MORE RIOTS IN FRANCE: “In recent days police patrols in a number of towns across the country have been attacked by petrol bombs. ‘This latest clash marks the progressive start of a repeat of the riots of November 2005,’ the statement said, referring to the incident in Grigny.”
UPDATE: On a more positive note, here’s a report on the U.S. from the Christian Science Monitor:
The Islamist radicalism that inspired young Muslims to attack their own countries – in London, Madrid, and Bali – has not yielded similar incidents in the United States, at least so far.
“Home-grown” terror cells remain a concern of US law officers, who cite several disrupted plots since 9/11. But the suspects’ unsophisticated planning and tiny numbers have led some security analysts to conclude that America, for all its imperfections, is not fertile ground for producing jihadist terrorists.
To understand why, experts point to people like Omar Jaber, an AmeriCorps volunteer; Tarek Radwan, a human rights advocate; and Hala Kotb, a consultant on Middle East affairs. They are the face of young Muslim-Americans today – educated, motivated, and integrated into society – and their voices help explain how the nation’s history of inclusion has helped to defuse sparks of Islamist extremism.
“American society is more into the whole assimilation aspect of it,” says New York-born Mr. Jaber. “In America, it’s a lot easier to practice our religion without complications.”
In a nation where mosques have sprung up alongside churches and synagogues, where Muslim women are free to wear the hijab (or not), and where education and job opportunities range from decent to good, the resentments that can breed extremism do not seem very evident in the Muslim community.
Let’s hope this is true, and remains so.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A “permanent intifada” in France?
On a routine call, three unwitting police officers fell into a trap. A car darted out to block their path, and dozens of hooded youths surged out of the darkness to attack them with stones, bats and tear gas before fleeing. One officer was hospitalized, and no arrests made.
The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.
One small police union claims officers are facing a “permanent intifada.” Police injuries have risen in the year since the wave of violence.
National police reported 2,458 cases of violence against officers in the first six months of the year, on pace to top the 4,246 cases recorded for all of 2005 and the 3,842 in 2004. Firefighters and rescue workers have also been targeted – and some now receive police escorts in such areas.
On Sunday, a band of about 30 youths, some wearing masks, forced passengers out of a bus in a southern Paris suburb in broad daylight Sunday, set it on fire, then stoned firefighters who came to the rescue, police said. No one was injured. Two people were arrested, one of them a 13-year-old, according to LCI television.
Sounds bad. (Via Dan Riehl, who thinks this means that France’s accomodationist policy regarding Islamists isn’t working).