Nickerson, C (6 November, 2005). “Youth’s Poverty, Despair Fuel Violent Unrest in France

;” ( 13 November, 2005) “Behind French Unrest, Cries of Racism, Neglect,”  The Boston Globe.

 

Mulrine, A (21 November, 2005). “After the Flames,” U.S. News & World Report.

 

 

Overview

In France’s worst civil unrest since the student revolts of 1968, a rage of racial, religious, and economically charged violence recently swept through 300 towns in the span of two weeks. These articles, written at the time of the riots, investigate their root causes, uncovering a complicated and volatile mix of social issues felt with particular intensity among the country’s youth population.

 

Centered in the housing projects of Clichy-sous-Bois, a predominantly Muslim suburb of Paris, the spiraling violence was triggered by two events. First, a French defense minister made bitter, slanderous remarks on the heels of being heckled and assaulted during a visit to the area. Second, two teenagers fleeing police where electrocuted to death when they sought cover in a power plant. According to Nickerson, arson attacks, running battles with police, random gunfire, and looting then erupted and spread even into Paris itself. At the root of all this stands the highly-charged context of alienated youth straddling the line between Muslim identity, drugs, and the larger conditions of French culture. Islamic leaders and social commentators acknowledge that most of the looters and arsonists were Muslims of Arabic or black African heritage.

 

Mahmoud Khabou, according to Nickerson, is a case in point. Age 20, he is the jobless son of Algerian immigrants living in housing projects. His heroes are Osama bin Laden and Rodney King. The first because he “gives pride back to Muslims.” The second because he was an ordinary man of color who “caused a great city to burn.” Consider the following economic and religious circumstances which may very well be shaping Khabou’s viewpoint.

·        At roughly 5 million, France has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe

.

 

·        Muslims make up 9 percent of the French population.

·        About 70 percent of Muslim immigrants are offspring of Arabs from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia

.

 

·        Unemployment in Islamic communities is estimated at 30 percent, more than three times the national average.

 

·        Unemployment approaches 40 percent for 19-29 year-olds of Moroccan or Algerian descent.

 

·        These same communities are isolated in the suburbs, away from the cities, and are marked by low-income housing, poor education, and lack of opportunities.

·        An average of 80 cars where burned in protest each day in France

even before the riots began.

 

·        Rioters lament that they are still viewed as foreigners “in a country that treats them like latter-day colonial subjects,” says Mulrine.

 

Of course, these factors do not tell the whole story. The following points should also be kept in mind:

 

·        Police say that fewer than 1,000 of the 63,000 inhabitants of the ghettoes participated in the violence.

·        France

spends more money on public housing than any other European Nation – the equivalent of 1.9 percent of its gross domestic product.

 

·        Free public schooling is available to all, but immigrant dropout rates are high.

 

Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Muslim Forum, an organization of Islamic groups in Britain, says the tensions and ensuing crisis are a result of economic, not religious, factors: “The crisis comes from poverty and feelings of powerlessness among so many Muslims. The crisis is not caused by Islam, but by people who turn to dangerous ideas and desperate measures in their hopelessness.” According to Sebastian Roche, a political scientist, the rising anger also results from the government’s lax attention to minority education issues.

 

“I don’t know why the men started the fires,” says Lila Allyah, a 13 year-old Muslim from the area of the riots. “Maybe just to remind the French we are here.”

 

“What does France offer me?” asked Mohammed Job, a North-African in his 20s. “Just freedom to be poor and unequal.”

 

 

The fact remains that Islam has become a ready source of identity for alienated, angry youths. According to Nickerson, immigrants who until recently proudly referred to themselves as “French Arabs,” “French Algerians,” “French Moroccans,” and so on, now call themselves “Muslims.” But this does not necessarily imply the presence of what some French newspapers have dubbed “hidden hands” – Islamic groups such as Al Qaeda – orchestrating the violence. Even still, says Mulrine, the combination of joblessness, resentment, and boredom has made the suburban ghettos “a fertile recruiting ground for Islamic extremists, even though the vast majority of residents are nonpracticing Muslims.” So-called “big brothers” have, says Nickerson, taken the turmoil as an opportunity for drawing more disaffected youths into militant movements. 

 

Even if Islam is not the motivating factor for the violence, the conditions that beset Muslim communities across Europe makes for a powder-keg in which social and economic factors converge through a net of Islamic identity. Experts worry the same situation that has crippled France may soon spread to other European cities.

 

One 20 year-old man captured what may be the core of the motivating confusion: “My identity card says I am French, but these are just words on paper. My relatives tell me I’m Algerian. But this means nothing. I feel too much a part of France to belong to Africa, but not such a part of France that I belong here. My feet are in two cultures; my heart belongs to none.”

 

 

Questions for Reflection and Discussion:

 

1.      Why did these riots occur?

 

2.      What are the religious and economic factors behind them?

 

3.      Are the seeds of similar situations present in neighborhoods close to you?

 

4.      Should the French government do more to improve the quality of life for people living in these suburban ‘ghettoes’?

 

5.      What is reasonable to expect of a government in caring for an immigrant community that increasingly insists on its ethnic/religious identity?

 

 

Implications:

The situation in France illustrates the tinder-box that obtains when ethno-religious identities are focused in an economically-deprived and detached environment. In an increasingly globalized and mobile world these challenges are not going to abate. As difficult as it may be to address the question of institutional racism or marginalization, this work must be done. And in doing so, real relationships of trust between local and government leaders is crucial.

 

Christopher S. Yates cCYS