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July 3, 2023

Are France's Muslim migrant rioters engaged in jihad?

By Monica Showalter

Jihad seems so passé in the wake of Joe Biden's disastrous Afghanistan pullout, which not only took U.S. forces out of the region, but seems to have emboldened Russia and China.

But to paraphrase the famous saying, it also may be that we are not interested in jihad, but jihad is still interested in us.

The example of France with its mass rioting, which has since spread to Belgium and Switzerland, gives one pause.

What do we know about the rioters? 

Well, they are deracinated youth from the French underclass, Muslim migrants and the children of Muslim migrants who live in the bleak, ugly banlieue suburbs of Paris, where a generous welfare system ensures they don't need and don't want jobs, which for many leaves them without purpose, too.  Hatred for France, resistance to assimilation, and their own criminal activity pretty well keep them in the underclass.  They rioted before in 2005 over claims of racial discrimination, and they will probably riot again.  France has no idea what to do about them except coddle them more.  France's president is no longer mentioning that they even are migrants, let alone Muslims.

But the role of jihad from abroad shouldn't be dismissed, either, given that France has seen considerable new immigration from jihad-infested countries.

According to INSEE, the French statistical institute, migration to France from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan African countries is up since the end of the COVID pandemic lockdowns.  (The Wikipedia page on immigration to France is outdated.)  African immigrants, according to its bar chart, constitute 47.5% of all immigrants in France as of 2021, the last date for which data are available, and form the largest group of immigrants.  In what may be a sub-category of that, 29.3% are from the Maghreb, the Muslim north African states that had been French colonies, such as Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.  France has about 7 million immigrants from all countries, including 2.5 million naturalized immigrants, 4.5 million migrants, and 0.8 million non-immigrant foreign nationals, or expats. 

Meanwhile, Pew Research argues that about 300,000 to 400,000 additional immigrants in the country are illegal aliens, a rise from years past.

So yes, the Muslim base for those attracted to jihad has expanded.

Still, there are counter-indicators.  The Muslim mosques, for one, have called for peaceful protest rather than the barbarism currently on display from migrants across the country.

According to Le Monde (they prohibit reprinting even a small passage of their work), the Grand Mosque of Paris issued its condolences to the family of the man whose death at the hands of police while defying police orders yet called for calm in the neighborhoods, urging the youth not to react with violence.  The paper noted that there was a Muslim family holiday on, and riots would surely ruin it.

The locals ignored them.

There were tweets like this on Twitter:

These aren't verified as things that have happened in recent days, but they appear authentic.

There also are broader indicators like this:

It rather suggests that something is going on with these longtime terrorists.

Recent events, such as the toddler knife attack in recent weeks, may have had a jihad nexus, too, according to reports.

There also is the jihadi upsurge in Israel, where terrorists are enacting monstrous attacks in Israel.

The preponderance of evidence suggests that if jihadis aren't engaged in laid out plans of action to strike at France through its terrorism, at a minimum, they may be taking advantage of it.

France is loaded with purposeless migrant youth.  France's president, Emmanuel Macron, blames social media for their disposition to riot, which has something of a ring of truth, given that revolting other phenomena, such as gangster glorification and the doings of that movie Cuties, which depicted North African and sub-Saharan African girls engaging in pervy twerking dances for audiences, which was based on observed activities in France, are rife.  Things like that make migrants soulless and without empathy for others.  They wreck social capital.

In that case, France had better get busy getting rid of the jihadis in its midst, because they're what happens next.  Just read what Eric Hoffer had to say about that in The True Believer — that fanatics and mass movements arise out of people who've got a sense of already ruined lives.  Right now, France may have reached that stage: the jihadis are showing what they want to do, and what they can do.  That goes for the U.S. and the rest of the West, too.

Image: Twitter screen shot.

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