The rioters who have terrorized Paris for two weeks now have been called many things by the mainstream media: poor, disaffected, disenfranchised, mostly immigrants or children of.  But one label applied to them in passing, if at all, is one that is certainly not unimportant or irrelevant: “Muslim.”

Anyone reading the accounts of perhaps the most respected news organization on earth, the Associated Press, would have no clue that Muslims were primarily behind the riots.  Ditto for those consuming the BBC, though at least that is a little less surprising.  And while Reuters, the New York Times, and the LA Times each feel compelled to mention that many rioters are Muslim, they treat that fact as, at most, incidental.  (As Daniel Pipes has noted, the situation in the French media is no different.)

By all accounts, the primary contingent of rioters is Muslim.  There have been some copycats, and there are anecdotal reports of native Frenchmen participating in the organized chaos.  But there is no denying that most of the rioters are Muslim.  Unless, of course, you’re in the mainstream media.

An AP story filed late Sunday night waited until the end of the 8th paragraph to identify where exactly the rioters are wreaking havoc.  Deep in the story, the AP informs its readers: “Violence has been concentrated in poor suburbs with large immigrant populations.”

The hot zones are indeed “poor suburbs with large immigrant populations.”  But they’re also heavily Muslim.  And it was Muslims who were almost exclusively involved in instigating the initial waves of violence.  Through the 11th day of rioting, it appears that Muslims—particularly when copycats are not counted—still account for most of the rioters.  Yet none of this context appears in the AP story. 

Here is how the venerable news agency explained the mushrooming violence:

The violence has escalated from an outburst of anger in suburban Paris housing projects into a nationwide show of disdain for French authority from youths and minorities, most French-born children of Arab and black Africans angered by years of unequal opportunities.

The word “Muslim” appears exactly once in the 1,000 word dispatch—at the very end.  Seemingly tacked on at the close of the article is the following: “Government officials have held a series of meetings with Muslim religious leaders, local officials and youths from poor suburbs to try to calm the violence.” (emphasis added)

Similar was a BBC story that merely described the urban battlegrounds as “poor, largely immigrant communities with high levels of unemployment.”  Just afterward, in the next-to-last paragraph—and out of nowhere—is this: “Muslim leaders have urged politicians to show respect for immigrant communities.”

So Muslims apparently are not involved in the riots, except in calling for their end.

Perhaps this is by the design of the French government.  An AP story from Friday afternoon quotes national police spokesman Patrick Hamon saying that there was “nothing that allows us to say that Islamists” were behind car burnings, police shootings, and other acts of sadistic violence, such as setting on fire a woman on crutches as she was exiting a bus. Continued...