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It's really important to understand the Muslim community in France, and not evoke false connections. We don't know if the attackers had anything to with the fl
by vonnik 11y ago
It's really important to understand the Muslim community in France, and not evoke false connections.
We don't know if the attackers had anything to with the flux of Syrian migrants moving across Europe now, but my guess would be: they had nothing to do with it.
There are about 5 million Muslims in France, which accounts for about 7 percent of France's total population. France has deep, long-standing and often troubled ties to several Muslim nations, notably Algeria. The French presence in Algeria lasted from 1830-1962.
During the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, France was targeted by terrorist attacks several times. One of those bombings EDIT: injured more than 100 people, which may be the number lost in the attacks today.
There are several basic facts that may help people understand why these attacks happen in France (I'm going to make some crude and unsympathetic generalizations that stem from the years I spent there):
* It's close to Middle Eastern and North African countries torn by conflict, notably Libya and Syria. These are training grounds for would-be attackers, many of whom originate in the west.
* Because of that, and of the fact that France rejoined NATO in 2009 and put itself firmly on the side of the US, it is also a proxy for the US, and will be targeted by those unhappy with American policies.
* It's racist. France has not dealt with the fact that people other than the French live on its soil. If you are the child of immigrants who were invited to France to help its post-War growth, you soon learn that a Muslim name will exclude you from many opportunities.
* Its economy is stagnant. France is no country for young men. They will face limited opportunities regardless of their ethnicity, unless they belong to the elite passing through the grandes écoles. This leads to a lot of frustration. When people cannot build a life in one direction, sometimes they are susceptible to morbid, violent ideologies.
* It's sloppy. I lived in France for 14 years, on either side of the 9/11 attacks on Manhattan. The French were really slow to put respectable security systems in place. CDG airport leaked like a sieve for years and I have no reason to believe that has changed.
Anyone who wants to know more about Islam in France should read Gilles Kepel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Kepel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Kepel
He wrote a particularly good book in the 1980s called "The suburbs of Islam".
- tonfa 11y agoCorrection: 1995 attacks killed 8 and injured 100 (Puts the current attack in perspective, I don't think anything similar ever happened)
- vonnik 11y agoI stand corrected. Thank you. A terrorist attack killing more than 100 happened in 1961, during the Algerian war for independence.
- e12e 11y agoAnd not to detract from your points above, there's been terror attacks on "both" sides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961
- mercurial 11y agoThat was a pretty nasty time. The French military tortured and assassinated on very large scale in Algeria (thousands of people). On the other side, the FLN was fighting a guerilla war, combined with terrorist actions (mostly bombings) against civilian targets. To compound this, once De Gaulle announced that Algeria would be become independent, hardliners from the military as well as from the Pieds-Noir community (people living in Algeria of French descent) formed a terrorist group known as OAS, targeting both FLN, Algerian civilians and French authorities (including attempts to kill De Gaulle).
- gotchange 11y agoYou forgot to include the recent intervention in Mali by French troops. This incident definitely upset the Al Qaeda in the Maghreb people and this terrorist attack was probably a retaliatory attack for the intervention.
- Asbostos 11y agoNot that it makes up for it, but France also committed state-sponsored terrorism (by any definition of the word) in New Zealand in the 80's. Though they only killed one person with their bomb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
- 001sky 11y agoCould you clarify how this would be "terrorism"? Terrorisms is not something targeted like this. Whethor or not it was a war crime or treason or murder or whatever (they plead guilty to manslaughter)...it's not a repeatable or scalable type of situation and was never a threat to the general public.
- Asbostos 11y agoI suppose not if terrorism has to give fear to the whole country, not just one group. But it was surely meant to intimidate by random-seeming violence. It wasn't part of a war, which distinguishes it from general war killing. Nor was it a personal grudge that distinguishes it from typical murder.
- gozo 11y agoThat has nothing to do with the definition of terrorism. Groups who do targeted attacks of sabotage that rarely kill people are also considered terrorists. For example the Earth Liberation Front is regarded as terrorists by the US. https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/dt https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/dt https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009/september/domterror_090709 https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009/september/domterror_09...
- 001sky 11y agoTerrorism is anti civillian warfare. Planting sabatoge devices that kill and maim innocent people is actually terrorism/ Is it just not as effective because it maims more than it it kills? I don't get it with these pedantic aruments. eg lets say we load a bunch of shrapnel into a tree so it maims or permanenly injures whoever the next logger is...tha is basically the same thing as lobbing hand grenades into the public square. the attacks are meant to target random people, caught unawares, in a way that conveys a persistant threat of continued, scalable future action. Now lets take some other shady randome violence like the KGB assinating a civilian in London with radioactive isotopes in his tea. Is that terrorism? No, its a specific threat carried out in a limited capacity against a designated target. It might be criminal or a war crime or wahatever bad thing describes it, but its not "anti civilian warfare", in the same way that not all war casualties are "war crimes" in the normal usage.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoA correction: France has always been a member of NATO, they withdrew from integrated military command for several decades though.