Mo



Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands


November 6, 2005

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST





Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's
about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots
and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western
Standard back in February.



Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of
my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in
London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night
as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of
urban unrest.''

''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.



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