Europe at War

Mark Steyn, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and I have at least one thing in common, we both believe that Europe is under siege. Obviously we all know about the big attacks in Spain and London and what they meant in the often dubious but ever changing global war on terror. If all Europe had to deal with was the occasional massive bombing of civilians in transit to work, I wouldn’t be writing this column. Unfortunately, Europe has a far greater problem on their hands, a Euroarab civil war. The worst part about it is, the people of Europe of have brought this on themselves.

The issue at hand begins in France. On October 27th, a number of young Muslim and African young men, in a fit of rage over the accidental deaths of two North African teenagers who thought they were being chased by police, began rioting from their Paris housing project. They burned cars, threw projectiles and bashed in peoples skulls. And the violence didn’t stop there.

Rioting spread to 300 French towns by late Sunday night, as vandals burned more than 1400 vehicles. Dozens of police officers were wounded and almost 400 people were arrested.

As of this writing, the rioting in France has gone on for 12 days and after a State of Emergency was declared, there are some signs that daylight may be breaking in France after this long arduous night. The rest of Europe does not appear to be so lucky. The unrest that began in a Parisian housing project has already spread to parts of Denmark, Germany, and Belgium, leaving other European countries with large Muslim populations holding wondering if and when they will be next.

The spin on this story is that these are disaffected, unemployed youths whom are victims of French racism. They lack adequate opportunity and that’s why they are angry. When interviewed, they stop blowing up buses to tell the press that, “We hate the police!” “It's the start of war,” yells another. And after Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called the rioters “scum,” another “marginalized youth” blurted, “Put this in your notebook...” and then rattled off a string of obscenities meant to cut the man down.

Google searches of this watershed moment in modern European life deliver a ton of articles that mildly justify or validate these acts of violence due to the way the French government has treated its Muslim and African immigrants. David Ignatius of the Washington Post even cites James Baldwin in trying to figure out the genesis of this tragic event.

One day in the late 1970s, the writer James Baldwin was explaining to an Arab friend that he wanted to go back to America after many years as an expatriate in France. "America has found a formula to deal with the demon of race," Baldwin told Syrian businessman Raja Sidawi, who had a house near him in St. Paul de Vence. In France and the rest of Europe, people pretended that the race problem didn't exist, Baldwin said, but "someday it will explode."

Baldwin was right, on both counts. The United States began to find solutions for its tormenting "original sin" after its cities burned in the 1960s. And France, unable to make the same transition toward racial integration, is now watching flames engulf the poor suburbs of Paris that are home to many of its black and brown immigrants.

Mr. Ignatius is somewhat right. Civil unrest is the bi-product of high unemployment and a general malaise among your more impoverished people. These are the folks whom are typically prone to street violence, drug abuse, passing of terminal diseases and STD’s and are most likely to have children carrying on the pattern of self-destruction who themselves are born to underage parents out of wedlock. In that, there is some validity to the claim that the poor black youth in France are just expressing their rage at a system that builds high walls to keep the riffraff out of white French society.

To stop there in the analysis however misses a rather big point and it seems that only a few people like Mark Steyn have really understood what has unfolded across the pond.

In his column he writes, ”Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.

Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.''

''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.”

It is not as if the radical Muslim leadership has been coy about their intentions for Europe. Dr. Zaki Badwari, former Director of the Islamic Cultural Centre of London wrote, "A proselytizing religion [like Islam] cannot stand still. Islam endeavors to expand in Britain. It aims at bringing its message to all corners of the earth. It hopes that one day the whole of humanity will be one Muslim community, the Umma."

There’s more of this sort of rhetoric out there. The plan appears to be to have as many Muslims immigrate to Europe has possible and then simply fight the “heathens,” from within. This is a fairly good plan when you consider how the attacks in Spain and London went down.

Obviously some of this could have avoided had the French treated there own citizens right. Even more could have been avoided had they not decided to embrace welfare as a way of life. But no argument stemming form economic disparity excuses the intent and methods of radical Muslims intent on bring war to the doorsteps of every man, woman and child around the Western world.