of the recent violence that rocked his suburb north of Paris. But rather than a blog or video diary, he turned to a new computer game that allows players to produce a short film and post it online. He made it with English subtitles "to correct what was being said in the media, especially in the United States, who linked what was happening, the riots, to terrorism and put the blame on the Muslim community," said Chan, a practicing Buddhist.

PARIS (Reuters) - France unveiled plans on Thursday to give youngsters in poor suburbs a better education and equal opportunities after its worst urban rioting in almost 40 years, and said it would punish discrimination with swinging fines. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who used emergency measures to quell the unrest, is now under pressure to show he can tackle the problems behind three weeks of rioting, mostly by youths of African or Arab origin. He said acts of discrimination would be punishable by fines of up to 25,000 euros ($29,000) , firms would consider guidelines to make job applications...

MANTES-LA-JOLIE, France - A warning whistle pierces the air, followed by a deafening roar. Two gray housing project towers come crashing down, replaced by a yellow dust cloud that blots out the horizon. Applause, whoops of excitement, and a hint of sadness is heard among the throngs of mainly North and West African residents who have gathered to witness the demolition in this town 30 miles west of Paris. Along with torched cars and Molotov cocktails, France's grim housing projects have come to symbolize the discontent that erupted in recent riots across depressed, mostly immigrant neighborhoods. The violence has awakened...

PARIS - The first thing the French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut said to us when we met one evening at Paris' elegant Le Rostand cafe, where the interior is decorated with Oriental-style pictures and the terrace faces the Luxembourg Gardens, was "I heard that even Haaretz published an article identifying with the riots." This remark, uttered with some vehemence, pretty much sums up the feelings of Finkielkraut - one of the most prominent philosophers in France in the past 30 years - ever since the violent riots began on October 27 in the impoverished neighborhoods that surround Paris and spread with...

PARIS (Reuters) - Urban violence in France fell to normal levels on Thursday after three weeks of rioting in run-down suburbs, allowing the government to begin mapping out plans to tackle the problems that sparked the unrest. ADVERTISEMENT Ninety-eight vehicles were set ablaze during the night, a sharp drop from the peak of the violence when 1,400 vehicles were torched in one night on November 6 by youths who say they are excluded from mainstream French society. "The situation has returned to normal because about 100 vehicles are set on fire each night in France," a police spokesman said. France's...