Ghettos Shackle French muslims.

I found this oldish BBC archive article quite interesting. Id wondered how French Arabs had become known as French Muslims in the short space of time that elapsed since i lived there. I don’t think the article delves deeply enough into finding an answer sadly. And strangely, since al Beeb worship at the altar of multi culti here, I wonder why they haven’t worked out that multiculturalism also = ghettos, ergo same thing? Doh.

In the mid 90s I went to the University of Nancy, which has a high density of French North Africans. Like everyone I was with at the time I was determined to use the time to crack the language - which is pretty tricky. Problem was when we, mostly girls, arrived there in preparation for a year in France, we found it particularly difficult to permeate the clicky groups of French girls and boys in their final year. Nevertheless we did make friends with some people. Nearly all of them French born North Africans. And since they weren’t exactly welcomed by the French students there either they tended to hang around in groups and made a bee line for the English misfits on arrival. I suspect it wasn’t only because we were misfits and initially we resisted the temptation to hang around the halls of residence lobbies. They would hawk in male groups and it could be quite intimidating as a girl trying to get to the coffee machine in the evening quite frankly. Nonetheless we failed miserably at making friends with any of the girls there. How can I put this. French women aren’t merely aloof. They aren’t even friendly. They are obsessed, OBSESSED with boys. Which might be a good thing for the blokes out there except that by and large the women are devoid of a sense of humour and inclined to throwing hissy fits for no real reason. My Blackadder jokes were probably crap in French but when I did say anything mildy amusing the boys would laugh and the girls would stare at you like the mini Marie Antoinettes they all are. So we socialised, like all the English students before us, with the French boys – the North African hawkers. Not that this felt unusual or odd. To me they really were just French. And every word of French I speak today I owe to a group of friends called Havidah (girl), Karim, Nasser, Kader, Ali and Driss (oh and Christophe a pot smoking, chain smoking, beer guzzling student who liked to drink and drive) .

Half of these guys family roots were in the berber sections of Algeria, not that they could really relate to that. Driss who had curly blonde hair and blue eyes was a ‘berber’. The level of mistrust with the students extended to cultural groups also. The Moroccans disliked the Algerians and vice versa. Not so much dislike as outright shows of hatred at times. None of them were practising muslims. Id go so far as to say that most of them disliked religion and Islam and spent a good deal of time ridiculing it. They all lived in and came from surburban areas mostly comprised of high rise HLMs. The flip side to the religious side is that they were still overtly pro Palestine. The French media was crazy about Palestine. That’s all I remember seeing. It really aggravated and riled them. Iraq didn’t. Noone there was in any doubt that Saddam was a ‘connard’ (jerk). Noone even discussed it. We’d sit in bars drinking copiuous amounts of beer and Karim and co would sketch the odd cartoon: topics included AK-47s, Intifada, Intifada, Intifada, oh and Palestinian flags. I paid it little attention. I just figured they were blokes. They like drawing guns. And that Palestine was just another French student cause celebre.

There was as I mentioned a hawking tendancy in that group. They were quasi Mafioso. Since we were part of their little entourage of uni friends any gestures by other males in the University that were seen as turf encroaching could and would frequently flare up with mafia like responses. I always found that pretty startling to be honest but in the process I learned to swear in Arabic (omg!). So all things considered i suppose all the classic elements were there.

When my French got better I had to undertake a project so I chose to focus on something suitably liberal to score the appropriate grade I needed in my final year. I chose, to concentrate on integration, Islam, HLMs and student life in that area. In the process I spent time with Havidah and her family in the banlieues of Metz. I got to interview a French imam in his house (ive still got the transcript). And I attended an anti Le Pen rally in Paris which was also very well attended by the scary CRS. The group addressing racism was corrupt and run by an Algerian who didn’t seem to really do that much. I think it was SOS Racism and if im right the leader of the group has since been done for fraud.

I put together a project load of work which at the time didn’t feel as relevant to me then as it does now. Lately Ive been reading back through all of it sparked by the horrible scenes in France over the last month. I came to the conclusion even back then that French xenophobia and the failure of socialism with its high unemployment and unworkable job platforms play a large part in the complete lack of cohesion. Sarkozy is right to look at these issues but wrong if he thinks the British model is something to aspire to. Multi culturalism doesn’t work. It’s the lefts way of saying we don’t know how to deal with immigration. Its just forced ghettoisation by any other terms and reinforces a lack of identity where foreign policy needs a special sanction from minority groups or they’ll blow you up. That’s not exclusive to France or the UK either. You get pockets and ghettos created through immigration all over the West as people naturally band together, including the US.

Basically Karim and co wanted to be French. They didn’t have a very promising future and nothing much has changed since then for French youths in general except by and large yet more immigration and no jobs. But they certainly weren’t islamists waiting to pounce.

Fast forward a nos of years: 9/11, copious Intifada-Jihadee Kool Aid which gives them a buzz and a sense of belonging, Osama is Cool and unfuckingtouchable, democracy is for saps, the MSM banging their drums on anti Americanism, the proliferation of the internet, the total failure of the French socialist model etc to unravel the job market. The yobs there are now turning to those intifada mafioso style tactics (like ghetto gangs use stylised tactics wherever they are) and to devastating effect.

I wonder what Havidah and Karim make of it all. Its not one single driving factor behind the problems in France but its certainly all riding that islamist ‘wannabee in our club’ crest now, isnt it. France is going through huge upheaval just as Britain did in the 70s. Except that it’s a different post 9/11 world out there and what the government is trying to drive through isn’t easy. Chirac has once again turned to Sarkozy to help. He admires anglo-saxon economic policies, the melting pot - well that’s good news. Good luck to them. I expect 2007 can’t come soon enough. But I wouldn’t suggest for one second they look to modern multi cultural Britain for social inspiration thereafter.