Unless you have been in another planet, you will know that in France, we have been witnessing some pretty violent and consistent rioting these past few weeks. With over 1,200 arrests, 1,400 burnt vehicles, and 36 police injured, isn't it time France and Europe attempted to end their Muslim aparthied policies?

You think the Hijab ban was anything else? Think again. Such is the discrimination against Muslims from North Africa that when Jon Henley interviewed Sylla, Sossa, Karim, Rachid, Mounir and Samir, the poignant summation is:

"We burn because it's the only way to make ourselves heard, because it's solidarity with the rest of the non-citizens in this country, with this whole underclass. Because it feels good to do something with your rage...Our parents, they should understand. They did nothing, they suffered in silence. We don't have a choice. We're sinking in shit, and France is standing on our heads. One way or another we're heading for prison. It might as well be for actually doing something."

The Times published a comment peice by Minette Marrin, expressing surprise at how the rage felt by the discriminated minorites had not unleashed earlier?

"What surprised us was the animosity that people in the village felt for the Arabs, as they called them when they didn’t use worse words. Nobody talked to them or played with their children. I think ours were the only children in the main square who did. In every shop there would be angry mutterings among indigenous people about them and us — how they were parasites, thieves and ignorant; they wouldn’t even have their children inoculated. You had to lock your doors. And there were so many of them."

"There is nothing new about the rage and resentment that have set France alight. Our part of France had been Le Pen country for years. La Haine, the celebrated film about a French ghetto just like those which have been ablaze for days, was made in 1995, 10 years ago. So it is odd that it has taken the French so long to wake up to the alarming failure of their much vaunted un-Anglo-Saxon society to accommodate its Muslims".

As the writer remarks, its not just France's problem either, the same manner of aparthied is being seen in Denmark, Belgium, Holland.

{moscomment}

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