Gun Violence in French Riots

[Neo-Luddite]

This stong mention of firearms (whether the rioters really are using them all that much or not) seems oddly timed with the E.U. move to further 'standardize' (read: restrict) firearm ownership.

The coverage on this is just about NON-EXISTANT here in the U.S. in any detail; all we get for coverage is 'angry French dis-enchanted youth are mad again and burning things'. No analysis, or very little. Frustrating when you want to get some perspective.

 

[The_Shootist]

Napoleon's Crowd Control Methods

"Give them a whiff of grapeshot."

Those who forget history...etc...etc

 

[ilbob]

Sad isnt it? Did they forget that the guy who keeps this place up and running is a Muslim. Yet they do not insult him. Why is that?

perhaps it is because he is not rioting and flying airplanes into occupied buildings.

 

[Joe Demko]

perhaps it is because he is not rioting and flying airplanes into occupied buildings.

You've yet to display any evidence, convincing or otherwise, that the rioters are rioting because they are Muslim. You've asserted it a couple times now, but that's not the same thing as proving it...but you already know that.

 

[Thain]

Has anyone in this thread insulted Muslims as a whole, or even implied that Islam was the source of the rioting? I don't think that has happened...

Several of us have pointed out that the 2005 riots were made up mostly of young Muslims. The current rioting is happening in the same banlieues were the 2005 riots happened.

Look, here in Michigan the 1943 and the 1967 riot happened in the same neighborhood... John Lee Hooker wrote a song about the first one, and the MC5 updated it for the second. Thirty-four years had passed inbetween, and yet the same demographic made up both groups of riot-goers. Horrible housing, racial tesions, poor jobs, police brutality... and yes, most of the rioters were Black.

Is it really that horrible to assume that the riots of two years ago might be conect to the riots of today? France has the same economic, social, and ethnic demographic in those banlieues today as it did two years ago. Yes, were are saying the rioters are Muslim, but we aren't saying they are rioting because they are Muslim...

I mean, if a riot broke out in Belfast tomorrow, I think I'd be able to safely assume the rioters were Catholic nationalists. Because that is the history of the ritos in that area.

 

[Joe Demko]

Have you actually read ilbob's posts?

 

[agricola]

This is not a Muslim thing - except for when these youths (who are of the same criminal nature as gangs on most estates) claim to be Muslim because it sounds hard (also like gangs on most estates) - if they were actually Muslims, they wouldnt be robbing / drug dealing / committing petty crime.

As for the incident that originally started this, please read Barman's posts earlier. The Police may well have run off because they were outnumbered - the vehicle was left at the scene, and anyone who has ever had to police one of these estates will know how quickly people who are not fans of the Police can arrive in numbers at the scene.

 

[Cosmoline]

if they were actually Muslims, they wouldnt be robbing / drug dealing / committing petty crime.

By that logic, the Crusades were orchestrated by atheists.

 

[Kindrox]

By that logic, the Crusades were orchestrated by atheists.

There is a major difference between actually BEING (following the tenets of) Christian and simply using Christianity as a tool to further an outside of Christian agenda.

 

[Cosmoline]

There is a major difference between actually BEING (following the tenets of) Christian and simply using Christianity as a tool to further an outside of Christian agenda.

How do you know what is or is not "outside of a Christian agenda"? Or a Muslim one for that matter. Defining Christians as only the ones you decide were "good Christians" is just a way of dodging the historical problem of Christians chopping people up in the name of their religion. It won't suffice. Not anymore than declaring that every "bad" Muslim from the head choppers in Iraq to OBL himself are "not really Muslim."

So if these rioters are Muslims who feel that their religion is being attacked by French libraries and schools, then their riot needs to be understood in that context. If they're just kids having fun that's also important. My problem is nobody seems willing to say what they are. Their use of firearms is also impossible to analyze without more information. It may be that it was just a few people going too far. Or it may be part of an attempted insurgency-style attack. Putting some ban on discussing possible religious motivations makes this analysis very difficult.

 

[agricola]

By that logic, the Crusades were orchestrated by atheists.

Not really. The people behind these riots (and especially the serious violence) are not disadvantaged youth (which is not to say that there arent disadvantaged youth on the estates, or that the disadvantaged youth arent involved in the rioting.

It is criminal gangs on the estates who have the numbers, the motivation and the tools with which to have a pop at the police in this way - indeed, this is the same throughout most of the Western world - and it was noticeable from some of the reporting of the 2005 riots how the demand for the population that live on the estates (the vast majority of whom were not youths) wanted Police patrolling on the estates in order to prevent the problems that the youths were causing, and that much of the criticism of police was that they werent doing this (instead driving around in cars, as if at a wildlife refuge - to use one of the more memorable phrases). Some of these gangs claimed to be Muslims, though (as far as my experience in London goes) these "Muslims" are conspicious by how little they live their lives according to a Muslim faith - no mosque, no prayers, drinking alcohol, committing thefts etc.

 

[Thain]

if they were actually Muslims, they wouldnt be robbing / drug dealing / committing petty crime.

Sorry, but a Muslim is just as capable of being a criminal, terrorist, or - as we have here- a rioter as any member of any religion. This isn't a knock on the religion, its just the way we humans operate.

Muslims, like Christians, aren't suppossed to throw rocks and molotov cocktails at police; they aren't suppossed to loot stores; they aren't suppossed to burn cars in the streets...

But they do.

There was a reason I mentioned Belfast in my earlier post. Men and women of all faiths have been behaving as both saints and sinners for all of recorded history.

I don't beleive they are rioting because they are muslim. They are rioting, and they are muslim, and the ethnic tensions between France's muslim minorty and the majority have contributed to the riot's beginning. Not unlike the riots in 2005, or how the many race riots in American history have begun.

The 1967 Detroit riot didn't happen simply because the rioter were black... But racial tensions were part the fuel, which when hit with the right spark, nearly burnt down the city.

There is nothing racist, bigoted, or prejudiced about saying that these riots have, as one of their root causes, ethnic tension. If you don't acknowledge the causes then they will never get addressed... News reports that pussyfoot around the isssue, by only talking about "youths" for example, just plain don't help resolve anything.

Its not too disimilar from discribing a riot in Gaza without every saying "Arab," "Palestinian," "Jew," or "Israeli..."

 

[Cougfan2]

Have I missed something here? I thought the riots were primarily a protest against Sarkozy's attempted political reforms trying to reverse some of the socialistic policies put in place by Chirac and some of his predecessors.

No more guaranteed employment, giving business the right to fire employees who are slackers, etc.........

 

[Thain]

Cougfan2, those were the mass protests a month or so back; There were a few scuffles with the Police - in a sort of Seattle Hippie WTO Protest kinda way - but nothing like the current rioting.

 

[Cougfan2]

Thain, thanks for the clarification. Guess you can't tell your rioters without a program!

 

[Kindrox]

How do you know what is or is not "outside of a Christian agenda"?

Please show me where the authority in Protestant Christianity, the Bible, ever suggested, authorized, promoted, glorified or in any way justified chopping people up in the name of Christianity?

It does not. So any chopping up done in its name was done because the actor wanted to do so for other reasons, under his own authority. The actor just used Christianity to attempt to give his acts credibility or to attempt to motivate others to act.

 

[Thain]

Kindrox, you aren't actually trying to sat that Protestants have never used religion as justification for violence, are you? That is just woefully uninformed...

Let's see... The Peasants' War (c. 1525) the Anabaptists kicked off a a war against all constituted authorities, and an attempt to establish by revolution an ideal Christian commonwealth, with absolute equality and the community of goods.

The Schmalkald War (c. 1547), that pitted the Lutheran princes of the Schmalkaldic League against the Catholic forces of Charles V.

In 16th Century France there was a succession of wars between Roman Catholics and Hugenots.

The Thirsy Years War, in the first half of the 17th century, were German states, Scandinavia and Poland were rocked by religious warfare. Catholicism and Lutheranism figured in the opposing sides of this conflict...

And let us not forget the sheer number of violent criminals down the years who have been Protestants.

 

[plexreticle]

This is no more a Muslin event that the Watts riots were a Christian event.

 

[American By Blood]

...if they were actually Muslims, they wouldnt be robbing / drug dealing / committing petty crime.

Does your proximity to Scotland make you more prone to the logical fallacy named for the people of that country?

 

[Thain]

True enough, I've never implied it was... But it is akin to the Watts riot in the sense that "Watts:Black, Paris:Muslim."

Horrible housing, ethnic tension, political frustration, poor jobs, police brutality (real and imagined), and so on and so forth are almost always at the root of any given riot. From Belfast to Watts, from Bejing to Detroit...

The ethnic tension at hand in the Paris riots is that of France's Muslim minority and its conflict with the majority. I don't see why it is so un-PC to say that it is what it is...

I for one don't think it is "insulting" to all Islam (as some have implied) to say that these "youths" that have taken to the Paris streets are Muslim. Is it racist to say that the rioters in the Watts Riot were black? Is it insulting to Christianity to say that the Troubles in Northern Ireland were between Catholics and Protestants? Is it insulting to Pennsylvanians to say that the Whiskey Rebellion was made up of farmes from the Quaker State?

I say we should just call a spade a spade, but no ddoubt someone would accuse me of racism.

 

[outerlimit]

Why the insistance on painting this as "the Muslims are at it again?" "The rioters are Muslims" is not the same thing as "They are rioting just because they are Muslims."

The issues that led to these riots, and the previous ones, are more complex than "Muslims are evil." It's comfortable to think in such simplistic terms, but thinking that way leads to nothing in terms of solutions.

When you come to someone else's country and act like a group of animals you're bound to be painted with broad brush strokes. Obviously, they belong back in Algeria since they don't seem to like where they are now.

 

[Thain]

When you come to someone else's country and act like a group of animals you're bound to be painted with broad brush strokes. Obviously, they belong back in Algeria since they don't seem to like where they are now.

I'll Take the high road,
and you'll take the low road,
and you'll win the Argument,
before me...

Me and Critical thinking,
will never meet again...

 

[Kindrox]

Kindrox, you aren't actually trying to sat that Protestants have never used religion as justification for violence, are you? That is just woefully uninformed...

Heaven's no. I am trying to say that those who use Christanity as an excuse for killing non-Christians certainly are not holding to biblical teaching.

If you are not holding to biblical teaching, you are christian in name only. We know the term RINO, meet its friend CINO.

 

[ilbob]

You've yet to display any evidence, convincing or otherwise, that the rioters are rioting because they are Muslim.

I don't recall ever saying they were rioting because they were Muslim. Only pointing out they likely were both rioting and Muslim. I don't think it is especially relevant that they are mostly black either. They are just thugs.

 

[TexasRifleman]

Horrible housing, ethnic tension, political frustration, poor jobs, police brutality (real and imagined), and so on and so forth are almost always at the root of any given riot. From Belfast to Watts, from Bejing to Detroit...

Which explains why Plasma TVs are always on the top of the "items to loot" list instead of food and blankets right?