Imagine the U.S. canceling the Fourth of July holiday due to high crime in our cities and you get a sense of what has occurred in France. Cities across France canceled Bastille Day observances July 14 because of rioting that ignited when a police officer shot and killed 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, a French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent, during a traffic stop in Paris on June 27.
News reports said churches were burned to the ground and graffiti was scrawled in red paint on a church in Marseilles declaring: "Mohammed was the last prophet". Bank branches were ransacked and ATMs opened with chainsaws. Some shouted "death to the police," "death to France," "death to the Jews," and "Hitler was right." A Holocaust memorial was defaced. Thousands have been arrested.
Kosher food restaurants and shops have been looted and burned during the rampage.
Ayat Oraby, a former Egyptian TV and Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, has contributed her dose of venom to the French riots: "To where is France heading? To hell, God willing!"
Is France now paying a heavy price for admitting so many radical Islamists into the country? As Sorbonne University Professor Bernard Rougier has written: "Since the 1970s, France has welcomed an ever-increasing number of immigrants from the Muslim world. ... Only a tiny minority have assimilated into French society. The others live as they lived in their countries of origin."
Guy Milliere, on his webpage for the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council, recently posted these various quotes on the subject: "Radical imams came from the Muslim world and allege that France is guilty of having colonized their countries, that Muslims should continue to live according to the law of Islam and that, in the imams' view, France should pay for its crimes. Many politicians have told the newcomers that France is racist and had exploited them."
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Milliere also posted this one: "Criminal gangs formed and began ruling these neighborhoods ... French political leaders closed their eyes. Meanwhile, these Muslim neighborhoods have grown and crime from them increased."
Some politicians have tried to appease the radicals by sending more money to Muslim neighborhoods following riots by mostly young people who believe they have no future. To no avail. Rioting has now spread to Muslim areas in Belgium and Switzerland.
Again, none of this should come as a surprise. As the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi predicted: "We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe -- without swords, without guns, without conquest -- will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades."
In 2018, a House of Representatives subcommittee held hearings on the influential Muslim Brotherhood and what it called its "global threat." Then-Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said: "The Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie, has said that the organization's goal is to establish a new Islamist caliphate, including the imposition of sharia law, which is the totalitarian Islamic legal code. We saw what happens when the Brotherhood takes control of a country in Egypt from 2012 to 2013, and the results were chilling, that then-President Mohamed Morsi defied the rule of law and granted himself near absolute power. As Egyptian leader Mohamed El Baradi put it, Morsi usurped all state powers and appointed himself Egypt's new pharaoh."
While it is obligatory to say not all Muslims are terrorists, nor do all share the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood, the rioting in France, Belgium and Switzerland shows the influence of the growing radical wing of Islam. It should be a warning because the extremists' have announced their ultimate targets are Israel and the U.S.
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