By Jonathan Keiler

Very hard to feel bad for the French who are enduring a bout of rioting in their Islamic slums after the accidental electrocution of two Muslim youths.  The boys' deaths were not the fault of French authorities, whose actions, even by the accounts given by Islamic activists, were reasonable.  The police were either chasing three boys because they had committed some minor offense (French version) or had avoided a police checkpoint to get home after a day of Ramadan fasting.  Either way they should have halted for the authorities, but instead the jumped over a fence into some high voltage wires.  Two of three boys were killed, the third badly injured.

Paris police officials are already invoking the spector of civil war. The problem for the French with this civil unrest over a relatively minor incident with the police, is of an entirely different category than comparable racially oriented disturbances in the US.  In America, with very few exceptions on the fringe, race riots involving black Americans have been over social and economic conditions, not national status.  Even during the worst rioting in the 1960s few blacks did not consider themselves American.  They may have believed, in many cases rightly, that they were being treated as second class citizens, but they were citizens just the same.  Not so in France, Britain, or any of the West European countries with large Muslim populations.  Nor does it seem to much matter whether the European government willingly confers citizenship or not.  A huge percentage of these states Muslim citizens do not identify with their adopted countries. 

So for example, you have rioting in France, which has relatively liberal and easy standards for achieving citizenship, but not in Germany, which has highly restrictive standards.  That today the rioting is in France and not Germany has to do with other factors, and eventually Germany will have its turn. 

The problem for France is that there is not really any social amelioration that can or will solve this problem.  The rioting youths are second class citizens (like American blacks often were in the 1960s) but unlike American blacks, these people do not want French citizenship, even if they already have it.  They want an Islamic government, which would be entirely inconsistent with the fundamental ideas and beliefs of France itself.  Bon chance mon amis.