Muslim youth began rioting in France on Oct. 27. By Nov. 5 nearly 1,000 automobiles had been destroyed, many buildings set on fire and citizens killed. Over 9,000 police officers were mobilized to restore order as hundreds were arrested. On Nov. 8 it was reported that over 1,400 cars were destroyed in a single night. The violence spread from Paris to 300 French communities, and then to Belgium where Muslim youth reportedly torched five cars near the central train station in Brussels. After nearly two weeks of ethnic rioting French President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency and the French government took the controversial step of deporting rioters who were foreign nationals. Brandishing a carrot as well as a stick, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin promised a redress of grievances while the French President admitted that the situation of Muslims in France was neither happy nor acceptable, and that measures would be taken to improve conditions.
The riots began in Clichy-sous-Bois, a Paris suburb, when two Muslim teenagers attempted to dodge the police by ducking into a power substation where they were electrocuted. The boys were of Tunisian and Mauritanian extraction. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was blamed for the deaths on account of his promise to wage a "war without mercy" against the "rabble" of crime-ridden Muslim neighborhoods. This "war" was resented by Muslim youth, who mobilized a counterstrike. As a result, the entire French government is embarrassed by the outcome. Of course, the embarrassment is aggravated by the fact that French intellectuals and politicians have long asserted that racism, as allegedly practiced in the United States, is the immediate cause of rioting in non-white neighborhoods. France imagined itself to be exempt from such outbreaks.
Prime Minister Villepin is famous for declaring that Europe's strength is to be found in "diversity" and the "ever stronger cohesion of a mosaic of peoples, languages, and cultures." According to Villepin, "While the world hesitates between an aspiration toward the universal and the call of specific identities, the European venture shows its capacity to force destiny." As pointed out by German foreign policy expert Christoph Bertram, the French diplomatic class would like to depict France as "a lighthouse sending beacons of reason and good sense out into the dark world of prejudice and ideological fervor." But, he noted, "beacons provide the light for other ships to steer a safe course." Not for themselves.
It is easy to point out the faults and mistakes of others, yet difficult to avoid faults and mistakes oneself. The problem of ethnic strife between Christians and Muslims is intractable, as suggested by the centuries-long strife of the Balkans (i.e., Bosnia, Kosovo, etc.). Asian and Africa Muslims have fought Europeans for over a thousand years. The violence will not end tomorrow. While Europe seeks unity in diversity, the contradiction will out. Squaring the political circle is as utopian as it ever was, and "forcing destiny" (which the French Prime Minister advocates) is merely a pigheaded pronouncement. The riots in France, and the French government's reaction, underscore the economic and political decline of France. Promising the moon to impoverished immigrants will only exacerbate strife in the long run as France compounds its sins with a promise it cannot keep. Correcting the economic inequities between African immigrants and native Frenchmen will require an open-ended transfer of wealth from one group to another by way of an economy that already grunts under high taxation, high unemployment and compromised productivity.
The legacy of European racism is well documented. What follows today is a politics of guilt, apparent in many nations where ethnic Europeans dominate. In light of the real results of policy, the politics of guilt is a vain attempt to throw ineffectual crumbs to offended and downtrodden non-European peoples. There is no amount of wealth transference that will correct the underlying problems. European racism still exists, even in those who do not feel racial pride or racial enmity. Economic inequality between Europeans and non-Europeans isn't going to disappear except through a reduction of Europe's standard of living. And this reduction will not do anything positive for the world's Muslims. It will only stop up the wellspring of envy, but never cure racial feelings (acknowledged or unacknowledged) that exist beneath the surface on both sides. Humane and enlightened people do exist throughout the world, but they are always a minority. The tribal instinct in man is real, and reading Michelet (or Villepin's version of Michelet) isn't going to overcome the natural floodtide of ethnic feeling on every side.
Non-European Muslims cannot and will not immigrate into Europe and become European Christians (or secular French intellectuals). Like Europeans, the Muslims are children of history. In addition, they are children of the Prophet Mohammed. The Europeans are the children of the colonial empires of a hundred years ago. The human race is divided into families, tribes and nations. The relationships between tribes and nations have ever been mediated by interminable warfare. Prime Minister Villepin thinks that he can chart a path around history, breaking new ground in "unity through diversity." May God bless his effort, but history teaches that his goal is beyond the reach of mortal man. Instead of admitting the utopian nature of their project, the French political and intellectual classes are determined to redouble their utopian campaign and reaffirm a set of unrealistic ideals.
Europe has - for the moment - lost the will to organize Crusades against Islam. But Europe retains the will to persist in a futile effort to homogenize and Europeanize the non-European peoples of the world. It is an unconscious attempt to colonize the planet intellectually and spiritually. It is through intellectual rationalism that European man sees himself as a "citizen of the world." But no such citizenship exists - or can prove meaningful. Instead of acknowledging diversity (as it claims) this program subtly levels all religious and ethnic distinctions by pronouncing their superficiality. When will it finally be admitted, at long last, that such distinctions are not superficial?
The secular West believes what the Chinese believed before their civilization stumbled and fell over 160 years ago. The West believes itself to be the central civilization of history. The West takes its superiority for granted and assumes that its intellectual precepts and standards are somehow permanent and universal instead of transitory and peculiar. The arrogance of the West is now subsumed in an imagined tolerance of the "other," and the "outsider." But as the outsider will tell you, this tolerance is form without substance. Its hollowness is found in empty promises of equality and development, in self-defeating socialist prescriptions and premature self-congratulations. The non-European feels and knows the European ideology is false because the non-European is closer to human nature and the tragic realities of history. He sees that the European ideology has undermined Europe's instincts, but only superficially.
The West toys with the idea that we have arrived at "the end of history," but the non-European feels the continued sting of history. The "enlightened" European fantasizes about the brotherhood of man. The tribes and nations and religious sectarians of the planet will never cooperate in this "brotherhood." In the last analysis, every tribe - including the European - wants brotherhood on its own terms. The secularist wants a secular, tolerant world. The believer wants a religious, theologically corrected world. The European wants a Europeanized world. All of these demands, dreams and schemes cannot be harmonized. This is the truth against which the European politicians fight. It is a truth that Europe will not recognize, even though the history of Europe teaches it over and over.
The promise of universal equality given by French President Chirac cannot and will not be kept. The program of Prime Minister Villepin will deliver the opposite of what Chirac has promised, not because Villepin or Chirac are racist villains, but because if nature is to be commanded it must first be obeyed. And that goes for human nature as well. The French government now makes love to a dangerous error. Chirac and Villepin have no other choice, no other option, because they yet believe in the brotherhood of man.
