France has problems:
In 2005, the people living in no-go zones were hostile to France. Today, their hostility has increased.
A few months ago, a police officer, Noam Anouar, who infiltrated Islamist circles, published a book, France Must Know. No-go zones in France, he wrote, are now foreign enclaves on French territory. "The gangs operating there," he noted, "have formed a parallel economy based on drug trafficking." ...
Anouar concluded that reclaiming these areas today would be complicated, costly, and involve calling in the army. ...
"Two months of lockdown," the author Éric Zemmour said on CNews TV, "will lead to an unprecedented economic crisis and probably to a very serious explosion of violence: it is high time to face reality: France is on the brink of chaos".
There are 7-8 times as many no-go zones today and "Gangs and radical imams seem totally in control."
In 2005 I wondered if the riots were a Le Xington and Concorde moment. I quoted a Strategypage post that said that the riots really were more about grievances than jihad.
Okay, I said, fair enough:
This all sounds reasonable. This year's rioting is based on lack of opportunity and is not jihad coming to Europe this year.
But this begs the question of what happens next time? First of all, I obviously assume there will be a next time. I assume this because I don't think the French are capable of opening their economy, government, or society enough to bring these suburban aliens into French life. So hopes raised by increased government attention to their plight will be dashed in a few years by pitiful results that leave France's Moslems in pretty much the exact same spot as September 2005. A few dozen more Social Cohesion mime academies won't count as progress.
My fear is that the jihadis in France will increasingly lead the alien and alienated Moslems of France. Remember our own Revolution. When colonists first confronted British soldiers with arms in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, and then lay siege to the British in Boston, we did not seek political separation. Our forebears only wanted their rights as Englishmen recognized. It was not until July 1776, more than a year later, that we made independence from the British our official goal.
This is not jihad and it never has been, says Strategypage. But this says nothing of the future. Will it become jihad? A cry for rights can become a cry for separation in remarkably short time. Will we look back at the events at Clichy-sous-Bois as the first clash leading to a declaration of independence by France's Moslems?
While there was no rapid evolution of motivation to jihad, the situation in 2015 provided hints that the weight of anger was shifting to jihad.
France has had recent riots in those suburbs during the Xi Jinping pandemic. And the French don't even try to extend state authority to those zones. While the rest of France is subject to covid-19 lockdowns, the Moslem immigrant suburbs are not.
Is France on the brink of chaos?
UPDATE: Of course, in that 2005 post I misused the term "begs the question" in its original definition rather than its current usage. Which I suppose begs the question of whether I used it correctly.
