Islam and violence

For the past few weeks, women archaeologists working on an excavation site near the royal basilica of Saint-Denis in the north of Paris have been subjected to intimidation and insults on the grounds that they wore ‘indecent’ clothing and did ‘men’s work.’ Posters calling for respect for their work and their persons have been put up around the site. The verbal abuse  the women have been subjected to has reignited the controversy surrounding the origin of the perpetrators, who belong mainly to North African immigrant populations that have become the majority in certain areas of Seine-Saint-Denis. 

Robert McLiam Wilson on the Islamist atrocities that are still haunting France.

Last week, the seventh anniversary of the 2016 Nice attack passed with very little notice outside of France. When Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel deliberately drove a 19-tonne truck into a crowd of Bastille Day revellers, he murdered 86 people, including 15 children. This was one of the deadliest terror attacks on European soil in the 21st century. And yet, like many similar Islamist atrocities, it seems to have been largely forgotten about.

Over 2,300 people have been arrested in connection with the multiple-day riots that shook France earlier this month following the fatal shooting of a teen named Nahel in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

Many have speculated about a connection between immigration and the rioting, with former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour explicitly blaming French immigration policy during an interview published last Sunday.

“No one can ignore reality anymore,” Zemmour said and added, “in spite of everything, most of the political class wants to believe that it is a social crisis when the root cause is obvious: immigration.”