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### Viewing cable 05PARIS7835, ANALYZING THE CIVIL UNREST -- THE ISLAMIC FACTOR

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Reference ID | Created | Released | Classification | Origin
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
05PARIS7835 | 2005-11-17 17:19 | 2010-12-01 12:00 | CONFIDENTIAL | Embassy Paris

`

    This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

    171719Z Nov 05

` `

    C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 PARIS 007835

    SIPDIS

    DEPT ALSO FOR EUR/WE, DRL/IL, INR/EUC, EUR/ERA, EUR/PPD,
    AND EB
    DEPT OF COMMERCE FOR ITA
    DEPT OF LABOR FOR ILAB

    E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/07/2015
    TAGS: PGOV ELAB EU FR PINR SOCI ECON
    SUBJECT: ANALYZING THE CIVIL UNREST -- THE ISLAMIC FACTOR

    REF: A. (A) PARIS 7682 AND PREVIOUS

    ¶B. (B) EMBASSY PARIS DAILY REPORT FOR OCTOBER 28 -
    NOVEMBER 16 (PARIS SIPRNET SITE)
    ¶C. (C) PARIS 7527

    Classified By: Pol/MC Josiah Rosenblatt for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)

    ¶1. (SBU) Summary: The perpetrators of the urban rampaging
    (refs) in France are by and large of Arab-African and
    Black-African background. In most cases, they are also
    Muslims, raising the question as to what extent their
    religious affiliation helps explain the explosion in France's
    immigrant suburbs. There is widespread agreement that
    unemployment and lack of education, and not religious
    affiliation, are the primary factors underlying the angry
    hopelessness of urban youth. That said, responsible
    commentators on the situation -- from officials who monitor
    potential support for terrorist activities to rights
    activists with long experience working in troubled
    neighborhoods -- see religious affiliation as a complicating
    factor. Thus far most of the youths in question, while
    happening to be Muslim by culture, are generally not viewed
    as individually inspired by Islam, just as Islamic political
    groupings are generally not viewed as being directly behind
    the violence. Observers note, however, that these groups
    have not hesitated to try to exploit the unrest for their own
    purposes, just as extremist and nativist politicians on the
    far-right have played to racism and xenophobic fears. The
    government's decision to turn to Muslim leaders to quell the
    unrest is itself seen by some as misdirected and a bad
    precedent, in contradiction with the French republic's strict
    secularism. In sum, while efforts to politicize the unrest
    are seen as unsuccessful to date, there is concern that not
    "getting it right" in dealing with the problems of France's
    underclass Muslims could eventually produce the very Islamic
    extremism identity that (almost) no one wants. End summary.

    No direct links to Islamic extremism
    ------------------------------------

    ¶2. (C) Though it has carefully watched for it, the French
    Government has not discerned any significant link between
    Islamic extremism and the recent unrest. As Christophe
    Chaboud, head of the Ministry of Interior's counter-terrorism
    coordination body (known by its French acronym - UCLAT),
    categorically reconfirmed to PolOff on November 15, "we (the
    GoF) have not found any link between Islamic extremists and
    those fomenting the unrest. He acknowledged that police and
    internal intelligence organizations have received "a few"
    signs that some Islamic extremists have participated in the
    violence. That said, he believed that they were acting as
    individuals and not as members of a coordinated, Islamic
    group.

    Fears of extremist and criminal exploitation
    --------------------------------------------

    ¶3. (C) Chaboud reported that GoF monitoring of websites and
    blogs (in France and abroad) nonetheless reveals that
    extremists are trying to exploit the unrest to their
    advantage, claiming (for example) that it results from GOF
    attempts to control and muzzle Islam in France. Asked
    whether there was any connection between organized criminal
    gangs and Islamic extremists in exploiting the unrest,
    Chaboud said those in the "revolt movement" were, at most,
    only petty criminals. Indeed, police are quoted in press as
    observing that where organized crime is strongest is often
    where there has been, counter to conventional expectations,
    little unrest, presumably because drug-selling organizations
    view burning cars as bad for business. (See also ref C for
    the views of a investigating judge on the connection between
    criminality and current unrest.)

    Just hoodlums?
    --------------

    ¶4. (SBU) Samira Cadasse, vice-president of a leading women's
    rights group that focuses on empowering women in poor
    immigrant communities, told PolOff that the small groups of
    youths responsible for car burnings and police taunting are
    the same ones who "hold hostage" suburban housing projects
    throughout France. Cadasse's NGO -- "Ni Putes Ni Soumises
    (NPNS -- translated literally as "Neither Whores nor
    Submissives") focuses on the difficulties poor, often Muslim
    women of immigrant background face in resisting
    discrimination from French society as well as oppression
    within their own cultural traditions. Cadasse said NPNS has
    tried to highlight for years the way frustrated, angry,
    aimless young men in poor neighborhoods, under the blind eye
    of French authorities, visit their powerlessness first and
    foremost on their female relatives.
    Or "Islamic" hoodlums?
    ----------------------

    ¶5. (SBU) Contrary to much of the media reporting, Cadasse
    said she definitely also perceived an Islamist element behind
    some of the violence. Exclaiming that, "we all know who
    these guys are," she claimed they had shaved their (Islamic)
    beards in order to spread violence. These unemployed
    Islamist youths were the same troublemakers who had sought to
    repress women in the troubled suburban neighborhoods. She
    also believed it significant that there were no girls among
    the troublemakers. That said, while Cadasse clearly believed
    that the misapplication of tenets some attribute to Islam
    abets the widespread oppression of women in these immigrant
    communities, she stopped well short of calling the "big
    brothers" committed Islamist fundamentalists.

    No role models or jobs
    ----------------------

    ¶6. (SBU) Cadasse identified lack of jobs as the real root of
    the problem, which was compounded by the relative generosity
    of the social safety net. As a result, young men sat idle at
    home, while receiving a generous -- but ultimately
    insufficient and humiliating -- 950-euro stipend from the
    government. They could not afford to move away from their
    parents, but at the same time accepted no parental control.
    She did not think it accurate to portray these youths as
    victims; these young men were guilty of arson and other
    crimes and should be punished. At the same time, she thought
    it would be difficult to break the vicious cycle. Cadasse
    saw the current crisis -- due to larger failures and
    shortfalls in education, employment opportunities and housing
    -- as very difficult to resolve, and doubted that the
    government had the will do go beyond the "Band-Aid" solutions
    employed in the past.

    30 years of "ghettoization"
    ---------------------------

    ¶7. (SBU) According to Cadasse, the government's history of
    treating only the symptoms rather than the causes of minority
    unemployment and social exclusion, and its failure to curb a
    thirty-year ghettoization trend among French immigrant
    communities, "has been an error" of governments of both left
    and right. Cadasse was pessimistic about the prospects of
    bettering the circumstances of France's immigrants of Arab
    background. She said that overall, "we're no better off than
    22 years ago" -- at the time of the "march of the beurs" -- a
    turning point in North African immigrant activism. While she
    did not envision a "Marshall plan" for France's
    inner-city-like suburbs, she believed that "drastic measures"
    were necessary nonetheless. PM de Villepin's pledge to
    reverse the budget cuts to associations (like NPNS) and to
    offer a range of other social program enhancements was a
    positive start. Government funding was also critical for
    secular NGOs like NPNS to combat the influence of Islamists.
    But she doubted the government had the will to stay the
    course. In her view, it was too tempting for the government
    to focus on security in an attempt to appeal to
    far-right-leaning voters in the upcoming presidential
    election.

    ¶8. (SBU) Comment: French NGOs are largely dependent on
    government support, and typically receive 80 percent or more
    of their funding from the state. These associations are
    essential to holding together the social fabric of poor
    neighborhoods, providing everything from food kitchens to
    tutoring to psychological support activities. Soon after
    President Chirac's re-election in 2002, the state financing
    of these associations was cut severely. Prime Minister
    Villepin last week promised to restore the cuts. The
    government appears to understand that diminishing the
    viability of these secular, state-funded charitable
    organization risks a vacuum that could be filled by home
    grown, Islamist self-help organizations. End Comment.

    GOF guilty of using religion?
    -----------------------------

    ¶9. (SBU) Interestingly, some see the government itself as
    guilty to some degree of having violated the principle of
    secularism it holds so dear. In a meeting with the rector of
    the Grand Mosque of Lyon on November 15, one Muslim religious
    leader's criticized the government for violating France's
    strict separation of the religious and the public. The
    Rector, Kamel Kabtane, took to task the government's effort
    to use Muslim religious figures to calm the situation in
    troubled neighborhoods. Kabtane said that many of his
    fellow-clerics were also ambivalent about the French
    government's call on religious leaders to "do the work of the
    government and security forces." "If farmers started
    protesting", said the Rector, "the government wouldn't call
    on the Archbishop to resolve the situation." He warned
    against attributing a religious dimension to socio-economic
    problems; there was a risk it could become a self-fulfilling
    prophecy.

    Better ecumenical than Muslim-only
    ----------------------------------

    ¶10. (SBU) Kabtane went on to point out that, "the government
    says that France is a secular state, but then -- when it
    serves its purposes to do so -- it turns around and calls on
    religious leaders to solve non-religious problems that the
    secular state should have been addressing over the last 20-30
    years." Kabtane has not issued a statement condemning the
    violence or calling upon the perpetrators to stop, as he
    believes it is important not to conflate the actions of
    violent youths with Islam. If religious leaders are to be
    involved, he believes it would be preferable to adopt an
    ecumenical rather than a sectarian approach. To that end, he
    was organizing a meeting of religious leaders from the
    Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities in Lyon on November
    ¶16. His aim was to convince those present to issue a joint
    statement condemning the violence and calling for it to end.

    The risk of an anti-Muslim backlash
    -----------------------------------

    ¶11. (SBU) Kabtane indicated that he was much more worried
    about backlash against Muslims following on the recent unrest
    than about any putative use of the unrest by fundamentalists.
    On November 12, a Molotov cocktail was thrown over the wall
    into the Grand Mosque of Lyon. Then on November 13, someone
    threw a Molotov cocktail over the wall of a mosque in
    Saint-Chamond (a town near Lyon). Kabtane said that Muslims
    were paying the price for the fact that French politicians --
    and foreign media -- have blamed the violence on "Muslims"
    and "immigrants" instead of on "unemployed" or
    "underprivileged" youths. (Comment: We have now heard
    reports of a handful of such attacks against mosques. In all
    likelihood, they were perpetrated by right-wing,
    anti-immigrant nativists. End Comment.) Kabtane added that
    he was satisfied with the demonstrations of support he had
    received from French authorities in the wake of the attack on
    the mosque. The local prefect visited the site the following
    morning, and Interior Minister Sarkozy had telephoned Kabtane
    to offer support.

    The French school system as the key
    -----------------------------------

    ¶12. (SBU) During a public affairs talk show on the evening
    of November 13, conservative philosopher Alain Finkelkraut
    addressed how "the Republic" could reclaim the troubled,
    inner-city-like neighborhoods "lost" to both law and order
    and social integration. Finkelkraut poetically evoked his
    experience in France's public school system, stressing its
    role in separating youths from surrounding society in order
    better to inculcate the values that underpin the "Republican
    ideal" of equal citizenship blind to race, nationality,
    religion and social class. Finkelkraut lamented the way
    "society had invaded the schools," bringing with it a raft of
    demands, identities, exceptions and resentments that, taken
    together, interfered with the inculcation of a shared
    national identity. In Finkelkraut's view, taking back the
    neighborhoods for "Republican" law and order was the lesser
    half of the battle. Providing, to those most removed from
    the possibility of it, the convictions and opportunities
    required for successfully integrating into French society was
    the more difficult, and most urgent challenge, facing France
    today.

    Otherwise sectarianism could follow
    -----------------------------------

    ¶13. (SBU) Finkelkraut warned that failure to meet this
    challenge would inevitably open the door to the ascendancy of
    separate, alternative identities focused on religion.
    Controversial Islamic activist Tarik Ramadan, who also
    participated in the round-table discussion, indirectly
    confirmed as much. Turning around the image of "the Republic
    needing to take back the neighborhoods", Ramadan, unctuously,
    but deftly, argued for the right of "the neighborhoods" --
    their cultures, identities, religion, etc. -- to "take the
    Republic."

    The French fear of "communitarism"
    ----------------------------------

    ¶14. (SBU) Former Prime Minister Alain Juppe -- spending a
    semester teaching in Canada -- posted a long piece to his
    blog (www.al1jup.com) that clearly identified "Islam in
    France," specifically "radical Islam," as a factor also
    "responsible" for the current unrest. In Juppe's view,
    "French Islam's" refusal -- so far -- to "solemnly proclaim"
    its acceptance of the "separation of the temporal from the
    spiritual" and its recognition of "non-negotiable, universal
    human rights" (including gender equality) contributes to the
    difficulty of integrating those who live in the neighborhoods
    where radical Islam presents itself as an alternative model
    for social organization.

    Comment
    -------

    ¶15. (SBU) The gangs of underclass youths who are the
    perpetrators of the car burnings and urban violence in France
    are not Islamists, nor are they at all motivated by religion.
    It is highly misleading to characterize them -- as is often
    done in media coverage -- as "insurgent" and "Muslim" youths.
    The anger felt by these youths stems from how they are
    trapped and without a future -- facing pervasive racial
    prejudice, and without the skills and education needed to
    get-a-life of employment and conventional respect.

    ¶16. (SBU) That said, the dominant religion in France's
    low-income housing projects affected by the recent violence
    is Islam, and there are those intent on "saving" these
    communities from their social ills by re-founding them on
    religious, as opposed to secular, principles, in effect
    filling the vacuum where French republican values have failed
    to take root. Whether or not Islamic organizations and
    fundamentalist proselytizing will make significant inroads
    among the inhabitants of France's immigrant suburbs of course
    depends on the effectiveness of the GOF's social programs and
    the willingness of French society at large to face up to its
    pervasive prejudices against Blacks and Arabs.

    Please visit Paris' Classified Website at:
    http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/paris/index.c fm

    Stapleton

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