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Riots scare Europe

France's immigrant rage could spill over

Paris — The French government Monday announced measures to stem a nationwide rampage by youths that showed no sign of abating, and several other European nations with large immigrant communities watched with concern that the violence could spread across their borders as cars were torched in Belgium and Germany.

The violence claimed its first fatality — a 61-year-old retired autoworker who died Monday of injuries suffered in an attack last week outside Paris.

MICHAEL SPINGLER/Associated Press (enlarge photo) Firefighters in Gentilly, south of Paris, battle an arson blaze early this morning. Disaffected youths, mostly Muslim immigrants from slum areas, have set thousands of fires in the country in a growing wave of violence. The government insisted it would impose order. The nationwide violence, most by Muslim youths, continued for an 11th day. The government said it would soon restore order.

Since the riots began Oct. 27 in a Paris suburb, they have spread to nearly 300 towns in what is largely perceived as a demand for attention from a neglected and embittered ethnic underclass.

Premier Dominique de Villepin announced curfews and called up police reservists. He promised that the government would take "the necessary measures to re-establish order very quickly."

Carried out largely by French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants, the rioting began after the deaths of two teenagers of North African descent who thought police were chasing them. They were electrocuted after hiding in a power station.

Many, but not all, of the rioters are young Muslims, members of a group that is disproportionately unemployed and feels marginalized by French society. Islam is the second-largest religion in mostly Catholic France. Muslims make up as much as 10 percent of the population, the largest such proportion in western Europe.

"Most of the young generation doesn't have jobs," said Nadim Younas, 39, a Parisian sign painter of Pakistani descent. "They are standing around here. They have drugs. When they are not busy, the devil is always there."

That devil apparently is also making its presence felt outside France: Five cars were torched Monday outside the main train station in Brussels, Belgium, and cars were also burned in Berlin and Bremen, Germany, in what authorities feared was copycat violence.

"This is something that should concern all European cities," said Dick Leurdijk, an expert on Europe at the Clingendael Institute of foreign policy in the Netherlands.

The U.S. Embassy in Paris on Sunday issued a warning to Americans traveling in France to be cautious. Australia, Austria, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Denmark, Slovakia and the Czech Republic on Monday issued warnings of their own.

Muslim influx hits home

In many ways, Europe is reaping the whirlwind of history. The years after World War II, and particularly the 1950s and '60s, saw major migration to Europe, with many of the newcomers arriving as temporary workers to rebuild a continent left devastated and bereft of many of its young men. They included Turkish guest workers who flooded into Germany and people from the Indian Subcontinent who moved to England for factory work.

Decolonization propelled the migration as well, with people from former North African colonies such as Algeria and Morocco, for example, moving to France.

Because the guest workers assumed their stay would be temporary, they made little effort to assimilate. Many Turks, for instance, have lived in Berlin for 40 years without learning German.

But for many, what began as a temporary stay has become permanent. While first-generation immigrants generally settled peacefully into ethnic enclaves, their children and grandchildren often feel alienated — at home neither in the land of their parents nor the land of their birth.

Massoud Shadjareh, the chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission in Britain, said in a recent interview that immigrants tend to compare their circumstances with those of people in their native countries, which makes them feel lucky. But members of the second generation, he said, compare their circumstances with others in their adopted homelands, and that can leave them feeling cheated.

The anger that sparked the riots in France after the death of the two youths in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois was inflamed when police set off tear gas near a mosque, and compounded when French interior minister and prospective presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy referred to the rioters as "scum."

But its causes run deep. According to reports, half of Clichy-sous-Bois' inhabitants are under 20, unemployment is above 40 percent and identity checks and police harassment are common. Housing is dilapidated.

In comments on TF1 television, Villepin said Monday that France "must offer them hope and a future." But he also charged that organized gangs are backing the violence as riots spread across the country.

There have been recent incidents of violence and signs of a clash of cultures in other European cities. Most notably, British citizens of South Asian and Jamaican descent allegedly carried out the July 7 suicide bombings against the London transportation system, which killed 52 people. And riots flared last month in Birmingham, England's second-largest city, sparked by tensions between members of the Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old black girl by an Asian man.

Last year, Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, who made a film perceived as critical of Islamic culture, was stabbed and shot dead in Amsterdam, by a Muslim extremist of Dutch and Moroccan nationality who later got life in prison. A number of mosques were desecrated in revenge for the attack.

Tolerance put to test

The cultural gulf can be vast. For example, many people in the Netherlands say that Muslim values conflict with Dutch values of respect for women and tolerance of homosexuals — and that the one thing they won't tolerate in their country is intolerance.

Likewise, French officials have said that residents of France must accept the French value of secularism. Last year, the wearing of headscarves or other religious clothing in school was banned.

Just last week in Denmark, thousands of Muslims — unimpressed by defenses of the Danish value of freedom of expression — took to the streets to protest the publication of unflattering cartoon images of Islam's founder, the Prophet Muhammad.

Abdelkarim Carrasco, a leader of Spain's estimated 1 million Muslims, said the French experience poses a key test for Europe.

"Either Europe develops and supports the idea of a mixed culture, or Europe has no future," he said. "Europe has to learn from what the United States has done. It is a country that has taken in people from all over the world."

The Associated Press contributed to this article.