Dix

That's French for 10, the number of nights now that the riots have plagued the Paris area, spreading to many other cities and suburbs and now spilling over into the city limits.

The urban unrest that triggered scores of arson attacks on vehicles, nursery schools and other targets from the Mediterranean to the German border reached Paris overnight, with police saying early Sunday that 13 cars were burned in the French capital.

The media keep trotting out the root causes explanation for the violence:

The unrest is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society's margins, struggling with unemployment, poor housing, racial discrimination, crime and a lack of opportunity.

Perhaps the French political, cultural and media elite should consider the accommodationist policies in the area of public education that have allowed radical Islamism to flourish in the most problematic neighborhoods. Recently there was leaked on the Internet a 37-page report detailing the problems in these neighborhood schools. Olivier Guitta writes for Frontpage Magazine:

Scores of informants told the Obin team [Obin being a French top education official tasked with overseeing the study that the was leaked] that these neighborhoods were undergoing a "rapid and recent swing" toward Islamization, thanks to the growing influence of religious activists. These young men, intense and highly intellectual in their piety, are sometimes former residents of the neighborhood who have been to prison, where they were converted to Islam. More often, however, they are educated men with degrees from universities in France, North Africa, or the Middle East. They have come to be known as "bearded ones" (distinctive beards are a marker of Muslim purists and extremists--think of bin Laden) or "big brothers" (a name evocative of the worldwide jihadist movement's Muslim Brotherhood), and they offer young people a proud identity--Muslim--in place of the dismal identity of unassimilated immigrant.

In Guitta words, the report concluded:

In a particularly interesting observation, Obin notes that it is the schools that have reached accommodations with the extremists that are most plagued by violence against girls, Jews, and teachers. Schools that refuse to tolerate the intolerable have coped much better with the problems described in the report. As a result, Obin calls for a policy of no compromise with Islamist demands.

Yet, compromise is what we will see, a capitulation to the demands of the Islamist radicals. A tough stance is not welcomed, as we saw when French Interior Minister Sarkozy used some harsh words to describe the thugs. From the Scotsman:

The minister's aggressive language, in which he referred to rioters as "scum" and vowed "to clean out" troubled suburbs, led to accusations from both the Socialist opposition and from within his own party that he was fanning the violence. Police unions have also joined the chorus of criticism, castigating Sarkozy's decision to end neighbourhood policing and complaining that his declared war on delinquency is making their job increasingly difficult and dangerous.

Gateway writes:

Much of the reporting we see in the Western Press like this from AFP make it clear that if your feelings are hurt, or you are called names, especially if you are an unemployed minority, then torching cars, hurling molotov cocktails, and lighting up handicapped people in wheelchairs is a "natural consequence".

Then, there is this chilling observation from Peaktalk:

The term “Paris Riots” has become a complete misnomer. There’s war going on in France and that is coming from someone who is not given to hyperbole, but the facts have made that conclusion inescapable. It is almost unbelievable that the Chirac administration truly believed that it could somehow escape the jihadist wrath by staying out of Iraq and distance itself from America’s War on Terror. The bitter irony is that rather than having his troops deployed in the Middle East, the French president may now need them at home.

If poverty and the pent-up anger it fosters is the cause for this rioting, then why only in France? Paul Belien explores why some riot and some do not. He points out that Poland has as high an unemployment rate as that of France. Yet, the Poles, rather than sitting at home twiddling their thumbs and pouring out into the streets to torch businesses and cars and their public schools, they go to work…in France.

They travel abroad for several weeks at a time to work in foreign lands. One of the places they go to is France, where they work harder, often delivering better quality and at lower wages than French workers. Can’t the “French youths” do the same? Do not tell me that there are no plumbers, construction workers and nurses in places like Clichy-sous-Bois?

The problem is that a welfare dependency does not encourage work:

…the Islamic “youths” of Clichy are the spoiled brats of the West European welfare state. Despite the media talk of “discrimination” (if there is any discrimination of immigrants in Western Europe, it is “positive” discrimination), they get the same generous welfare benefits as other Frenchmen. The West European government handouts are so high that none of the allegedly “frustrated and angry unemployed” are willing to do the kind of jobs that the Poles gladly take. The moral perversion which accompanies socialism has affected Muslims to a larger extent than it has affected people raised in the traditional Christian culture of the West with its stronger sense of individual responsibility – and even among the latter social welfarism has had devastating effects on traditional morality, which has almost disappeared.

It’s not politically correct, though, to point out that there just may be something in the Islamic religion, which can not be found in the “traditional Christian culture,” that has not the internal strength to withstand the disease of “moral perversion which accompanies socialism….”