Bellil’s experience is not unique. Last year, a 17-year-old girl was burned to death by one of these thugs. No wonder so many Muslim girls veil themselves rather than risk a similar fate.

While the most sensational of the atrocities are prosecuted, most go unpunished, and there’s little will to end this reign of terror in French ghettoes. The goal seems to be, well, look the other way and blissfully enjoy the Parisian nightlife. But time and demographics are on the extremist’s side. The French are not reproducing themselves to replace those who are dying. And Islamists are reproducing and immigrating. France, as we know it, will soon disappear.

The real problem with France, like the rest of post-Christian Europe, is a flawed, rigidly secular worldview. France has renounced its Christian heritage, refuses to reform its welfare state, and has no compelling moral vision—as we see in its sanctimonious rejection of British and American morally driven foreign policy. Without a vision, the people perish—which is why France may be doomed to “eat its young” and, in turn, watch as they bite back.

For further reading and information:

“Falluja-Sur-Seine?: There’s a reason the media is reluctant to connect the dots on the French riots,” by Edward Morrissey (Weekly Standard, 9 November 2005).

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Val MacQueen, “Veiled Threat,” Tech Central Station, 18 February 2004.

Elisabeth Eaves, “The French Eat Their Young,” Slate, 9 November 2005.

“The New French Revolution,” CBS News, 16 May 2004.

Mark Steyn, “Early Skirmish in the Eurabian Civil War,” Telegraph (London), 8 November 2005.

Jeff Clinton, “French Intifada,” The Dawn Treader blog, 7 November 2005.

Joel Kotkin, “Our Immigrants, Their Immigrants,” Wall Street Journal, 8 November 2005, A16. (Subscription required.)

Theodore Dalrymple, “Bonfire of the Vanities,” Wall Street Journal, 7 November 2005, A20. (Subscription required.)

Theodore Dalrymple, “The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris,” City Journal, Autumn 2002.

Joe Loconte, The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler’s Gathering Storm (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).