Newsday.com: Why French youth are rioting

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# Why French youth are rioting ## Muslims suffer joblessness, exclusion
November 8, 2005 For nearly two weeks, massive race riots have spread from the dismal suburbs of Paris to 300 French towns, a stunning development that has shocked France and triggered worries in other parts of Europe where communities of restive, disaffected Muslim immigrants have grown in large numbers. Most of the looters and arsonists who have torched more than 1,400 vehicles in violent clashes with French police are young Muslims of Arabic or black African heritage, whose rage reflects frustration with discrimination, poverty and joblessness. All it took to ignite the riots was the accidental electrocution in a power substation of two young boys who feared they were being chased by police (they weren't, as their surviving friend admitted.) There may be a temptation for Americans to indulge in a binge of schadenfreude, that Teutonic term for the joy one feels at another's misfortune. But clucking at France's serious predicament would be pointless and mean-spirited. It's true that French commentators, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's devastation, pointed with something approaching glee at America's racial divisions and the poverty of those left stranded in the midst of a rich society. But this French tragedy should be watched with a degree of sorrowful understanding. At the root of the problem is what the French call "social exclusion" - a genteel euphemism for the corrosive blend of racial bias, religious discrimination and economic isolation experienced by the growing numbers of Muslim youths, many of them second- or third-generation French natives born of immigrants from former French colonies in North and West Africa. French society tends to ostracize those who don't embrace French cultural identity. Muslims, however, often feel that they have never been considered really French, no matter how hard they try to assimilate. The spark for the rage is economic - unemployment among French Muslim youth is endemic. But the riots, increasingly organized through Internet sites, have given an opening for fundamentalist Islamists to radicalize French Muslims, giving the riots an even more volatile and sinister edge in an age of terrorism. French society now must confront its own demons and struggle to bridge the yawning gap of social and economic inequality that has sparked riots among its Muslims. hN Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.