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| Two women talk as police officers stand in front of the courthouse in Meaux, near Paris, on September 22, 2011. The court convicted two other women for publicly wearing Islamic veils; France banned face coverings earlier that year. |
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: France and the rest of Western Europe have never honestly confronted the issues raised by Muslim immigration
The terrorist assault on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7 may have been organized by al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. But the attack, along with another at a Paris kosher market days later, was carried out by French Muslims descended from recent waves of North African and West African immigration. Well before the attacks, which left 17 dead, the French were discussing the possibility that tensions with the country’s own Muslim community were leading France toward some kind of armed confrontation.
Consider Éric Zemmour, a slashing television debater and a gifted polemicist. His history of the collapse of France’s postwar political order, “Le suicide français,” was No. 1 on the best-seller lists for several weeks this fall. “Today, our elites think it’s France that needs to change to suit Islam, and not the other way around,” Mr. Zemmour said on a late-night talk show in October, “and I think that with this system, we’re headed toward civil war.” Read on and comment » | Christopher Caldwell | Friday, January 16, 2015
