On the 11th day of rioting in France by “mainly Muslim rioters,” the media is finally beginning to be willing to report that there may be a religious element to this madness.

Newsweek’s November 14th issue will say:

Soon, dozens of angry young men came from the soulless high-rises looking for cops to fight and cars to burn on streets named, as it happens, after heroes of French culture: boulevard Emile Zola, allee Albert Camus, rue Picasso. Dead white men. “It’s Baghdad here,” the rioters shouted. Night after night last week, rage spread through the ghettos that ring Paris, then beyond to every corner of France. When a tear-gas canister exploded near a mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois on the fourth violent evening, a new cry went up. “Now this is war,” said one of the vandals. Others cried “jihad.”

Reuters reports:

Reacting to official suggestions that Islamist militants might be orchestrating some of the protests, one of France’s largest Muslim organizations issued a fatwa against the unrest.

WaPo:

The incident incensed youths in the neighborhoods, where unemployment is high, particularly among the French-born descendants of Muslim Africans and Arabs who say they feel the government has abandoned them.

The New York Times, laughably according to Ed, reports that it’s definitely not religious.

Though a majority of the youths committing the acts are Muslim, and of African or North African origin, the mayhem has yet to take on any ideological or religious overtones.

…

In an effort to stop the attacks and distance them from Islam, France’s most influential Islamic group issued a religious edict, or fatwa, condemning the violence. “It is formally forbidden for any Muslim seeking divine grace and satisfaction to participate in any action that blindly hits private or public property or could constitute an attack on someone’s life,” the fatwa said, citing the Koran and the teachings of Muhammad.

And Captain Ed summarizes what is at stake here.

This kind of multi-culti blindness will cause France and the West to lose the war on terror. The Islamists are playing for keeps, and the media organs of the West want to pretend that all religions are equal and that only “youths” cause unrest. Until the Islamists have the French government under the knife, we can expect the global media to continue its apologism for terrorists who use legitimate social concerns to start armed insurrections in the heart of the West. Even with guns and bombs aimed against the French, the media will not recognize a war when they see it.

Below the Beltway adds:

Meanwhile, the American media continues to largely ignore the events in France and to refer to the rioters as “youths” while ignoring the fact that they are predominantly, if not exclusively Muslim. As I said several days ago, France is reaping the whirlwind for its lax immigration policies of the past 40 years or so and for the fact that it has largely ignored its immigrant population. They are, it seems, dealing with an angry, most likely radicalized population in their midst. And, as events in Denmark and elsewhere demonstrate, it is a problem that all of Europe will eventually have to deal with.

The Washington Times is reporting that “French authorities have hinted that Islamic militants may be manipulating angry teenagers to defy the government, using the Internet to organize the unrest. ”

Raphael Satter makes the opposite argument.

In other words: poverty, while undoubtedly a factor in the unrest, has only marginal explanatory power. Spectacularly uninformed commentary aside, the same holds true for radical Islam. In fact the argument can be made that the disturbances in France stem just as much from social problems rooted in traditional French politics as from the economic, racial or religious complications of Muslim immigration.

Austin Bay counters:

Poverty exacerbates all problems, but poverty in and of itself does not produce violence. Migrants from France’s former Muslim colonies initially came for jobs, not to assimilate or “become French.” But the migrants stayed. Now France’s “Muslim neighborhoods” are permanent “cultural islands.” The French government’s own duplicitous policy towards Salafist/Islamist terror has backfired. France has fought Islamist terrorism. For 15 years the French government has been supporting the Algerian government’s battle against the Armed Islamic Group (GIA, the French acronym). In the mid-1990s GIA set off several bombs in and around Paris. However, the French government’s rhetoric has been appeasenik and enabling. Ah yes, the source of Muslim outrage is…America! France was following its Cold War strategy of snaking between Washington and Moscow. Remember, Reagan frightened the USSR. In 1983 Reagan was going to cause a nuclear war in Europe. Etcetera.

Appeasement and duplicity have once again failed as policy. Didn’t work for France in the Rhineland and at Munich, either

Rob at Say Anything brings it a bit closer to home.

This same sort of insurrection is exactly what we risk every day we allow the current state of illegal immigration to exist, and Bush’s “guest worker” program is no solution to the issue. It does not encourage assimilation or integration but would rather legitimize the creation of an underclass of second-class, pseudo-citizens who have a personal stake in our country but no true loyalty to it’s society.

Roger L. Simon reports receiving an email from Paris.

I am absolutely astounded at the failure of this government to attack the problem of the riots. I don’t see it as being primarily an issue of religion, but a turf war by drug criminals, who happen to be of muslim extraction. But the failure of the government to nip this in the bud has now opened the door for players who do have a religious agenda. Mid-week I was cautiously optimistic about the situation. Now I’m very pessimistic.

Mark Steyn:

‘’French youths,'’ huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the “youths” are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn’t take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ‘’French'’: They’re young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you’re likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ‘’Arab street,'’ but it’s in Clichy-sous-Bois.

…

Theodore Dalrymple concludes a piece on British suicide bombers with this grim summation of the new Europe: ‘’The sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict.'’ Which sounds an awful lot like a new Dark Ages.

And PeakTalk observes some irony.

The term “Paris Riots” has become a complete misnomer. There’s war going on in France and that is coming from someone who is not given to hyperbole, but the facts have made that conclusion inescapable. It is almost unbelievable that the Chirac administration truly believed that it could somehow escape the jihadist wrath by staying out of Iraq and distance itself from America’s War on Terror. The bitter irony is that rather than having his troops deployed in the Middle East, the French president may now need them at home.

Over at No Parasan, we have this:

the Union of Islamic Organisations of France issued a fatwa ordering young Muslims to calm themselves and to meditate. The Union also included a statement which squarely places the responsibility of the riots on failed French policies regarding immigration and minorities.

Then this…

Suburban residents abandoned by their government and left at the mercy of gangs. … Yes, but thanks to the fatwa those gangs will be busy meditating from now on.

UPDATE: Captain Ed points out a pre-riot warning, and wonders about the collective amnesia of the reporting. (Via Tinkerty Tonk)

Within six weeks of the GSPC announcement, we see a massive and coordinated uprising originating from the ghettoes in which Algerian and other Muslim refugees and their families live. The “riots’ have sophisticated coordination between cell leaders, using the Internet and instant messaging as well as cell phones — an odd tool for a spontaneous demonstration where one neighborhood would hardly have those phone numbers at the ready.

The Islamist connection might get ignored by the media now, but when it involved Iraq as a training base (as the Post article did), they had no hesitation in writing about it. One wonders why they have suddenly developed amnesia about it now.

But Law Hawk points to Clive Davis, who thinks that the Muslim aspect may be being over emphasized, and he quotes from John Lichfield’s Independent article:

Talk of an intifada is absurdly misleading. Firstly, the rioters are far from being all Muslim (although more than half are from Islamic backgrounds). Second, they have no sense of political or religious identity and no political demands. Their allegiance is to their quartier and their gang.

UPDATE: 11/8/2005 - Lost Budgie reports that Fox News is now using the term Muslim Riots.