Islam

Talk of war is emerging from the right and the left

Is France at war? Alain Finkielkraut, one of the most popular and respected — if controversial — intellectuals in France, appears to think so. Finkielkraut recently made further enemies by joining a growing set of French intellectuals, writers and politicians who say that France is in the midst of a desperate battle. To Finkielkraut, the rioting and looting that ripped across France earlier this summer was part of an ongoing conflict between two groups: those who respect Republican values and those who hate the French Republic.

MARSEILLE, France—It is 10 a.m. but the squalid streets beneath the stained tower blocks of the Rosiers neighbourhood are deserted. A few young men armed with Kalashnikovs stand guard near a playground where torn garbage bags and rusted-out shopping carts perch in place of children.

At the edge of the housing project, a dumpster blocks the way in. Beside it, three stern-faced teenagers search vehicles and admit only residents or drug associates. They haul back the dumpster and guide cars past concrete barriers, broken furniture and craters in the pavement toward the next group of sentries deeper in the compound.

Interesting snapshot that unfortunately fails to address the role Islam plays in the No-Go Zones of France.

A mother quoted in the Star piece also turns up in this City-Journal entry citing a Guardian article:

The vacuum of effective policing . . . allowed a twisted cycle of brutality to fester; ferocious violence that Amine knows too well. On 29 December 2020 his brother disappeared. For six days his mother scoured the city until tipped off that the 21-year-old would not be coming home. Brahim Kessaci was found beside another body in the boot [trunk] of a burned-out car on a road heading out of the city. A third body had been sliced into pieces with a chain saw and images sent to his traumatised father.

There was no widespread rioting in response to these horrible crimes.

The country’s riots cannot be explained away by socio-economic woes alone.

The most destructive, spectacular and costly riots in France’s recent history, surpassing even the infamous unrest of 2005, are over. To the Anglophone media and its audiences they were an expression of the anger felt among the children of France’s former overseas possessions – a generational resentment fuelled by experiences of poverty, discrimination and painful colonial legacies.

Others have noted the opportunistic, even recreational quality of rioting, but the anger – the rage – against France among parts of its youth is real and goes deeper than one specific event.

Women in the southern French city of Lyon are reportedly facing sexual harassment from men on a near-daily basis. They go without make-up, change their preferred attire, and even avoid certain areas of the city to live their daily lives in peace.

Several women have shared their experiences living in the city and having their mobility hampered, whether travelling by public transport or simply walking down the street. They told the news platform Actu about their day-to-day lives in Lyon.