Moslems of Europe:    Albania | Bosnia | Bulgaria | England | France | Germany

On October 17, 1961, some 30,000 Moslems, mostly Algerians, demonstrated in Paris against a recent curfew imposed only on the Moslem population. They were met by some 7,000 armed police: when the smoke cleared, approximately 200 Algerians had been massacred in what would today be called a police riot. Weeks later, bloated Algerian corpses were still being pulled from the Seine, despite official claims that “the Algerians fired upon us first” and “there were only 5 deaths.” It was the culmination of a long battle rooted in the struggle for Algerian independence, a battle fought by street bombings and terror throughout France. The revolution which cost 100,000 French and 1 million Algerian lives in Algeria cost some 6,000 Algerian and 400 Francais de souche (European French) lives in France. Today Algeria is an independent country, and one Frenchman in ten identifies as Moslem. And yet many of the same problems persist, as French citizens and immigrants of North African descent struggle to find their place in French society.

France’s economy has been in the doldrums for years, with a current official unemployment rate of 9%. The rate is considerably higher among France’s hakris, children of Algerian immigrants, and such work as they can find is frequently dead-end menial labor. While Article 252-2 of the French constitution criminalizes workplace discrimination it is rarely enforced, and newspaper advertisements commonly include requests for “Persons of French cultural origin” or “Bleu-Blanc-Rouge” (Blue-White-Red: the colors of the French flag, shorthand for “only Ethnically and Culturally French need apply.”). French slums are filled with an ever-growing number of bored, disaffected, unemployed North African French youths. Some turn to delinquency and crime. France’s crime rate has grown 13% in the past two years, and today France has a higher rate of burglary and theft than the United States. Others turn to an increasingly radicalized brand of Islam; Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20th September 11 hijacker,” is a French citizen of Moroccan descent.

To date France’s government has done little to address these issues. France’s liberal intelligentsia still suffers considerable guilt pangs over the excesses of French colonialism, and has found that the best way to deal with racism and street crime is to pretend they don’t exist. France’s political establishment bends over backwards to avoid the appearance of race-baiting; by law the French census cannot seek information on religious or ethnic minorities. This gives the appearance of an equitable society, and helps ensure that no hard data exists on the effects of racism in France. Alas, it has not made these problems disappear. When polite talk of racial matters is forbidden, you will start to hear impolite talk … and thus Jean Le Pen, once derided as a fascist and neo-Nazi, garnered 18% of the popular vote in the recent election after beating Lionel Jospin, an incumbent left-leaning socialist, in the primaries.

France has the largest Moslem population in Europe: it also has the largest Jewish population, with some 600,000 French citizens of Jewish descent. The recent troubles in the Middle East have come home to roost in France with a spate of anti-Semitic attacks and incidents. While France has an unsavory history of anti-Semitism dating back well before the Dreyfuss Affair, the Jews of France are still wealthier and more integrated into French society than the North African French. The recent attacks have been as much about this disparity as about Palestinian rights to self-rule. In an effort to appease their Moslem population, the French government has been among Israel’s harshest critics and among the strongest European supporters of the Palestinian cause. The wave of synagogue-burnings was at first met by the “ostrich” approach (“We do not have an anti-Semitism problem: the synagogue burning and assaults on Orthodox Jews are merely vandalism… ). Of all the candidates in the recent election, only Jean LePen spoke out at length about Moslem attacks on French Jews… and his solution of “deport the Moslems” is gaining increasing popularity and attracting increasing alarm.

Had it not been for the victory of Charles Martel over the forces of Abd-er-Rahman at Poitiers (near modern-day Tours, France), Islam might well have supplanted Christianity as Europe’s state religion. Today there are more Moslems in France than Protestants; some experts estimate that within the next twenty-five years one out of four Frenchmen will profess Islam. Combined with a continuing decline in the number of France’s active Roman Catholics, it could well be that demographics accomplish what the Islamic armies were unable to do.