THE ISLAMIZATION
OF EUROPE
The French
Intifada—Ongoing Guerilla Warfare
Part 8 of a Series
Mike Scruggs
For The Tribune Papers
Intifada is an Arabic word for a political or religious uprising. It first came into popular use with the Palestinian uprisings beginning in 1987 but has since become a more general term for Muslim uprisings, not only in the Middle East but also in Europe.
In late October of 2005, news audiences around the world were introduced to the French Intifada. Following the accidental electrocution death of two Muslim youths evading French police, rioting Muslim youth gangs in a suburb north of Paris began setting fire to automobiles and other vehicles. The rioting spread to 274 Muslim enclaves in France and a few in Belgium. Over a three-week period, more than 9000 vehicles were destroyed, 1500 in one night. More than one hundred buildings were burned, and more than 900 French police were wounded while trying to control the violence. The wanton destruction finally subsided with fewer than one hundred vehicles being destroyed on November 18.
Relative calm was restored only after French officials imposed a belated curfew and negotiated with Muslim leaders to limit police access to the troubled areas. At the same time, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy declared a get tough policy on street violence, which was supported by 73 percent of the French public. Within weeks, however, both President Jacques Chirac and Sarkozy were back to the old policy of appeasement.
The liberal press in France and around the world immediately identified the causes of the riots as high unemployment, discrimination against immigrants, and, of course, French racism (the usual liberal suspect). The high unemployment, at least, is true, but whether the fault lies with discrimination and racism remains to be seen. The welfarist policies of the French government, as with other European welfare states, are not conducive to high employment. In addition, most Muslim immigrants from North Africa have shown little interest in assimilating into French culture. The increasingly strong trend is for Muslim immigrants to reject French culture and to emphasize perpetuating their own Arab-Muslim culture, while demanding that the French accommodate them. Also, seven out of eight immigrants are now coming to France to join family rather than to work.
One of the first appeasement proposals by the government was a call for what we in America call “affirmative action” employment policies. The French call such policies “positive discrimination,” which seems more appropriate as it recognizes that ethnic preferences for some means discrimination against others. It may surprise most Americans that the nation that virtually invented radical liberalism during the French Revolution of 1789 does not force employers to favor minorities in their employment policies. A sizeable majority of the French believe such policies would be contrary to the concept of liberty. They also realize that promises by politicians currying favor with ethnic voting blocks would likely mean injustice to the European French majority. I do not believe that the French public will stand for this sort of appeasement, but it is possible that such policies could be imposed by the European Union whose leaders are truer to the Jacobin tradition of leftist despotism.
More recently, Sarkozy, who is a Right-Center candidate for President in the spring of 2007, has called for stricter immigration policies that would reduce the number of immigrants coming to join family. In addition, the immigration-restrictionist National Front Party of Jean Le Pen has jumped from 11 percent to 17 percent in the polls.
The French Intifada did not start or end in 2005. The French consider the Intifada to be ongoing guerilla warfare between French police and Muslim gangs. Fortunately, the weapons of the young Muslim warriors have thus far been limited mostly to rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails (gasoline filled bottles with a rag fuse). No AK-47’s have yet been smuggled in from Greater Albania—the major Jihadist beachhead in Europe. However, during the first nine months of 2006, more than 2500 police have been injured or wounded in keeping the peace in Muslim enclaves. More than 9000 police cars have been stoned, and twenty to forty vehicles are still torched every night. There are many virtually autonomous Muslim zones which French police fear to enter. The Police Union is now demanding armored cars to help control the Muslim enclaves.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, Al-Qaida has trained some French Muslims in urban warfare. Sarkozy himself has noted that the October-November 2005 Intifada was well organized. For several nights before the major violence in France, gangs of 30 to 40 Muslim youths rioted in Aarhus, Denmark, in what seemed on the surface to be a spontaneous outburst. Further investigation revealed that the riots had been planned two weeks in advance.
The Muslim population of France is thought to be about six million or 10 percent of the population. This estimate may be low, as governments and their chambers of commerce are apt to be conservative in these kinds of estimates. Some have estimated the population may already be 20 percent Muslim. At present, 25 percent of French babies are born to Muslim parents. As the European birthrate is near the replacement level and the Muslim birth rate is several times higher, with continued legal and illegal immigration, France could be majority Muslim in less than forty years
For the last several years, the crime rate in France has increased annually by high single digit percentages. In the heavily Muslim district of Seine-Saint-Denis with a total population of 1.5 million, violent robberies increased 23 percent and assaults increased 14 percent in the first half of 2006 alone. In all of France there were 480 reported attacks on police during September 2006, up 30 percent from the previous month. According to an Iranian-French researcher, in May 2006, 70 percent of French prisoners were Muslim.
Although the enormous unemployment rate of French Muslims (at least double the native French rate) doubtless contributes to the alarming rise in crime, there is an underlying ideology problem growing in the Muslim community. It is Jihad. The principles of Jihad allow Muslims to visit violence against all unbelievers in the cause of global Muslim dominance. Islam is not just a religion; it is an ideology that insists on replacing all secular government and law with Islamic government and law (Sharia). According to Muhammad himself and his many modern disciples (such as the very influential Muslim Brotherhood theorist, the late Sayyid Qutb), Jihad may progress tactically and strategically through various stages of deceit and warfare.
As elsewhere in Europe, second and third generation Muslims, often well educated, are returning to the traditional values of Islam. Holy War against all unbelievers and non-Islamic governments is one of those values taught by the Koran and the example of Muhammad that the Western liberal elite refuse to acknowledge in their calculations. Yet it is very real and will bring down Europe unless its leaders come to a realistic understanding of the religious, social, and political doctrines of historic Islam and take appropriate action in their immigration, law enforcement, and welfare policies.
It was a French army under the command of Charles Martel that turned back the advance of Muslim Jihad in AD 732 at the Battle of Tours, near Paris. Western civilization with its Christian heritage and freedoms owes them a great debt of gratitude. Do the French still have it in them to turn back this new wave of Jihad by emigration? Will they be able to defeat the invaders by launching a decisive counterattack reminiscent of those for which the French Army was so famous under Napoleon?
The French have disarmed themselves spiritually and morally by rejecting their Christian heritage and worldview. They have disarmed themselves intellectually by embracing multiculturalism and post-modern liberalism. They have allowed a huge political and cultural fifth column to grow in their midst—one that undermines both their ability to defend and sustain their culture and their existence as a nation. They have helped to create a growing totalitarian, anti-Christian, multiculturalist, materialist menace in the form of the European Union. This menace is evolving into something even more fearful—Eurabia, which unless strangled in its cradle, may become the darkest tyranny ever to beset mankind.
Yet I hope that by a kind and merciful Providence the French people and all the peoples of Europe will throw off their intellectual and spiritual delusions and come to their senses in time. Do they have much time? Do we?