The Washington Times
Letters to the editor
Published November 18, 2005

A French perspective on the riots
With regard to the recent riots in France, I have to ask myself if American media and French media are covering the same events. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly calls the riots "The MuslimInsurrectionin France," and The Washington Times suggests in an editorial that Islamic leaders are behind the riots: "Although The [Washington] Post might imagine Islamic leaders 'play no role' in the riots, the leaders themselves seem to think differently" ("The French riots," Editorial, Nov. 10).

Lille's Metro-equivalent, 20 Minutes (a free journal that is passed out on the Metro), attributes the French riots to five main factors: politicians' neglect for underprivileged areas, the breakdown of relations between police officers and young people in the inner city (which is actually outside the city — les banlieus), poverty, Islamists responding to right-wing fundamentalists such as Jean-Marie Le Pen. and Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, who referred to the inner city as "trash" (racaille).

Attributing the French riots to Islamists falsely associates the rioters with suicide bombers in Iraq and the war on terror. It ignores decades of discrimination against immigrants and their offspring in France and the frustration that has resulted.

Children of Arabs who came to France in the 1950s speak fluent French and have university degrees from France, but many of them find that they cannot find jobs or rent apartments, while their generationally French classmates have jobs, apartments and cars. The French riots today more closely resemble the race riots of the 1960s in Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles than they do the war on terror.

NINA PEACOCK
Valenciennes, France