Islamic Victory

Why the Islamists may well succeed [Excerpts]

Jack Kelly

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin--whose name may one day be as synonymous with appeasement as Petain's is with collaboration--would like to make a deal.

His problem is finding Muslim "community leaders" who can stop the rioting. In communities where law and order are absent, it is thugs with guns who are in charge, not the voices of moderation, such as they are.

The remarkable thing about the spark that set off the rioting is that there were police in Clichy sus Bois for the youths to flee from. About ten percent of France's population are Muslims. The overwhelming majority live in concrete ghettoes like Clichy sus Bois, which the police as well as ordinary Frenchmen tend to treat as "no go" areas.

The result is these ghettoes are largely under the control of criminal gangs and religious extremists.

The discovery of a large Molotov cocktail factory in a southern suburb far from Clichy sus Bois suggests the violence is not spontaneous.

But if it is jobs the rioters are after, it must be as automobile workers, because the principal tactic of the rioters has been to torch cars, along with nursery schools and the occasional police station.

Most of the rioters are petty criminals. But others seek de jure recognition of a de facto partition of France that's been under way for some time.

"Some are even calling for areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the millet system of the Ottoman Empire," wrote Amir Taheri, who lives in Paris. "Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs."

A de facto millet system already is in place in parts of France, Taheri noted: "In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist hijab while most men grow their beards to the lengths prescribed by the sheiks."

It seems inconceivable that a civilized Western nation would bargain away to a handful of thugs its democratic principles and sovereignty over much of its territory. But the Islamists may well succeed. For though what the Islamists believe in is vile and reactionary, it is something. The French believe in nothing. (http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1105/jkelly111005.php3?printer_friendly)